Two tagging questions for classical music

[simoncn]

(21-02-2013 15:58)magister Wrote:  Some people say to not bother with Albumartist, some say to complete it (in various ways). Much depends on the player in use, since some ignore Albumartist. I did find one piece of info on the Mp3tag site that indicated that some Android players don't work well with Albumartist; one person said "The safest thing which works with all players is dropping the ALBUMARTIST field completely." So we're all over the map.

I'm aware that there are differences of opinion about whether or not to fill in AlbumArtist as well as Artist. In your original post, I thought you were saying that some people have suggested using AlbumArtist and omitting Artist, but this seems to have been a misunderstanding on my part.

Quote:But this is exactly what happens with my Composition tag. I can search Composers --> Beethoven --> Symphony No 5, and I see a nice "Play all" item that enables me to load the whole symphony at once, if I want, as well as the individual movements listed below.

You wouldn't see this if the only Beethoven composition you have is a single recording of Symphony No 5. Ih this case, when you browse to Composers --> Beethoven, there would be no Composition choice displayed, because all the items in your current selection are tagged as the same Composition. Instead, you'd see an ungrouped list of the indidual movements of the symphony. To see the whole symphony as a single grouped item, you'd need to use the Group tag.

You'd have a similar problem if you open an album containing a recording of Symphony No 5. The album contents would show a separate entry for each movement of the symphony. If you want the album contents to show a single entry for the whole symphony, you need to use the Group tag.

Quote:So I'm still uncertain about this. I read in another thread that Group can handle situations where the tracks making up a work are not contiguous -- is that the only difference? For the next release of MinimServer, I'd suggest expanding the section in the user user that deals with this.

It's actually the opposite: you can use Group if the tracks are contiguous, but you can't use Group if they're non-contiguous. You can use Composition in both cases.

The difference is that a Group is treated as a single item wherever it appears. This could be in a list of album contents, or it could be when browsing via any index entry. Composition is just a normal tag, and it only has a grouping effect in the specific context of the Composition index entry. Does this help to explain the difference?

Quote:Maybe the best thing for me to do is use Group exclusively but display it as Composition, since I prefer the latter term for classical works ("group:Composition" in the properties file).

This wouldn't work, because the Group and Composition tags are used for different purposes. You can't substitute one for the other. However, you can use both of them together on the same tracks.