How to organize and tag classical music

[DavidHB]

(09-05-2016 17:12)simoncn Wrote:  MinimServer doesn't allow different AlbumArtist tag values within the contents of a single album (i.e., a single CD with your tagging system).

If you want to have different "album artist" tag values within a single album, you could use some other custom tag name for this "album artist" information and add this custom tag name to indexTags so that you can use it for browsing purposes.

It may be useful to make a distinction between AlbumArtist, for which only one value (it may be blank) is allowed in MinimServer, and Artist, for which multiple values are allowed.

That said, if I have understood your tagging scheme correctly, you are trying to use a single tag/field to contain multiple data elements. Although there are no tagging 'rules' which prevent you from doing this, it will be very difficult to avoid inconsistencies and confusion as your library grows. It is better, as Simon is in effect suggesting, to use different tags for different purposes, even when (as is often the case with my Group and Composition tags) they often contain the same data.

(09-05-2016 17:12)simoncn Wrote:  Another option is to tag the files with Orchestra and Composer values and use tag formatting to create "album artist" information to appear in your control point, as DavidHB has suggested.

I was trying to keep the description of my system as simple as possible, so I did not mention that I use Composer, ComposerSort, Orchestra, Soloist and Conductor tags; I always populate the first two, but only populate the others when they are relevant. In the tagging software I use (MP3Tag), I ensure that all the tags I regularly use are shown on the tag panel, so that they can easily be populated as necessary.

David