Behavior if ARTIST and ALBUMARTIST tags are empty

[schup011]

Hi,

as I have mainly classical music, I use the BAND, CONDUCTOR, COMPOSER and ARTIST (+ ALBUMARTIST) tags.

I also use the Custom Clock applet for Jivelite to display the tags I want.

Quite often, it happens that tracks only have a BAND (with or without CONDUCTOR), but no ARTIST and ALBUMARTIST.

In this case, LMS (i.e. the ARTIST field that is some kind of LMS-own combination of the track's ARTIST and ALBUMARTIST tags) shows "Kein Interpret" (German for "No Artist"), and that is quite annoying because in other cases, it is absolutely needed. I would just want it to be empty.

How can I prevent this behavior?

(BTW: My Workaround is to use only ALBUMARTIST and to display the ALBUMARTIST field instead of the ARTIST field, but I would love to differentiate between TRACKARTIST and ALBUMARTIST in some cases.)

[d6jg]

Hi,

as I have mainly classical music, I use the BAND, CONDUCTOR, COMPOSER and ARTIST (+ ALBUMARTIST) tags.

I also use the Custom Clock applet for Jivelite to display the tags I want.

Quite often, it happens that tracks only have a BAND (with or without CONDUCTOR), but no ARTIST and ALBUMARTIST.

In this case, LMS (i.e. the ARTIST field that is some kind of LMS-own combination of the track's ARTIST and ALBUMARTIST tags) shows "Kein Interpret" (German for "No Artist"), and that is quite annoying because in other cases, it is absolutely needed. I would just want it to be empty.

How can I prevent this behavior?

(BTW: My Workaround is to use only ALBUMARTIST and to display the ALBUMARTIST field instead of the ARTIST field, but I would love to differentiate between TRACKARTIST and ALBUMARTIST in some cases.)

Why don’t you just add whatever you want to appear to the ARTIST tag?
The appearance of No Artist or No Album is to some of us a useful pointer that there is a tagging error and I for one wouldn’t want it suppressed.

[schup011]

I don't mix between bands (orchestras, ...), conductors and solo artists because I would like to have lists for each type.

EDIT: And with classical music, the number of artists for one track can become quite long and difficult to manage. Also for that, the usage of different tags makes sense.

[RobbH]

Is there some sort of placeholder that would be acceptable to you in the Artist field when there are no soloists? Perhaps an ellipsis, or a hyphen? Anything that LMS could recognize as content should prevent it from inserting "Kein Interpret". Since this behavior is a bug to you but a useful feature to others, some sort of workaround is in order.

[schup011]

Is there some sort of placeholder that would be acceptable to you in the Artist field when there are no soloists? Perhaps an ellipsis, or a hyphen? Anything that LMS could recognize as content should prevent it from inserting "Kein Interpret". Since this behavior is a bug to you but a useful feature to others, some sort of workaround is in order.

Hey, very good idea! I am using a special space character now (ASCII 255), and this is recognized as content, and is displayed as blank!

[RobbH]

Hey, very good idea! I am using a special space character now (ASCII 255), and this is recognized as content, and is displayed as blank!

That sounds perfect. Much better than a cryptic punctuation mark!

[BJW]

Related:

https://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?48730-known-bug-slash-in-artist-name

https://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?70456-bug-8380-read-all-mp3-tag-versions

U seem to have found a workaround, but I wonder if there's a better way?

Also I can't seem to find a post I vaguely recall where Andy said a file should have some tags, but maybe that was in the bug, idk.

[schup011]

Related:

https://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?48730-known-bug-slash-in-artist-name

https://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?70456-bug-8380-read-all-mp3-tag-versions

U seem to have found a workaround, but I wonder if there's a better way?

Also I can't seem to find a post I vaguely recall where Andy said a file should have some tags, but maybe that was in the bug, idk.

I am using the "ALBUMARTIST filled with Asc-255" trick. That works well for me, except for the little detail that the "Now Playing" screen in Jivelite always shows as artist " , " at the beginning because it wants to show the non-empty ALBUMARTIST as well. But given that I am using a custom clock screensaver there, I can live with that.

I am not aware of any other solution.

Well, all my files are tagged. TITLE, COMPOSER and ALBUM are always filled. And there is always some kind of artist, but that can be ARTIST and/or BAND and/or CONDUCTOR. That is a classical music specialty.