Author Topic: please add albumartists tag  (Read 4675 times)

hiccup

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MusicBee doesn't have the tag 'albumartists'

It is a valuable tag that allows you to store multiple album artists for a release.

This is useful for many (most?) classical releases where both the composer, and/or the conductor and/or the orchestra and/or the soloist all could be considered to be one of the album artists for a release.

It is also useful for many non-classical releases such as e.g.:
https://www.discogs.com/Antony-3-And-Current-Ninety-Three-Live-At-Saint-Olaves-Church/release/334162
https://www.discogs.com/Elis-Regina-Toots-Thielemans-Elis-Toots/master/416132

Software such as MusicBrainz' Picard, Kodi, Emby already have 'albumartists'.

An added benefit would be that it makes it more obvious to users that there exists a dedicated tag for multiple album artists, which will decrease the chances of users misusing the albumartist tag for this and possibly running into some unforeseen issues by doing that.

Also it will free up a custom tag  ;-)




sapr

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One question: I think iTunes always present such albums as VA (corresponding to the 'iTunes compilation' checkbox in track setting), and then each tracks would have its own artists. Do you mean adding a tag for aggregation of all such artists? In that case I feel there would be potential problem for displaying such tag, as it can contain a hoard of people (twenty-something is not uncommon).

hiccup

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I think iTunes always present such albums as VA (corresponding to the 'iTunes compilation' checkbox in track setting)
No that's something very different.
I am talking about albums such as:

Janine Jansen - Bach Concertos
Eno · Hyde - High Life

Those are certainly not Various Artists albums.
The first could be considered to have Janine Jansen as the album artist. (some might prefer it to be J.S. Bach)
But both Janine Jansen and J.S. Bach are album artists here.

Ditto for the second example, where Brian Eno and Karl Hyde are both album artists.

The same for the examples in my start post.
Elis & Toots is not a VA album. Some songs contain them performing together, some individually.
So the album artist would be Elis & Toots, just as it says on the cover.
The album artists are Toots Tielemans, and Elis Regina.

MusicBrainz already makes these album artists available (e.g. by means of Picard), and players such as Kodi (previously XBMC) also uses 'album artists' for many years now.

Corliss Rain

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I am talking about albums such as:

Janine Jansen - Bach Concertos
Eno · Hyde - High Life

Those are certainly not Various Artists albums.
The first could be considered to have Janine Jansen as the album artist. (some might prefer it to be J.S. Bach)
But both Janine Jansen and J.S. Bach are album artists here.

Ditto for the second example, where Brian Eno and Karl Hyde are both album artists.

MusicBrainz already makes these album artists available (e.g. by means of Picard), and players such as Kodi (previously XBMC) also uses 'album artists' for many years now.

I've been using the existing Album Artist tag for this and separating them with a semi-colon, which works if you're using the column browser, but not so much if you're grouping your display by that tag. It would be nice if it could be split, like the Artist and Composer tags.

hiccup

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I've been using the existing Album Artist tag for this and separating them with a semi-colon, which works if you're using the column browser, but not so much if you're grouping your display by that tag. It would be nice if it could be split, like the Artist and Composer tags.
Yeah, the main purpose of 'album artist' is to help in keeping the tracks of an album together.
That's why it should not be used as a multi-value tag.
And why it should be written exactly as on the cover of the album, nothing else.

Just  to be clear, many MusicBee users will already be using 'album artists' as a custom tag.
The reason for this wish is not to discuss the undeniable validity and usefulness of the tag, but to:

A.  Have it available so not to need to 'waste' a custom tag on it.
B.  As a means to help/educate users to use both tags properly.
 
Last Edit: May 22, 2021, 08:00:44 AM by hiccup

sapr

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Quote
I am talking about albums such as:

Janine Jansen - Bach Concertos
Eno · Hyde - High Life

Those are certainly not Various Artists albums.

I see, indeed I have misunderstood what you meant before. These are of course not VA albums.


Quote
Yeah, the main purpose of 'album artist' is to help in keeping the tracks of an album together.
That's why it should not be used as a multi-value tag.

Personally I used something very similar to Corliss (use the existing Album Artist tag in Musicbee), and additionally solely rely on format that supports multi-value tag (FLAC, M4A...). Once the setup is done, I simply forgot the problem has ever existed. Totally ignoring any sort of external "recommendations" here, and only concentrate on personal needs (specially, using column browser to filter out main album artists), sorry.

Hope I'm not misunderstanding again, I reckon what you need is something like "Display Album Artist" which behaves like current "Display Artist" does vs (multi-valued) artists?

hiccup

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Hope I'm not misunderstanding again,
I'm sorry, but it looks like you are.

But this is the wishlist board, and the way it works is that a member can ask for/suggest a new feature, and explains why.
Then other members that understand and support it can reply with something like:  +1
If a member foresees any negative effects if the request was implemented, he is free to explain them.

But I don't feel this thread is for explaining a request multiple times, and I think my startpost, and my second explanation contain all the information needed to appreciate the proposal.

If you want to learn how 'album artists' works in practice, you could do a forum search, which should present you with even more examples including screenshots of how you can use 'album artists' different from, and in addition to 'album artist'.
Last Edit: May 22, 2021, 05:24:40 PM by hiccup

sapr

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But I don't feel this thread is for explaining a request multiple times, and I think my startpost, and my second explanation contain all the information needed to appreciate the proposal.

It's entirely fine for me, since it's Stefan's decision alone to pick up proposals. I might never understand the necessity to create another single value tag though, no matter how many pages, documents or guides are there to be read, sorry for that.

hiccup

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It's entirely fine for me, since it's Stefan's decision alone to pick up proposals. I might never understand the necessity to create another single value tag though, no matter how many pages, documents or guides are there to be read, sorry for that.

That only confirms that you still don't understand.
Neither the proposal, nor how this wishlist board works.

'album artist' should be used as a single value tag, 'album artists' as multivalue tag.
It's not about 'adding another single-value tag' at all.

If you don't care or understand, no problem. Just refrain from commenting.

Now please stop derailing this wishlist thread?