How to sort Artist first in Multiple Artist Splitter?

[Tybot]

I figured out the cause of the issue mentioned here: https://getmusicbee.com/forum/index.php?topic=22140.0

A lot of my tracks looks like this when there are multiple performers involved:

As you can see "Elvis Presley Artist" is not at the top of the list which means that when I use library filter to filter out the artist, MusicBee only shows the tracks that have their artist and performers formatted in the exact same way. I tried moving the Artist to the top of the list and that solved the issue.

The question now is how do I automate this?

[boroda]

click 'show as text' button, then just cut/paste plain text strings.

[Tybot]

click 'show as text' button, then just cut/paste plain text strings.

Yeah, I started doing that and then realized it had to be done about 4.000 times seeing as most songs need individual editing. I was kinda hoping it could be done some other way.

I also don't get the reason for this. All my tags are as they should be which means it's MusicBee that decides what the order should look like and I don't see any reason for the sort-order Performer, Artist, Performer, Performer. Rather than Artist, Performer, Performer, Performer.

[Steven]

i'll look into this on the weekend as this doesnt sound like the expected behavior

[Tybot]

i'll look into this on the weekend as this doesnt sound like the expected behavior

Thank you Steven for addressing it!

I was afraid it might be my own fault since I've been messing around with a lot of different tag-related stuff lately, so I did some more research.

Here's how the tags of a clean album that's just been ran through Picard looks like in MP3Tag:

http://i.imgur.com/bekIHFm.jpg

Here's how it looks when I look at it with MusicBee for the first time without any changes made by me:

http://i.imgur.com/kKuhGpF.jpg

The entry "The All-American Rejects - Artist" is found all the way at the bottom of the list visible in Multiple Artist Splitter.

And here's what happens when I click the artist-link:

http://i.imgur.com/npXN6XC.jpg

As you can see in the tab bar, MusicBee shows the search result of "Artist is Tyson Ritter", which just happens to be at the top of the list in the Multiple Artist Splitter window. I'm assuming the library filter is working as it's suppose to by choosing the first entry in the list as the base of its search. How the order of that list gets messed up is the question.

I just wanted to clarify it further and assure myself that this wasn't a problem I created. I appreciate you taking a look it.

[Steven]

i am unable to reproduce any incorrect behavior, nor can i see why it would be the case looking at the code.
I dont plan to spend more time investigating this

[Tybot]

i am unable to reproduce any incorrect behavior, nor can i see why it would be the case looking at the code.
I dont plan to spend more time investigating this

I appreciate you taking a look at it but I must say, it doesn't sound right that you're not able to reproduce it as that would mean there's something wrong with just my copy of the software.

If you add a value to the "PERFORMER" tag in a flac file, is the main artist at the top of the list in the Multiple Artist Splitter window, unlike my example below?



Here's the file I'm using as an example: https://www.dropbox.com/s/sp5ifuzw9k8zmya/07.%20KISS%20-%20When%20Your%20Walls%20Come%20Down.flac?dl=0

If you could at least open it on your end to see how it looks, if it looks any different on your system than it does on mine it would be immensely appreciated. Since flac files uses the ARTIST tag as the main artist and PERFORMER as the band members, and mp3s uses PERFORMER as the ARTIST, I'm thinking it could have something to do with that, it gets mixed up somehow. That MB is set up to handle tags the way they are in mp3 files and not flac.

Even if you can't figure out the root of the problem, maybe it's possible to add an option to ignore the PERFORMER tag when doing any kind of search, lyrics or library. That would certainly solve the problem.


Edit:

I managed to figure out the culprit and it's not MB. Picard does something, not sure what yet, when tagging an album that causes the entry-jumble. If I clear a flac file of all tags and then just add Artist and a couple of Performers and add the files to MB, they're in the right order. If I run it through Picard before adding it to MB, the list becomes jumbled. Apologies for wasting your time Steven.

[Tybot]

i am unable to reproduce any incorrect behavior, nor can i see why it would be the case looking at the code.
I dont plan to spend more time investigating this

Would it be possible to configure Musicbee so that when <Artist> is used to search for something, it gets its information from the Artist tag instead of choosing the top entry in Multiple Artist Splitter, which is populated by both the Performer and the Artist tag? That would certainly solve the problem and I don't see how it would affect any other area.

Right now <Artist> seems to be linked to both Artist and Performer tag.

[Tybot]

Finally managed to solve this with a MP3Tag action. Picard obviously saves the Performer tag in a way that Musicbee doesn't like and the solution is to make a third-party tag tool copy the existing Performer tags to a new Performer tag.

Action:

1. Merge duplicate fields - Field: "PERFORMER" Separator: ;
2. Guess values - Source format: %performer%~%performer% - Guessing pattern: %performer%~%performer%
3. Split field by separator - Field: "PERFORMER" Separator: ;