Same Album Title - Different Album Artist

[Birdy]

All,

how you organize/tag "Greatest Hits", "Best of ..." albums?

Example:
Artist 1 - Greatest Hits
Artist 2 - Greatest Hits
Artist 3 - Greatest Hits

In the Albums list I see 3 entries for "Greatest Hits" sorted by artist.

Is there a way to show the artist in the album title (only for duplicate album titles)?
Or do I need to change the album title to "Greatest Hits - Artist 1"?

Thanks in advance!
Birdy

[simoncn]

You can use the tagFormat property to add the artist to the album title but this would apply to all albums, which is not what you want.

The simplest solution is your suggestion of changing the Album tags for the albums that you want to differentiate in this way.

If you want to keep the "Greatest Hits" Album tags unchanged in your files, I could suggest some other approaches.

[Birdy]

Hi Simon,

thanks for your quick reply.

Yes, if possible I want to keep the Album tags unchanged.

It would be great, if you could suggest an other approach.

Thanks,
Birdy

[Birdy]

(06-01-2020 20:28)simoncn Wrote:  You can use the tagFormat property to add the artist to the album title but this would apply to all albums, which is not what you want.

The simplest solution is your suggestion of changing the Album tags for the albums that you want to differentiate in this way.

If you want to keep the "Greatest Hits" Album tags unchanged in your files, I could suggest some other approaches.

Hi Simon,

yes, if possible I want to keep the Album tags unchanged.
It would be great, if you could suggest an other approach.

Thanks,
Birdy

[simoncn]

My apologies for the delay in replying.

You can use a tagging program to add a custom tag to the albums that you want to have a specially formatted album title, for example:

ALBUMCUSTOM=Artist 1 - Greatest Hits

You also need to add AlbumCustom to the itemTags property and add the following to the tagValue property:

Album.replace={AlbumCustom}

This tells MinimServer to use the AlbumCustom value for those albums that have AlbumCustom tags and use the Album value for other albums.

Alternatively, if you don't want to edit the files at all, you can use the MinimServer tag update facility (see this section). Your tag update file would contain entries like this:

@ALBUM=Greatest Hits
&ARTIST=Artist 1
=ALBUM=Artist 1 - Greatest Hits

[Birdy]

Hi Simon,

now I had some delay
Many thanks for the information!
I will look into both suggestions.

Birdy

[Birdy]

Hi Simon,

I tried the tag update facility, but it is only working fine for 1 album?!?
I added the following lines:

@ALBUM=Greatest Hits
&ARTIST=Artist 1
=ALBUM=Artist 1 - Greatest Hits

@ALBUM=Greatest Hits
&ARTIST=Artist 2
=ALBUM=Artist 2 - Greatest Hits

Is something wrong in my approach (syntax)?

Thanks,
Birdy

[simoncn]

You need to use the actual names of the albums and artists and repeat this group of 3 lines as often as needed.

[Birdy]

(07-02-2020 14:29)simoncn Wrote:  You need to use the actual names of the albums and artists and repeat this group of 3 lines as often as needed.

Thanks for your quick reply.
That is / was clear.

"Real" example:

@ALBUM=Greatest Hits
&ARTIST=Robbie Williams
=ALBUM=Greatest Hits - Robbie Williams

@ALBUM=Greatest Hits
&ARTIST=Lenny Kravitz
=ALBUM=Greatest Hits - Lenny Kravitz

Control point (Bose Soundtouch App):
Greatest Hits
Greatest Hits - Lenny Kravitz

So it is only working for 1 of 2 (same story, when I tried with more)
All names cross-checked several times

[simoncn]

Thanks, I understand now that for some reason it doesn't work for Robbie Williams. Can you try a few others? The @ALBUM and &ARTIST lines need to match the album exactly. I suspect there is something about either the Robbie Williams album or the lines you have typed that is causing a mismatch.