Show artist instead of album artist for various artist albums

[JZStudios]

I can edit the track details on the bottom of the now playing tab to show all the different tags, and it's set up the way I'd use it with pretty much everything. For compilation albums or soundtracks though, it shows "Various Artists" instead of the tracks actual artist. I don't know if the edit thing will actually use code, and if it does I don't exactly know how to use it.
Something like [If <Album Artist> is <Various Artists>, then display <Artist>, else display <Album Artist>]


You can see it says the artist is Bonnie Somerville in the upper right. The thought also occurred to me that I could have it display "Artist" all the time, but then I'd get the long chains of guest artists, and in the case of my slightly oddly tagged classical, it would no longer show the album artist as Beethoven, and instead display whatever orchestra.

[hiccup]

Something like "If album artist is "Various Artists" then display "Artist," else display "Album Artist"."

That shouldn't be very hard.
There is a vast amount of information on, and examples of virtual formulas to be found both on the forum and on the wiki.
Have you given it a shot to try something yourself?

[JZStudios]

Something like "If album artist is "Various Artists" then display "Artist," else display "Album Artist"."

That shouldn't be very hard.
There is a vast amount of information on, and examples of virtual formulas to be found both on the forum and on the wiki.
Have you given it a shot to try something yourself?

No. I'm not very good at code, and I don't even know if this particular instance actually utilizes code.

Okay, so I've now looked at this; https://musicbee.fandom.com/wiki/Useful_Virtual_Tag_Formulas
which makes me feel pretty confident that what I want should be possible, but I'm still not good enough at code to do it. I can figure out
$If(<Album Artist>="Various Artists", display <Artist>, $else display <Album Artist>.
That doesn't work and I couldn't tell you why.

Also, on a completely unrelated note, I never noticed until now that you answered my question about normalization, so thanks for that.

[hiccup]

I can figure out
$If(<Album Artist>="Various Artists", display <Artist>, $else display <Album Artist>.
That doesn't work and I couldn't tell you why.

You are close. It only needs to be simpler since the &If statement by itself will already know to display B or C depending on A.
So:

$If(<Album Artist>="Various Artists",<Artist>,<Album Artist>)

[JZStudios]

I can figure out
$If(<Album Artist>="Various Artists", display <Artist>, $else display <Album Artist>.
That doesn't work and I couldn't tell you why.

You are close. It only needs to be simpler since the &If statement by itself will already know to display B or C depending on A.
So:

$If(<Album Artist>="Various Artists",<Artist>,<Album Artist>)

That seems to do it. I can just drop that right in the panel layout customize field without having to make any virtual tags too.