Semicolons in "Display Artist"

[rdgimenez]

Hi!
I feel like this is a pretty basic thing to do, but I couldn't find a solution in the wiki or forums so far...

My tracks have mostly multiple artists, because I like to collect cast albums, and they're tagged with semicolons, so it actually creates a different individual "Artist" tag for each one, which is desirable. Beeing doing that forever.

Something happened in my mind, and now I find the "Display Artist" tag quite ugly with the semicolons in it, so I thought about replacing the semicolons with commas, but only on the "Display Artist" tag, so they stay with their individual "Artist" tags.

I tried with the built-in replace tool, but it doesn't have a "Display Artist" field, only "Artist". 
The multiple search and replace feature of the AT&RT plug-in has it, but the result is the same: It also changes the "Artist" tags back to a single artist with all of them joined together.

I know I could just click on the Split Artists button, but that doesn't work when I select multiple tracks, and it's a pretty big library to do individually...

Is there a way to batch modify my semicolons on the "Display Artist" tag for commas without ruining my neatly organiased "Artist" tags?
Maybe the advanced replace tool on AT&RT, but I never used it, seems quite, well..., advanced.

Thanks!

[hiccup]

Welcome to the forum rdgimenez

That question is not that easy to answer, since <Display artist> is not really like a regular tag.
It is a tag that MusicBee creates for itself internally.
So, it can exist in the database only, but I think it sometimes also gets written to the file. (I looked into this a while back, but I don't have the details in my head anymore)

I won't be the best person to answer this further, since I have created a custom tag for it, and am using Picard to populate it.
So for me, MusicBee never touches it.

One thing I am wondering about though:
I would not expect semi-colons being present in 'Display Artist' to begin with, since the concept of 'Display Artist' is somewhat similar to 'Album Artist', in the sense that it is a singular entity, and should not be multi-value.

Others may be able to give further and better advice on this…

[rdgimenez]

Thanks, I'm glad to be here, seems like a great community!

I got the result I was expecting by replacing the semicolons with commas, and then clicking the Split Artist button. I just wish it could be done automatically!

[tjinc]

It seems that you are happy with the current functionality and it is only the appearance that you want to change. This is the sort of thing a virtual tag can easily do - you can set it up once and don't have to edit all your tracks.

If you are not aware of virtual tags then check out these links:
Virtual Tags on the Wiki
Virtual Tag Functions forum post

In this case you could use the Replace function:

Code

$Replace(<Artist>,;,",")

(and you might want to change the label to something like 'Disp Artist')

Then use the field <Disp Artist> in place of <Artist> wherever you want in MusicBee.

[cereal_eater]

There is also a similar thread providing a different solution: https://getmusicbee.com/forum/index.php?topic=40796.0

[rdgimenez]

It seems that you are happy with the current functionality and it is only the appearance that you want to change. This is the sort of thing a virtual tag can easily do - you can set it up once and don't have to edit all your tracks.

That's exactly it!
I'll look into virtual tags, thanks!

There is also a similar thread providing a different solution: https://getmusicbee.com/forum/index.php?topic=40796.0

I'll check that one, too!
Thanks!

[rdgimenez]

Just to wrap this up—I wasn't able to get the custom/virtual tag to work as expected.

I tried creating a "musician" tag, copied all the artist data into it, and replaced the semicolons with commas.
That part worked fine.

However, since I use the "Album and Tracks" view, I couldn't find a way to make MusicBee display the "musician" tag instead of Artist (which appears in brackets next to the title).

Since I didn’t want to switch to "Track" view (where it would have worked fine), neither continue bothering you with such a minimal thing, I decided to bite the bullet and manually use the "Split" button on every track.

All good now!


Thanks, everyone, for the help!