Display Artist AND Album Artist Sent to Last.fm

[boutbw]

I was under the impression that the only artist field that was sent from MusicBee to Last.fm was the "display artist" field. I haven't been able to figure out or think of a way to get around this issue I'm describing. Essentially, I always use the album artist field for semi-colon separated individual artists for multiple artist albums, and I use the artist field (including the display artist field) for the combined artist tag. A good example of this tagging is for Freddie Gibbs & Madlib:



Multiple Artist splitting and display artist:



When it scrobbles to my Last.fm account, the artist is set to the display artist like expected, but the album artist is set to the semi-colon separated multiple artists, which of course doesn't scrobble correctly:




I'd like to be able to get around this somehow, if only for scrobbling correctly. It's surely a Last.fm issue and not a MusicBee issue, but I thought that the display artist field was the only artist field sent. And of course I want to be able to keep my music all tagged properly with semi-colons as I have been where it's appropriate. Advice or thoughts?

[frankz]

And of course I want to be able to keep my music all tagged properly with semi-colons as I have been where it's appropriate. Advice or thoughts?

I'm curious as to why you think that having the semi colon separated value in the album artist tag means it's tagged properly.  It's not.  Album Artist is a specific, definable thing: It's the way the album is credited on the jacket/sleeve/cover etc.  This album is credited to "Freddie Gibbs & Madlib" according to Musicbrainz and last.fm.  For it to be properly tagged, that would have to be the Album Artist tag. Although you can use semicolon-separated values in the Album Artist field as kind of a navigational kludge in MusicBee, it is not standard for this to be a split field, and I'm not surprised that it breaks trying to match up with other sets of values.  It is a singular thing across an album.

Scrobbles usually include Title, Artist (Display Artist in this case), Album, Album Artist, Duration and Time Played.  I don't know exactly how Musicbee does it, but those are the usually expected fields.

To be tagged properly, you'd want Display Artist to match the way the track is credited, then in the artist splitter list the individual artists for browsing purposes, then the correct album artist according to the source you're trying to match to (last.fm in this case).  Then, in your view, you can set your thumbnail browser to "Artist: Artists" to be able to navigate to the individual artists' listings as you're trying to do now with Album Artist.

EDIT TO ADD: By the way, I'm not trying to say that you shouldn't do it your way, just that what you're trying to do with it isn't going to work your way.  It's all what you find to be most important - proper matching or tagging the way you want to.

For example, I've got all kind of funky values in my Album field ([2018 Deluxe Edition], [2001 Remastered], etc) and I've come to accept that these will never exactly match what's in last.fm's database, but I can't change them now or it will screw up my synched play counts.

[boutbw]

And of course I want to be able to keep my music all tagged properly with semi-colons as I have been where it's appropriate. Advice or thoughts?

I'm curious as to why you think that having the semi colon separated value in the album artist tag means it's tagged properly.  It's not.  

Apologies, I hope I did not come across as presumptuous. Probably should generally avoid the word "properly."  

Album Artist is a specific, definable thing: It's the way the album is credited on the jacket/sleeve/cover etc.  This album is credited to "Freddie Gibbs & Madlib" according to Musicbrainz and last.fm.  For it to be properly tagged, that would have to be the Album Artist tag. Although you can use semicolon-separated values in the Album Artist field as kind of a navigational kludge in MusicBee, it is not standard for this to be a split field, and I'm not surprised that it breaks trying to match up with other sets of values.  It is a singular thing across an album.

I definitely have been using it for navigational purposes (for which it is definitely very nice) - but if there's a better way, I'm going to happily try it!

To be tagged properly, you'd want Display Artist to match the way the track is credited, then in the artist splitter list the individual artists for browsing purposes, then the correct album artist according to the source you're trying to match to (last.fm in this case).  Then, in your view, you can set your thumbnail browser to "Artist: Artists" to be able to navigate to the individual artists' listings as you're trying to do now with Album Artist.

This is super helpful! Pretty much exactly the sort of mechanism I was looking for. I hadn't tried sorting via "Artist: Artists" before, but it seems to do the trick with the display artist set to "Freddie Gibbs & Madlib" and the individual artists "Madlib" and "Freddie Gibbs" tagged in the splitter. My only issue with it seems to be that it doesn't recognize custom sorting in the thumbnail browser (i.e. "The Cure" are sorted under T despite having "the" as an ignored word, and "Pat Martino" is sorted under P despite having a custom sorting input as "Martino, Pat").

[boutbw]

Looks like my version needs to be updated, and that might fix it! Quick searching found this thread on the exact same sorting issue: https://getmusicbee.com/forum/index.php?topic=29875.0

Thanks again for the help!

[phred]

Looks like my version needs to be updated, and that might fix it! Quick searching found this thread on the exact same sorting issue: https://getmusicbee.com/forum/index.php?topic=29875.0

What version are you currently using?
The thread you referenced is mentioning an early version of 3.4. I suggest getting the latest 3.4 (or even better - 3.5) patch from my signature below.

[boutbw]

Looks like my version needs to be updated, and that might fix it! Quick searching found this thread on the exact same sorting issue: https://getmusicbee.com/forum/index.php?topic=29875.0

What version are you currently using?
The thread you referenced is mentioning an early version of 3.4. I suggest getting the latest 3.4 (or even better - 3.5) patch from my signature below.

I was using v3.2 (I know, I know - I should update more often). Updated to v3.4 and the custom sort tags work perfectly when sorting via Artists: Artist! I've got a lot of editing to do with my files, but at least I know how to achieve what I was trying to achieve thanks to the advice here!

[frankz]

I'm glad it worked out!