AlbumArtist Issues - creates more Albums

[Pastim]

I have, in some cases, multiple AlbumArtist tags. I'm aware that issues with this have been raised before, but one of the solutions has created a separate issue for me that I've lived with, but would rather not if I can help it. Apologies if I have asked something similar in the past.

To get multiple AlbumArtist tags to be shown properly, one solution is to alias it, eg:

Code:

aliasTags - AlbumArtist:MainArtist

and to get back to the normal name for display:

Code:

indexTags - MainArtist:AlbumArtist

This works, but has an unfortunate side effect of defeating the 'mergeFolderAlbums' logic. I therefore end up with multiple albums wherever I have split an album between folders, since the 'same AlbumArtist' logic fails. My folders are organised by composers, works and workartists, so I have loads of effectively duplicate albums, even though the AlbumArtist is the same and the track and disc numbers are correct for one album.

If I don't use the alias, I get much the same number of albums as I expect (a few more than foobar2000 or LMS say there are, but only a handful for reasons I don't yet comprehend), but I get many 'unknown' AlbumArtists where there are multiples.

If I use the alias I get around double the number of albums I expect, but I do get to see all the individual AlbumArtists.

Is there a solution?

I'm aware I have not discussed other tags here, such as Artist. The reason for that is that I use AlbumArtist quite specifically to mean the key Artist or Artists that appear on every track of the Album. These Artists are duplicated in my Artist tags, along with others who only take part in a few tracks.

[simoncn]

(26-09-2014 19:51)Pastim Wrote:  This works, but has an unfortunate side effect of defeating the 'mergeFolderAlbums' logic. I therefore end up with multiple albums wherever I have split an album between folders, since the 'same AlbumArtist' logic fails.

....

Is there a solution?

The mergeFolderAlbums logic depends on matching a single AlbumArtist value or identical Artist values. By aliasing AlbumArtist to MainArtist, you have disabled MinimServer's ability to match on AlbumArtist. MinimServer should still be able to match on Artist if all tracks of the album have the same Artist value(s).

You have two options:

1) Create another tag such as MergeArtist to control album merging for albums whose tracks don't have identical Artist values. You should alias MergeArtist to AlbumArtist and not put AlbumArtist in indexTags.

2) Put each album in a single folder.

[Pastim]

(26-09-2014 20:45)simoncn Wrote:  

(26-09-2014 19:51)Pastim Wrote:  This works, but has an unfortunate side effect of defeating the 'mergeFolderAlbums' logic. I therefore end up with multiple albums wherever I have split an album between folders, since the 'same AlbumArtist' logic fails.

....

Is there a solution?

The mergeFolderAlbums logic depends on matching a single AlbumArtist value or identical Artist values. By aliasing AlbumArtist to MainArtist, you have disabled MinimServer's ability to match on AlbumArtist. MinimServer should still be able to match on Artist if all tracks of the album have the same Artist value(s).

You have two options:

1) Create another tag such as MergeArtist to control album merging for albums whose tracks don't have identical Artist values. You should alias MergeArtist to AlbumArtist and not put AlbumArtist in indexTags.

2) Put each album in a single folder.

I feared as much. Neither of the options works for me.

I can't see myself creating a new tag on over a thousand (or two thousand depending...) albums to sort out a problem that only seems to affect minimserver. I only use an alias because of the multiple albumartist issue, which seems to be specific to this server. It is not feasible for me to assign Artists to tracks that don't involve those Artists.

I have spent many hundreds of hours filing music the way it makes sense to me (even if to no one else). Re-organising would be really difficult and would muck up my plot (daft though it may be).

However, many thanks for the quick response.

[simoncn]

(26-09-2014 21:20)Pastim Wrote:  I feared as much. Neither of the options works for me.

I can't see myself creating a new tag on over a thousand (or two thousand depending...) albums to sort out a problem that only seems to affect minimserver. I only use an alias because of the multiple albumartist issue, which seems to be specific to this server.

From your experience, how do other servers that don't have this "problem" merge tracks in different folders that belong to the same album and are tagged with different artists and different album artists? Do they merge by matching the album name only? This would lead to false positives with tracks from different albums being merged incorrectly.

[Pastim]

(26-09-2014 22:38)simoncn Wrote:  From your experience, how do other servers that don't have this "problem" merge tracks in different folders that belong to the same album and are tagged with different artists and different album artists? Do they merge by matching the album name only? This would lead to false positives with tracks from different albums being merged incorrectly.

With foobar2000, LMS and Bliss, provided the Album and all AlbumArtist tags are the same, and the discnumber and track numbers are consistent (and in some case the disctotal or totaldiscs line up) then all tracks are treated as belonging to 1 album. All report the same number of albums, now I have taken care to ensure all albums have one or more AlbumArtist tags, even for compilations where I use 'Various'. I am not aware of any logic link to the Artist tags (and I mean just that tag, not any wider meaning of Artist). There may be further tricks where AlbumArtist is absent or the compilation tag is set, but I don't know about that - sorry. It is certainly true that where AlbumArtist is different they tend to count differently.

Minimserver works in almost the same way counting my albums if I keep the AlbumArtist tag under its real name (although it still counts slightly differently), but the search by AlbumArtist goes awry where there is more than one.

I have a suggestion to make which would hopefully not be too hard to implement. Could one add an optional tag field to the mergeFolderAlbums property, such as:

Code:

mergeFolderAlbums      true,tag

where 'tag' is the field the user wants to use as being common to all Albums in place of AlbumArtist? This would default to AlbumArtist if omitted, leaving all functionality as it is now. In my case, I would put MainArtist (the alias I use to get around the multiple value issue), so the server would use the one or more tags under that name on each track.

In fact I have another bespoke tag that would also work for me. I added the catalogue number in a tag I called setId. I did this before I discovered MusicBrainz, which I has it's own variant on this (see https://musicbrainz.org/doc/Release/Catalog_Number).

The reason I have multiple AlbumArtist tags on some albums is that for some, e.g. a lieder recital, the singer and pianist are of equal importance to me, and I want to find the album for one or the other.

Regards

[simoncn]

Thanks for this thoughtful and helpful response. I understand all the points you are making except for this one:

Quote:The reason I have multiple AlbumArtist tags on some albums is that for some, e.g. a lieder recital, the singer and pianist are of equal importance to me, and I want to find the album for one or the other.

I don't understand why these would be tagged as AlbumArtist rather than Artist. Do you also tag them as Artist or do you use the Artist tag for some other purpose?

[DavidHB]

(27-09-2014 09:38)Pastim Wrote:  The reason I have multiple AlbumArtist tags on some albums is that for some, e.g. a lieder recital, the singer and pianist are of equal importance to me, and I want to find the album for one or the other.

Edit: this post crossed with Simon's (above). We seem to be of a mind.

Please forgive me if I am being dim, but I thought that the normal way of dealing with cases of this kind is to leave AlbumArtist blank (or use a placeholder such as <Various artists>), and have varying and/or multiple Artist tags. Compilation albums will require this approach in any case.

If the relevant data in a large collection is housed in the AlbumArtist tag, it is pretty quick and easy to use a tool such as MP3Tag's tag to tag copying feature to make the change. Browsing would then be by Artist rather than by AlbumArtist, and searches (at least if implemented as they are in Bubble DS/UPnP) would still find entries with the artist name.

Or have I completely misunderstood the issue?

David

[Pastim]

(27-09-2014 10:59)simoncn Wrote:  I don't understand why these would be tagged as AlbumArtist rather than Artist. Do you also tag them as Artist or do you use the Artist tag for some other purpose?

In the case of a lieder recital, the two Artists are both AlbumArtists, and Artists, so I tag them as both. I appreciate that others think differently, but it's logical to me. AlbumArtist is one thing - the main artist appearing on every track, and therefore worthy of being looked up as such in a search on AlbumArtist. Every track has a list of Artists (some use Performer but I don't), so they appear there as well. If I try to rely on the logic of a server to merge AlbumArtist and Artist, different servers behave differently, so I tag everything to my needs.

I'm happy to accept that I'm daft, but have got used to being so over the years

[Pastim]

(27-09-2014 11:12)DavidHB Wrote:  ... but I thought that the normal way of dealing with cases of this kind is to leave AlbumArtist blank (or use a placeholder such as <Various artists>), and have varying and/or multiple Artist tags. Compilation albums will require this approach in any case.

These aren't compilation albums. Both (or even more in a few cases) appear on every single track. I have some Albums consisting of Trios that don't have a name of the Trio, just 3 players. They are all AlbumArtists in my (probably misguided) way of thinking, and also are all Artists.

Use mp3tag (or puddletag which I use instead) to make a mass change in my logic would not be trivial, since I would want to check every single instance on over 25,000 tracks to make sure I wasn't creating duplicate Artist tags.

[simoncn]

(27-09-2014 11:41)Pastim Wrote:  In the case of a lieder recital, the two Artists are both AlbumArtists, and Artists, so I tag them as both. I appreciate that others think differently, but it's logical to me. AlbumArtist is one thing - the main artist appearing on every track, and therefore worthy of being looked up as such in a search on AlbumArtist. Every track has a list of Artists (some use Performer but I don't), so they appear there as well. If I try to rely on the logic of a server to merge AlbumArtist and Artist, different servers behave differently, so I tag everything to my needs.

I'm happy to accept that I'm daft, but have got used to being so over the years

If I understand this correctly, if you choose to use an AlbumArtist tag or tags for any track in an album, these tag(s) would appear on every track of the album, presumably in the same order. Because an identical list of AlbumArtist tags appears on every track in the album, converting this list of tags to a "match key" string would correctly match all tracks of the album.

MinimServer could adopt such a scheme and this would work for your library. The problem I envisage is that many libraries would have some tracks in an album where one of the album artists isn't tagged (perhaps because he/she isn't playing on that track) and this would cause unexpected match failures.