Author Topic: Multiple album artists & publishers  (Read 13536 times)

Felipefontes

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Each day I'm liking MusicBee more, it does all I need.  But I still have some thing I would like, for example multiple album artists & publishers. Can this be done?

ma_t14

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You can split multiple artists by using ";" (without quotes). For publishers that is not possible, but I don't get how can one album have multiple publishers? Well... It can... but that would mean having multiple versions of the same album each having ONE but different publisher  :-\
Last Edit: September 24, 2011, 11:13:47 PM by ma_t14

Steven

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Each day I'm liking MusicBee more, it does all I need.  But I still have some thing I would like, for example multiple album artists & publishers. Can this be done?
i could do multiple publishers (although it doesnt make sense to me to do that), but with album artist, many of the functions in MB are built around it being a single artist for the album. You could assign multiple artists to the tracks

stevepaul

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There are times when an album is genuinely a collaboration between two artists (eg Diana & Marvin which is Diana Ross and Marvin Gaye).

In this case I would like the album to appear in both the Explorer list and Artwork Display for Diana Ross and Marvin Gaye independently.

At the moment I have the Album Artist as Diana Ross & Marvin Gaye (which effectively creates a new Artist) and in this case I have to remember which Artist I consider to be the primary Artist (for this particular Album it's Diana Ross).

Although there is a nice search facility in MB it's surprising just how many people prefer to 'browse' my record collection using the Album Artwork view or Library Explorer (side) view.

Being able to have 2 Album Artists (or more) would be extremely useful.

As for multiple Publishers there are some occurences where this could be useful ...

For instance the album 'The Very Best of Sting & The Police' was released twice ...

Once in 1997 by A&M Records and then again in 1998 by Polygram (superb album btw)

ma_t14

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There are times when an album is genuinely a collaboration between two artists (eg Diana & Marvin which is Diana Ross and Marvin Gaye).

In this case I would like the album to appear in both the Explorer list and Artwork Display for Diana Ross and Marvin Gaye independently.

At the moment I have the Album Artist as Diana Ross & Marvin Gaye (which effectively creates a new Artist) and in this case I have to remember which Artist I consider to be the primary Artist (for this particular Album it's Diana Ross).

Although there is a nice search facility in MB it's surprising just how many people prefer to 'browse' my record collection using the Album Artwork view or Library Explorer (side) view.

Being able to have 2 Album Artists (or more) would be extremely useful.

Why don't you use the Artist tag instead? The artist tag can be used to separate multiple artists. In track browser and I think in library explorer too if you have multiple artists they appear separately. It was requested before to have the artists appear separately in main panel as well but it has not been implemented (yet)

As for multiple Publishers there are some occurences where this could be useful ...

For instance the album 'The Very Best of Sting & The Police' was released twice ...

Once in 1997 by A&M Records and then again in 1998 by Polygram (superb album btw)

And your point is what, exactly? A huge number of albums is published more than once by different publishers. But owning the album published by, in your example, A&M Records does not effectively mean you also own the Polygram album. You can't just tag it with two Publishers tags because it is essentially a different album altogether. Different publisher many times means different mastering methods being used in the production and other times the versions of the songs are different in general (different recording, different song length etc)
Last Edit: September 25, 2011, 04:22:19 PM by ma_t14

Steven

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just regarding album artist - its too big a change to have multiple album artists as it affects many search/sorting/organisation functions and not something i am willing to do. You can set the each track with multiple artists

stevepaul

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@ma_t14

Wasn't trying to make a point, just illustrating (for people who may not be as enlightened as yourself) that it is posssible to have multiple publishers for the same album by the same artist ...

@Steven

Shame that you can't do anything for splitting the Album Artist (but can understand your reasons); it would have been a nice feature to have ...

Although splitting the Artist at the Track level works in the Track Browser view, unfortunately most people (in my experience) like to browse record collections by images (not lists) and the Album Artwork view (Grouped by Artist and  sorted on Album Artist/Album) is a really nice view of anyones record collection ...

Ah well, can't have everything and MB is still an excellent piece of software ...

ma_t14

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@ma_t14

Wasn't trying to make a point, just illustrating (for people who may not be as enlightened as yourself) that it is posssible to have multiple publishers for the same album by the same artist ...


No offense intended :-\

I was just trying to explain why in practice having multiple publishers in one album is wrong and why there no "occurrences where this could be useful" (I was referring to this part in your post when I replied)

stevepaul

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You'd be surprised at the number of arguments I've had about which particular publisher/recording company an Artist did their best work with !!

Anyway while I'm here you may be able to answer this question for me (as your one of the most prolific contributors here).

Which latest release of MB (not the current one) enabled the playing of m4a/aac with the help of the base_aac plugin?


stevepaul

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I thought it was but I couldn't find anything ...

I got the feeling it was one of those that Steven did a fix for but posted the link in the thread concerned and it never made the update list because he fixed something else soon after and posted another update ...

ma_t14

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Quote from: Steven
...
- new: bass_aac or quicktime no longer required for playback of aac files for windows 7 users (the aac decoder that comes with windows 7 is used). BASS_AAC.dll will still be used if its installed
...

This is from the changelog of the latest release. It means all previous weekly releases require bass_aac no matter what os you have. But I don't understand why do you need this. If you have bass_aac included it will use it anyway no matter what...
Last Edit: September 26, 2011, 05:27:58 PM by ma_t14

Felipefontes

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I do split multiple artists in the Artist tag, but I wanted the same for Album Artist. I have an album, for example, by Elis Regina and Tom Jobim, who were separate artists and only released this album together. So when I group by artist in artwork (which uses Album Artist tag), there's an artist just for Elis Regina and Tom Jobim.. But I understand it might be difficult to do this.

And about multiple publishers, it's because I like to put both publisher and label in this tag, for example, Sony Music, Epic Records, 550 music; or avex trax (a label/publisher in Japan) and rhythm zone (a label within avex trax).

ma_t14

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And about multiple publishers, it's because I like to put both publisher and label in this tag, for example, Sony Music, Epic Records, 550 music; or avex trax (a label/publisher in Japan) and rhythm zone (a label within avex trax).

You can use a custom tag and name it Label

stevepaul

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@ma_t14

I was keeping a register of updates since the last beta release (1.2.4218) and a description of what had been added.

This included whether it was simply an 'exe' change or included DLL's etc.

Just a 'fun' thing really  :)