Figuring out / Musing out about tagging multiple artists and featuring artists

[please55]

I promise I've read older threads, even a few at hydrogen forums. I'm still looking for more opinions.  I'm mostly looking for clarity around tagging artist info.

For tracks that feature a secondary artist, I've been capturing that info in the 'artist' tag. So for a song 'Happy' by John featuring Maya

Title - Happy
Artist - John feat. Maya
Album Artist - John

Downside is that creates a fictional artist entry 'John feat. Maya'.

1) Are there any downsides to putting the featuring artist in the title other than making it longer or maybe being less aesthitically pleasing?

2) Does the 'album artist' support multiple entries much like the 'artist' tag does (at least for flac and aac)?

3) Take an album by B.B. King & Eric Clapton. Would you enter it as 'B.B. King & Eric Clapton' in album artist or as two separate entries if possible?

4) When do you use '&' vs 'and' for multiple artists or bands? Ex 'Grace Potter & The Nocturnals' or 'Grace Potter and The Nocturnals'? Keep in mind both have been used officially on their albums. So my question is do you actively standardize towards one, follow what's on the cover, or don't really care?

5) Apparently MB uses ';' as a delimiter between entries vs other software like MP3tag that uses //. I know its partly due to a lack of industry standards but in general which method do you find causes least problems for you down the road?

For now I'm ignoring 'display' option available in MB but I'm aware its very versatile. I just want to nail down a baseline first.

[frankz]

I promise I've read older threads, even a few at hydrogen forums. I'm still looking for more opinions.  I'm mostly looking for clarity around tagging artist info.

For tracks that feature a secondary artist, I've been capturing that info in the 'artist' tag. So for a song 'Happy' by John featuring Maya

Title - Happy
Artist - John feat. Maya
Album Artist - John

Downside is that creates a fictional artist entry 'John feat. Maya'.

1) Are there any downsides to putting the featuring artist in the title other than making it longer or maybe being less aesthitically pleasing?

2) Does the 'album artist' support multiple entries much like the 'artist' tag does (at least for flac and aac)?

3) Take an album by B.B. King & Eric Clapton. Would you enter it as 'B.B. King & Eric Clapton' in album artist or as two separate entries if possible?

4) When do you use '&' vs 'and' for multiple artists or bands? Ex 'Grace Potter & The Nocturnals' or 'Grace Potter and The Nocturnals'? Keep in mind both have been used officially on their albums. So my question is do you actively standardize towards one, follow what's on the cover, or don't really care?

5) Apparently MB uses ';' as a delimiter between entries vs other software like MP3tag that uses //. I know its partly due to a lack of industry standards but in general which method do you find causes least problems for you down the road?

For now I'm ignoring 'display' option available in MB but I'm aware its very versatile. I just want to nail down a baseline first.

The most important thing to understand is that ; or // or anything else in the tag is just a display mechanism, and underneath each of those artists is being stored as a separate Artist tag.  So you don't have to choose one besides whatever one the software you're using uses.  If you separate by ; in MusicBee, you will get
Artist: John
Artist: Maya

as two tags.  If you separate by // in other software, you will get
Artist: John
Artist: Maya
as two tags.  

The second most important thing to understand is that Display Artist is not a complication but is very useful as a simplifier.  So once your track is properly tagged with...

Artist: John
Artist: Maya

...you can safely put John feat. Maya in the Display Artist tag and have it show exactly how you want to.

If you already have John feat. Maya in Artist, you can click the [...] button to the right of the tag in the edit screen and split them into their separate artist tags and keep John feat. Maya as a display.

As for Grace Potter & the Nocturnals vs. Grace Potter and the Nocturnals and similar, I usually tag both and then put the display artist as whatever way it shows up officially.  All my iterations of Prince, for example, are tagged "Artist: Prince" no matter what else is there in the display so I can easily find them in a search.

As far as Album Artist, it's always what's on the spine of the CD.  The official Album Artist or Various Artists for multi-artist compilations.  I do believe Album Artists supports multiple in MB, but I don't believe in using anything besides the official album artist there. YMMV, of course.

Hope this helps.

[phred]

As for Grace Potter & the Nocturnals vs. Grace Potter and the Nocturnals and similar, I usually tag both and then put the display artist as whatever way it shows up officially.

When trying to decide what is "correct" I go to the artist's website to see how they use it. If the artist's site doesn't exist, I default to Wikipedia.

[frankz]

As for Grace Potter & the Nocturnals vs. Grace Potter and the Nocturnals and similar, I usually tag both and then put the display artist as whatever way it shows up officially.

When trying to decide with is "correct" I go to the artist's website to see how they use it. If the artist's site doesn't exist, I default to Wikipedia.

When deciding between which is official and which is not official, that works. But some bands themselves use different versions on different releases.  For my purposes, I want to be able to find all by the artist no matter what they wanted to call themselves that week (like Prince), so I use what I know I'll search in "Artist" and the artist's choice for that release in "Display Artist"



For this band, I also tag everything "Grace Potter" and "Dem Gams"

OK, that last one was a joke.  But dem gams.

[psychoadept]

I want to be able to find all by the artist no matter what they wanted to call themselves that week (like Prince), so I use what I know I'll search in "Artist" and the artist's choice for that release in "Display Artist"

Yeah, this. There are several artists that I tag artist/sort artist based on what I'll look for them under, which is not necessarily consistent with the Display Artist. Buddy Holly/The Crickets, Bob Marley/The Wailers, etc.

[vincent kars]

2) Does the 'album artist' support multiple entries much like the 'artist' tag does (at least for flac and aac)?

To the best of my knowledge a common convention used in media players is
[album artist]= single value
[artist]= multiple values

[Steven]

MusicBee does support multiple album artists but i am of the same view it would normally be a single value

[The Incredible Boom Boom]

1) Are there any downsides to putting the featuring artist in the title other than making it longer or maybe being less aesthitically pleasing?

Slightly unrelated, but kinda related to MB, but it's one of the biggest reasons why Last.fm is such a chaotic mess.

3) Take an album by B.B. King & Eric Clapton. Would you enter it as 'B.B. King & Eric Clapton' in album artist or as two separate entries if possible?

4) When do you use '&' vs 'and' for multiple artists or bands? Ex 'Grace Potter & The Nocturnals' or 'Grace Potter and The Nocturnals'? Keep in mind both have been used officially on their albums. So my question is do you actively standardize towards one, follow what's on the cover, or don't really care?

<Artist> B.B. King; Eric Clapton
<Artist (displayed)> B.B. King and Eric Clapton
<Album Artist> B.B. King and Eric Clapton
<Sort Artist> B.B. King; Eric Clapton

I use whatever appears on the cover, and if, as in the case of the B.B. King and Eric Clapton collaboration "Riding With the King," neither is used, I default to the word "and." As you see above, I don't use <Sort Artist> as most do. I specifically set it up the way I did, because it handles multiple artists while allowing me to not have to mess with the <Artist> or <Album Artist> tag to sort through artists. This lets me be anal retentive with the <Artist> tag, but have all their albums, even done under different aliases, in one spot. To use @frankz dilemma as an example...

<Artist> Prince and the Revolution
<Artist (displayed)> Prince and the Revolution
<Album Artist> Prince and the Revolution
<Sort Artist> Prince

Another good example is Diddy, formerly known as P. Diddy, before then Puff Daddy and has also released an album under Puff Daddy & the Family. <Sort Artist> Sean Combs puts everything in one place!

Title - Happy
Artist - John feat. Maya
Album Artist - John

Downside is that creates a fictional artist entry 'John feat. Maya'.

I put featured artists in <Artists: Guest>. It's a tag, or something similar, that *needs* to become a standard across all music player platforms.

[hiccup]

3) Take an album by B.B. King & Eric Clapton. Would you enter it as 'B.B. King & Eric Clapton' in album artist or as two separate entries if possible?

I'm a strong advocate of always and only having one single value Album Artist because:

- it's one of the most essential tags that defines your albums and keeps it's tracks together.
   Multiple values can easily create a mess that's difficult to control in other places and situations.

- (as frankz said also) it will/should match and show how the album artist was promoted and printed on the physical album.
   (for classical music it can be a different story though)

But of course it makes sense that you'll want to be able to find both 'Robert Cray', and 'The Robert Cray Band' when looking for his albums.
Or: 'Brian Eno and Robert Fripp', 'Brian Eno & Robert Fripp', 'Fripp ● Eno', etc.

Here's a suggestion of mine on how to achieve that using Musicbrainz' Picard and an Album ArtistS tag:
https://getmusicbee.com/forum/index.php?topic=29851.msg166102#msg166102

You could also do it manually without using Picard of course.

And from your example where the Album Artist is: B.B. King & Eric Clapton,
it would make sense to me to have:

B.B. King & Eric Clapton
B.B. King and Eric Clapton
B.B. King
Eric Clapton

all as Album ArtistS for an album.