Artist vs. AlbumArtist

[bubbleguuum]

(15-08-2012 14:17)winxi Wrote:  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?

If the artist is the same for every track of the album you should not write AlbumArtist tag so that would be b). In short, you write the AlbumArtist in tags only when the track artist differ between 2 or more tracks of the same album (eg for *some* compilation, split eps, etc).

(15-08-2012 14:17)winxi Wrote:  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

One possible way to do it is to have 3 trees:

1. an Artist tree whose elements are only track artists (will not contain Various Artists or whatever other AlbumArtist tag values)
2. an Album Artist tree that contains all Albums Artists with Album Artist = Track artist for albums for which Album Artist is not defined (eg Artist is the same for all tracks)
3. a VA only tree that contains all VA albums (albums for which AlbumArtist tag is present)

Not that compilation doesn't imply an AlbumArtist tag. Take for example a "best of" Sting where every track has Artist = Sting. That's why compilations generally require a separate "COMPILATION" tag to mark them as such and to be able to display only compilations (subtree 4)

foo_upnp exposes subtree 1, 2 and 4.

Some more details on recommended Album Artist tag usage:

http://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?..._Standards