Various Artists in 6.2 with MP3

[MeSue]

Who is using the "Various Artists" features in 6.2 with MP3 files and actually likes it? If it's you, would you mind posting how you have your files tagged and what settings you have under Compilations in SlimServer? Thanks.

[Philip Meyer]

Various Artists in 6.2 with MP3

>Who is using the "Various Artists" features in 6.2 with MP3 files and
>actually likes it? If it's you, would you mind posting how you have
>your files tagged and what settings you have under Compilations in
>SlimServer? Thanks.

I am generally happy with it, but really could do with a fix for bug 2066 before I can really use it properly.

I have the following settings:

Don't include composer, band and orchestra in artists.
Group compilation albums together
Don't include compilation artists in artist list
Use TPE2/BAND ID3v2 tag as "ALBUMARTIST"

For albums that have various artists, I tag each track with the specific artist for that track in the standard ARTIST tag. The albums then appear automatically under "Various Artists", and those artists that only appear on various artist albums are exploded into the Browse Artists list, but are still searchable (I think - there was a bug about this, not sure if that is fixed now).

However, sometimes I have albums that have mainly one artist, but with a guest appearance on a single track. In this instance, I'd like to have the album appear as a non-various artists album, in the heirarchy for the main artist of that album. I thought this could be achieved by setting each track of the album with ALBUMARTIST=<the main artist> (or perhaps get away with only tagging the one special song). The tracks would still display the "song artist" on the now playing screen. This doesn't currently work (ALBUMARTIST seems to be ignored), but is covered by bug 2066, which is targetted for the 6.2 release.

Does that help?

Phil

[MeSue]

Thanks for chiming in. I find the whole thing very confusing. My biggest issue with it is exactly what you you described in bug 2066.

The other things is… I have no idea what this means:
Use TPE2/BAND ID3v2 tag as "ALBUMARTIST"

I have never seen TPE2/BAND ID3v2 fields in any of the tagging software I've used. How do you get it in there? I usually do tagging in Music Library, which has AlbumArtist but it says this is a database field and not a ID3v2 tag.

For my albums that really are compilations, I always put "various" for AlbumArtist and the actual artist for track artist. Then, like you, I have several albums where there is on AlbumArtist but there may be one or a few songs with a guest artist. I tag these just like you and I also don't like these being lumped under various artists.

I think SlimServer should not try to assume/guess things like it's doing now. It should only go by what the user has put into the tags. Do you agree?

[Philip Meyer]

Re: Various Artists in 6.2 with MP3

I'm going to be doing a bit of guesswork here, as I am not involved with the software.

>The other things is… I have no idea what this means:
>Use TPE2/BAND ID3v2 tag as "ALBUMARTIST"
>
Never used them myself either. I think it is something to do with the way iTunes stores tags. I believe this setting simply makes slimserver see those tags and stores them as if they were ALBUMARTIST, so they are aliases for the same thing. You can ignore the setting if you are using ALBUMARTIST and never use TPE2/BAND.

>For my albums that really are compilations, I always put "various" for
>AlbumArtist and the actual artist for track artist. Then, like you, I
>have several albums where there is on AlbumArtist but there may be one
>or a few songs with a guest artist. I tag these just like you and I
>also don't like these being lumped under various artists.
>
It appears that AlbumArtist isn't used by slimserver yet (or at least not if "Group compilation albums together" is selected).

In your case, if you believe you have fully tagged your music library the way you want it, you don't want slimserver to do the guessing, so I think you simply select "list compilation albums under each artist". I think slimserver should then put your "various artist" albums under an artist according to your ALBUMARTIST tag (ie. "various"). If there isn't an ALBUMARTIST tag, each track will be stored under (song) ARTIST/ALBUM/TITLE.

>I think SlimServer should not try to assume/guess things like it's
>doing now. It should only go by what the user has put into the tags. Do
>you agree?
Not completely. Of course, there should be a clear option to turn off the facility (perhaps off by default). Something like a checkbox "Guess various artist albums" at the top of the Compilations prefs section. I believe this is what the first drop-down list is for, but it's not very clear.

I quite like the guessing it is doing, it seems a reasonable thing to do. But if a user has entered tags, such as ALBUMARTIST, TPE2 or BAND, then those should be used instead of any guesswork.

I have quite a lot of albums that are various artists, and hardly any have ALBUMARTIST tags. With this new various artist guessing implementation, it has tidied up my music library quite well. There are some albums that are going wrong because I can't override the guessing being performed by use of the ALBUMARTIST tag, but if I were to switch off the guessing, it would be worse I could change my song artists to be the albumartist, and perhaps put the song artist into the track title as others seem to do, but I don't like that.

Phil

[MeSue]

Thank you for trying to help, Phil.

From what I can gather… there is no such thing as an AlbumArtist tag for MP3 files. However, we can get AlbumArtist-like behavior by telling SlimServer 'Use TPE2/BAND ID3v2 tag as "ALBUMARTIST"' except for the slight problem that this can only be done through iTunes.

Can anyone confirm if the above assumptions are true?

At the moment I have tried to make it so Compilations are not used at all. I've set the options under "Compilations" to:
-List compilation albums under each artist
-Include compilation artists in artist list

However, I have some Albums that are getting split into two line items when I browse by Album. When I click the album name, some albums are listed under the first item and some are listed under a the second item. There is no way to list all the songs from the Album when browsing by Album. The songs are all in one folder but the track artists are different for each song.

On other compilations, the album is listed once — as it should be.

The only differences I can see is that the ones that SlimServer is splitting up have the artist as part of the file name set off by either parenthesis or dashes OR, the artist is not included in the file name. In the ones that SlimServer is not splitting up, all have the artist as part of the file name separated by underscores.

Maybe this has something to do with the "Guess Tags" setting under formatting. I will try taking that out and rescanning to see if it helps. If not I guess I have to rename all those files to use underscores instead of parenthesis or dashes.

Ugh… I am so sick of rescanning over and over and trying to figure this all out!

[Dan Sully]

Various Artists in 6.2 with MP3

* MeSue shaped the electrons to say...

>Can anyone confirm if the above assumptions are true?
>
>Ugh. I am so sick of rescanning over and over and trying to figure this all out!

We will be reworking a lot of the Various Artist, Multiple Items in Tags and
Compilation handling in the next few days. Me and Dean had a long discussion
about it yesterday. More forthcoming.

-D
--
<fuz> deregulation will lead to greater competition, consumer choice, and lower prices.
my name is elmer fudd. I own a mansion and a yacht.

[MeSue]

>>We will be reworking a lot of the Various Artist, Multiple Items in Tags and Compilation handling in the next few days. Me and Dean had a long discussion about it yesterday. More forthcoming.<<

Oh, that is music to my ears! Thanks.

[dip]

We will be reworking a lot of the Various Artist, Multiple Items in Tags and Compilation handling in the next few days. Me and Dean had a long discussion about it yesterday. More forthcoming.

Do you have already any specific ideas how it will be changed? Will bugs 1209, 2055, 2056 and 2057 be taken into account?

[disaster]

Just to add my two penneth to the Various Artist discussion. I've been using 6.2b1 - 3981 for a while, but noticed the new "Random Mix" functionality in the latest build so thought I would take a look.
I'd experimented with 3981 and worked out the best approach to tagging my compilation/mix albums.
Setting ALBUMARTIST, ARTIST and TRACKARTIST resulted in mix albums showing only as ALBUMARTIST when browsing by artist. Viewing the details of track from "Playing Now" showed all the correct details, including ARTIST.

Using 6.2b1 - 4577 both the ALBUMARTIST and the ARTIST now appear in the list when browsing artist, something I specifically want to avoid.

Have experimented with the VA settings without luck, but my understanding is the setting ALBUMARTIST makes these redundant anyway.

[Craig, James (IT)]

Re: Various Artists in 6.2 with MP3

Sounds similar to the bug I raised recently:

unwanted composer shown in ARTIST track info

http://bugs.slimdevices.com/show_bug.cgi?id=2231

James
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[tass]

The TPE2 field is available via MP3 Tag Studio - http://www.magnusbrading.com/mp3ts/

Hope this helps someone

I've been waiting for this feature... time to upgrade and give it a go

[chopdog]

Various Artists

I am using the Various Artists facility and find it THE single most useful features of 6.2

Superb - Thanks Dean.

[dean]

Re: Various Artists in 6.2 with MP3

Glad you like it, though I must admit, Dan Sully did all the hard work.

-dean

On Oct 11, 2005, at 11:21 PM, chopdog wrote:

>
> I am using the Various Artists facility and find it THE single most
> useful features of 6.2
>
> Superb - Thanks Dean.
>
>
> --
> chopdog
>