Can we get the first ARTIST value to scrobble instead of DISPLAY ARTIST?

[SandaruLJ]

It's so annoying when dealing with the tracks with multiple artists.

for example: Steven Wilson feat. Ninet Tayeb creates a new artist in my last.fm library and records the scrobbles under that name instead of Steven Wilson. So the scrobbles are divided between these two names, Steven Wilson doesn't get the love he deserves and my library becomes inconsistent.
This becomes unbearable with soundtrack albums where there are so many guest artists, different ones for each track. The album gets butchered!

If we could get an option to use the first ARTIST value for scrobbling, it would be very convenient. I could edit the DISPLAY ARTIST field to show only the main artist but I don't wanna lose information. I wonder if I'm the only one having this problem...

[psychoadept]

Not just you. Getting scrobbles to sync correctly with last.fm is a big pain in the butt, because last.fm "standardizes" things however it wants, and then it won't sync back to MusicBee correctly. I'm starting to think we need a plugin to allow us to set "scrobble artist", "scrobble album", etc, independent of anything else.

[SandaruLJ]

Scrobbling ALBUM ARTIST field wouldn't be compatible with compilation albums. I thought a better solution would be to scrobble the first ARTIST value. That way, the main artist will be getting the scrobbles. Wouldn't that be better than using the DISPLAY ARTIST?

[frankz]

The standard way to tag is to have the main artist be the display artist with any guest artist listed in the title as "Title (feat. Guest Artist1, Guest Artist2)" and listed under "Artists" in the tags.  This tagging convention is compatible with Last.FM. 

Other tagging conventions individual users invent may suit their needs better, but are likely not compatible with services across the board.  The above has proven to be cross-compatible pretty much across the board.

[psychoadept]

The above has proven to be cross-compatible pretty much across the board.

Except that Musicbrainz abandoned this practice some time ago, explicitly preferring to put all artists in artist credits. There is some synchronization between musicbrainz and last.fm, I thought, but maybe I imagined that.

[frankz]

I use a plug-in (feat artists in titles) that negates that unfortunate MusicBrainz decision (I never noticed it), so my tracks scrobble fine to Last.FM.  YMMV, of course.

I'm specifically talking about "Display Artist," which I believe MusicBee uses to scrobble.  I have guest artists put into the title and also tagged out as ";" artists.  If Brainz puts them in Display Artist, I manually separate them so only the main artist is listed as Display Artist.

I'm, of course, not trying to dictate how other people tag their files.  I'm just sharing what I've found to work pretty much across the board.  Use the info, or don't use it at all, as your specific situation warrants.

[SandaruLJ]

But isn't the sole purpose of DISPLAY ARTIST tag to display all the contributing artists in a fancy way with "feat.", "&" and stuff and keep the TITLE tag clean and original? If we tag guest artists into the TITLE, we wouldn't need a DISPLAY ARTIST tag since that and the ARTIST tag would exactly have the same value. MB could just use the ARTIST tag for UI purposes.

The above has proven to be cross-compatible pretty much across the board.

I'm glad that your method works for you, but it does not for me. Seems our music tastes are different . Anyway, wouldn't it be convenient if we had an option to choose which tag we'd like to use for scrobbling. My opinion is that the first ARTIST value is the ideal for scrobbling, since it's always the main artist.