Author Topic: question about lyrics search  (Read 3317 times)

chrctrlmt

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I format my artist tag like so; 'queens of the stone age f/trent reznor', with the featured artist always included in the artist field following the 'f/'.

when using the lyrics panel the lyrics search seems to use this and often comes up empty handed as the format isn't very conducive to the lyrics search.

is there a way to configure the lyrics search to use album artist instead?  that makes more sense to me since artist tags can often use varying formats.

i think the same thing applies to the artist picture search that is used in the artist picture panel.

hiccup

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I think there are many different opinions on 'featuring artists'.
While personally I don't concern myself with it much, I would expect it to be used in a song title, not in the artist tag.

Having 'album artist' as the source to find lyrics also doesn't seem right to me.
Every song will have an artist it is credited to, but not all songs will have an album artist it is credited to.
(singles not on an album, tribute albums with various artists performing songs of another artist, etc.)

chrctrlmt

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despite the semantics of putting an 'artist' in the 'title' field, which is strange to me, the musicbee lyrics search will nonetheless fail to find the lyrics.  however, using the album artist as the search parameter for the lyrics, it works.  it might be worth changing the way it functions simply so it works better, regardless of the right/wrong/preferred ways to human eyes.  just my two cents.

hiccup

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using the album artist as the search parameter for the lyrics, it works.
I didn't even know you could set that.

Perhaps this also depends on the lyrics provider that sources the lyrics to MusicBee?
Maybe one trips over 'ft.' being present in artist or title, and the other doesn't?

Hopefully a member more experienced in this matter can clarify things a bit.

chrctrlmt

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the way i discovered this was by doing the lyrics search via google (right-click on the lyrics panel>google search) for a track that returned no lyrics.  the resulting google search results page shows what it is being searched by ("artist" "track title") which includes additional artists and confuses the search.  i then remove the 'f/trent reznor', for example, from the search results and the lyrics are returned.  it sounds like it's not possible to edit that in musicbee directly - to change the fields used by the lyrics search from 'artist' to 'album artist' so the lyrics are returned.

phred

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it sounds like it's not possible to edit that in musicbee directly - to change the fields used by the lyrics search from 'artist' to 'album artist' so the lyrics are returned.
You are correct.
Download the latest MusicBee v3.5 patch from here.
Unzip into your MusicBee directory and overwrite existing files.

----------
The FAQ
The Wiki
Posting screenshots is here
Searching the forum with Google is  here

Bee-liever

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MB uses 'Display Artist' for lyrics search.
I've always thought it should be a fall back option to use 'Artist' when "Redo Search" is used after finding no lyrics in the initial search.
MusicBee and my library - Making bee-utiful music together

Steven

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MB uses the following:
- if the artist is split into artists with roles, uses the first artist with the role Artist
- if no artist splits then uses the display artist
- attempts to strip out featured artists from the name eg. removes "ft. xxxx". However "f/" is not one of the criteria it uses to strip out featured artists but could be added

Bee-liever

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Thanks for clarifying that Steven.

- if the artist is split into artists with roles, uses the first artist with the role Artist
Ones I've had trouble with before, must be ones I haven't got around to re-tagging correctly with the Artist Splitter yet  :-[
MusicBee and my library - Making bee-utiful music together

chrctrlmt

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...However "f/" is not one of the criteria it uses to strip out featured artists but could be added

please!  this could be a solution as well.  thanks everyone

hiccup

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I format my artist tag like so; 'queens of the stone age f/trent reznor', with the featured artist always included in the artist field following the 'f/'.
Now that your issue is narrowed down, why not use 'feat.' or 'ft.' instead of 'f/'?
It reads better, and it will probably solve your current issue.
Also, since it is the most common way to mark featured artists for a song, it may prevent you running into other issues similar to this one further down the road.

edit
Also 2, personally I am always very careful/reluctant to use slashes in tags.
I think I have the experience that it can mess up things when encountered in virtual tags.
Last Edit: September 09, 2021, 06:56:55 PM by hiccup

chrctrlmt

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i probably should.  suppose i could use the tagging tools to batch edit all of the files i have containing that.

hiccup

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Your decision, but to me it seems the most sensible thing to do.

chrctrlmt

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maybe 'with' would be a good addition to the criteria as well