How to add or remove a tag from multiple files, leaving the other tags intact.

[Mayibongwe]

Suppose you want to add a tag value to multiple files at the same time.

If I'm not mistaken, this preset is only limited to adding manually typed strings?
It's not able to reference an existing tag? For example, one cannot copy <virtual_tag_1> to <artist>?

I turned to this preset for answers as it appears that the native copy tag command does not add an extra tag on the above example.
It only appends the virtual tag to the first artist tag on the file. I haven't done enough testing to make the report in the official thread as yet.

[hiccup]

If I'm not mistaken, this preset is only limited to adding manually typed strings?

Correct, that's its purpose.

It's not able to reference an existing tag? For example, one cannot copy <virtual_tag_1> to <artist>?

Couldn't that be done with one of the existing 'combine tags' presets?

[Mayibongwe]

Couldn't that be done with one of the existing 'combine tags' presets?

Thanks, this certainly got me somewhere (combining <virtual_1> + <artists> and then writing the result to <artist>).
I was trying to come up with a solution for this #3 below. The only problem I have now is that the above is also then overwriting <display artist> in the case of multi-artists.

I am not sure if this has always happened, but I suspect it came with one of the recent updates. Artist and display artist should just be independent tags, but that's another topic.
Thanks for clarifying the workings of this preset. I will probably post further developments on this on the AT&RT thread itself.

3. And finally, how do I write the "Display Artist" as an "Artist" tag on the MP3s in my librairies and not the list of artists separated by semicolons, or worse, just the first artist?
All without changing the value of tags (main artists, guests and remixers) under MusicBee.

[hiccup]

The only problem I have now is that the above is also then overwriting <display artist> in the case of multi-artists.

Just guessing, no idea if this would work:
Perhaps have the script first read Display Artist and store it in a temporary tag.
Then make it do 'your thing', and as the last step have Display Artist written with the content of the temporary tag?

[Mayibongwe]

That would work. But it seems, users would also have to do that for all other artist variants (guest, remixer, etc.).
It's the first time I'm exploring the ASR section of the plugin and I'm at wit's end trying to figure out how one can actually edit the contents of <artist> without modifying all other artist tags in the file.

e.g. I have these tags:
<artist> = artist1
<artist: guest> = guest1

And my end goal is:
<artist> = artist1
<artist> = artist2           (this would have to be derived from an existing tag like <virtual_1>)
<artist: guest> = guest1

Attempting to add/write to <artist> overwrites existing variants like <artist: guest>.
I will revisit this some other time - my brain is fried for now. All the best to dyl_m. I'm taking this L.

[hiccup]

I will revisit this some other time - my brain is fried for now. All the best to dyl_m. I'm taking this L.

I wanted to try some things out, but AT&RT behaves a bit annoying and unexpected sometimes, and will occasionally also trigger a crash on my test setup.
So I'm gonna wait for a next version of AT&RT before picking this up again. (A next AT&RT update will probably also have some improvements on title/sentence case stuff and other things. I hope boroda is well)

PS
Do you happen to know how to expose the Display Artist tag in MusicBee itself so that it can be used in virtual tags?
<Display Artist> doesn't work...

[Mayibongwe]

Do you happen to know how to expose the Display Artist tag in MusicBee itself so that it can be used in virtual tags?
<Display Artist> doesn't work...

Is that a trick question, haha.
<artist> itself is <display artist> in all occurrences within MusicBee.

This thread will forever be a fixed point in the timeline.

[hiccup]

Is that a trick question, haha.
<artist> itself is <display artist> in all occurrences within MusicBee.

Nope, no trickery going on here ;-)

Display Artist begins its life as an internal virtual tag that will indeed show what's in Artist.
But after modifying tags (not artist related tags per-se) it will begin a second life as a physical tag.
I myself am using Picard to populate the Display Artist tag, and that will sometimes differ from Artist.

[SteelDragon]

I've noticed that these two presets (add or remove a tag from multiple files) are not compatible with the newest update of Advance Search & Replace plugin from January 2025. An error message appears when trying to import ("wrong format").
Had to go back to the v7 of the plugin to make the presets work again.

Is there a way to update the presets to get them to work with the newest version of the Advanced Search & Replace plugin?

[hiccup]

The presets were updated.

(in the AS&R panel, click the 'Import…' button and navigate to the presets that were extracted from the .rar download)