Artist vs. AlbumArtist

[winxi]

Hi,

the MinimServer project has motivated me to revise the tagging of my music collection. Until now I haven't really cared about the AlbumArtist tag. I've read the MinimServer user guide and i now understand how the Artist and the AlbumArtist tags affect the appearance of the Artist and the All Artists index entries.

However, i don't fully get the point of the differences between the Artist and the AlbumArtist tags. Can somebody shortly explain there use in different cases?

Scenario 1:
There is a usual album containing just one artist (lets say Sting). Basically, there are 3 possibilities to tag Artist and AlbumArtist:
a) Write Sting to AlbumArtist only
b) Write Sting to Artist only
c) Write Sting to both Artist and AlbumArtist
From my understanding, possibility a) is not the best solution and possibilities b) and c) make no difference for the appearance in MinimServer. How should this be made and is there some kind of standard for tagging Artist and AlbumArtist?

Scenario 2:
Consider a compilation (e.g. a soundtrack) with titles from different artists. What i do now is to write the corresponding artist for each track to the Artist tag and the AlbumArtist tag will become 'Various Artists'. Doing this, 'Various Artists' will appear under the Artist index entry in MinimServer, which is somewhat not intended. Should i leave AlbumArtist empty for compilations? Is there 'the right way' to do it?

cheers, winxi