Empty "album artist" shows as "Artist"

[barlet]

i don't know whether it is intentional or not, but "Album Artist" is being displayed as "Artist" when a list is produced in the main centre of the programme. In my opinion, it should show as empty, like say, "Original Album".

Thanks for your excellent programme, Steve

[Zak]

Having the Album Artist default to Artist is very much by design and many grouping functions depend on it working that way.

What exactly are you trying to achieve by having it display something other than the Artist name?
It can probably be achieved some other way.

[barlet]

Thanks Zak for your reply.

When organising files, I am trying to place in the same folder music recorded by the same artist. I mean that there are a lot who are featuring other artists in their work and what I am trying to do is to place the main artist as the folder name. As it is now, one cannot pinpoint directly where tags are not proper.

[psychoadept]

Zak is right, this can be achieved other ways. For instance, check out the support for multiple artist tags: https://musicbee.fandom.com/wiki/Tagging#Multiple_Value_Tags

[The Incredible Boom Boom]

Thanks Zak for your reply.

When organising files, I am trying to place in the same folder music recorded by the same artist. I mean that there are a lot who are featuring other artists in their work and what I am trying to do is to place the main artist as the folder name. As it is now, one cannot pinpoint directly where tags are not proper.

I think I understand what your issue is. Most people split the featured artist out of the <Artist> tag and instead add them to the song title. I find that method unsightly as well and in order to display featured artists, I make extensive use of MusicBee's built-in <Artist: Guest> along with a Virtual Tag that replaces <Title>. Maybe you can ask this thread to be moved to the Wishlist board and see if Steven will include an option to display <Artist: Guest> with the <Title> tag?

[BoringName]

I feel like I'm necroing a lot of threads lately but at least I'm searching for existing threads instead of just starting  new ones

So as a recent convert from iTunes (well converting my partner from iTunes) I'm finding the music library wasn't as well maintained as I thought. Lots of albums are showing up multiple times because some tracks have different data. One of the main issues if the "Album Artist" field being inconsistent. I'm working through it.

I came across this problem because I added "Album Artist" to the field headers expecting to sort it and see all the empty ones. It was showing the artist for songs where it was actually blank. Personally I think if it's blank then it should be displayed as blank. Auto filling it with the "Artist" name is misrepresenting the data.

But that's just my opinion. I mainly made this post to give an alternate solution to the problem. Just create an auto playlist and set the criteria for the "Album Artist" to "has no value". This will populate a playlist with any tracks that have a blank "Artist Album" field.

[phred]

I mainly made this post to give an alternate solution to the problem. Just create an auto playlist and set the criteria for the "Album Artist" to "has no value". This will populate a playlist with any tracks that have a blank "Artist Album" field.

You can also do a custom search with the same criteria. But as others have stated, when <Album Artist> is blank it equals <Artist> and since it is by design, it should not be changed.