"Various Artists" in Artists

[DoXer]

Hi,
I tagged my compilations albums with MP3TAG. I set ALBUMARTIST=Various Artists and COMPILATION=1. All compilations are under "Various Artist". If I select an Artist i.E "New Order", then also the tracks from the compilation appears in the artist list. See screen shot. How can I avoid this?

[JJZolx]

Hi,
I tagged my compilations albums with MP3TAG. I set ALBUMARTIST=Various Artists and COMPILATION=1.

With Squeezebox Server it's generally not a good idea to set ALBUMARTIST=Various Artists or compilations albums. Call it a quirk.

All compilations are under "Various Artist". If I select an Artist i.E "New Order", then also the tracks from the compilation appears in the artist list. See screen shot. How can I avoid this?

I don't see a screen shoot, but I think you mean that compilation albums on which New Order appears are listed among New Order's albums. I don't think you can avoid this.

[DoXer]

With Squeezebox Server it's generally not a good idea to set ALBUMARTIST=Various Artists or compilations albums. Call it a quirk.

Please be more specific. I saw a lot of threads here in the forum, but I'm a little bit confused. I also using my MP3-Library with MediaPortal and foobar. And they are useing the TPE2/ALBUM ARTISTS.

I don't see a screen shoot, but I think you mean that compilation albums on which New Order appears are listed among New Order's albums. I don't think you can avoid this.

Uploaded now. Sorry

[Phil Leigh]

Please be more specific.

DO NOT SET ALBUMARTIST or ALBUM ARTIST = "Various Artists".

[JJZolx]

With Squeezebox Server it's generally not a good idea to
set ALBUMARTIST=Various Artists or compilations albums. Call it a quirk.

Please be more specific. I saw a lot of threads here in the forum, but I'm a little bit confused. I also using my MP3-Library with MediaPortal and foobar. And they are useing the TPE2/ALBUM ARTISTS.

Sorry, that should have read:

"not a good idea to set ALBUMARTIST=Various Artists on compilations albums"

It's a bit of a long story.

When Squeezebox Server sees an ALBUMARTIST tag of 'Various Artists' it creates an artist named 'Various Artists', the same as if you'd tagged an album with ALBUMARTIST=U2 or similar. This artist is different than the 'Various Artists' listed as the first artist in the artists list (you many not see that one if all of your compilations have ALBUMARTIST=Various Artists).

If you have a compilation album tagged without any ALBUMARTIST tag, then Squeezebox Server creates a pseudo-artist with the name 'Various Artists' (this name can be changed in the settings) and it places compilations albums under that artist name. It's essentially the place where you go to find all of your compilations. The way you've tagged things, these albums will be found under an artist call 'Various Artists' sorted under 'V'. That behavior in itself may not be an inconvenience, but it can get a little confusing if you also have compilation albums without the ALBUMARTIST tag, which would then be found under the _other_ Various Artists.

For Squeezebox Server ALBUMARTIST and ALBUM ARTIST are equivalent. There's an option in Settings > My Music of 'Treat TPE2 MP3 tag as Album Artist'. When this is ticked TPE2 is also used as ALBUMARTIST.

[DoXer]

Thanx for the detailed explanation. Also found this in the wiki.
http://wiki.slimdevices.com/index.php/Compilations

[garym]

Sorry, that should have read:

"not a good idea to set ALBUMARTIST=Various Artists on compilations albums"

It's a bit of a long story.

When Squeezebox Server sees an ALBUMARTIST tag of 'Various Artists' it creates an artist named 'Various Artists', the same as if you'd tagged an album with ALBUMARTIST=U2 or similar. This artist is different than the 'Various Artists' listed as the first artist in the artists list (you many not see that one if all of your compilations have ALBUMARTIST=Various Artists).

If you have a compilation album tagged without any ALBUMARTIST tag, then Squeezebox Server creates a pseudo-artist with the name 'Various Artists' (this name can be changed in the settings) and it places compilations albums under that artist name. It's essentially the place where you go to find all of your compilations. The way you've tagged things, these albums will be found under an artist call 'Various Artists' sorted under 'V'. That behavior in itself may not be an inconvenience, but it can get a little confusing if you also have compilation albums without the ALBUMARTIST tag, which would then be found under the _other_ Various Artists.

For Squeezebox Server ALBUMARTIST and ALBUM ARTIST are equivalent. There's an option in Settings > My Music of 'Treat TPE2 MP3 tag as Album Artist'. When this is ticked TPE2 is also used as ALBUMARTIST.

Every time I think about this issue my head hurts. ;-) I was just looking and I notice that I have albumartist in my compilation albums (with AA set to "Various Artists". i also have them tagged with COMPILATION=1. I've changed the SbS label from "various artists" to compilations. So as indicated here, the first listing in my ARTISTS menu is COMPILATIONS. And all my comps are there. But if scroll down to Various Artists (in the "V's", I see all the same albums listed again. So they're in both places, which could be confusing.

Many folks smarter about this than me have lots of posts around here on this subject. Seems like one is best to either use NO album artist tags, and then make sure that COMPILATION=1 on comp albums, or to use AA tags on everything, using VA on compilation album AA tags and not using the COMPILATION tag at all. But I'll have to experiment with this notion.

[Philip Meyer]

>Please be more specific. I saw a lot of threads here in the forum, but
>I'm a little bit confused. I also using my MP3-Library with MediaPortal
>and foobar. And they are useing the TPE2/ALBUM ARTISTS.
>
TPE2 is called BAND, but is often regarded as ALBUM ARTIST.

Mp3Tag used to honour TPE2 as holding Band/Orchestra information by default, not Album Artist, but the latest (beta?) version changed this such that by default TPE2=ALBUM ARTIST (can be mapped either way).

Similarly, SBS can be configured such that TPE2 can be regarded as either BAND or ALBUM ARTIST. It used to default to BAND, but this might be different.

So, it may depend which version of SBS you use, and which version of Mp3Tag you have installed, and how you have configured both apps, as to whether you are really setting/reading Album Artist or Band tag values.

You can check how SBS has interpretted your id3 tags by looking at the tags reported in the Web UI when you browse to a song. Does it actually report that you have an Album Artist tag on the songs?

[Philip Meyer]

>DO NOT SET ALBUMARTIST or ALBUM ARTIST = "Various Artists".
Users can, but if they do, also ensure that COMPILATION=1.

i.e. for compilations, can either:
set a COMPILATION tag (and optionally an ALBUM ARTIST tag to whatever you like)
or
don't set a COMPILATION tag and ensure that ALBUM ARTIST is also not set, so SBS scanner automatically determines the album is a Various Artists compilation.

The two alternatives do not have identical behaviour consistently across all UI's - (one way sets track artists instead of artists, which can affect results when browsing artist links).

[Philip Meyer]

>I've changed the SbS label from "various artists" to
>compilations. So as indicated here, the first listing in my ARTISTS
>menu is COMPILATIONS. And all my comps are there. But if scroll down to
>Various Artists (in the "V's", I see all the same albums listed again.
>So they're in both places, which could be confusing.

I think if you set Album Artist=Compilations, you will also see this as the album artist, wherever that is reported in each UI. eg. on Touch UI Now Playing screen, you would see:

Trouble
Compilations, Coldplay
Acoustic Songbook