Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[yooz]

I have an Album from only one artist, exept one song ...so I put the additional atist with "feat. xyz" into the [Artist] in [Album Artist] I use only the Main-Artist of this album.

MC is changing the Albumtype to "Multiple Artists"...

...if I FlipFlop the two fields its "Single Artist"...

...shouldn't this be the other way round?

MC 13.0.144

[marko]

It's not clear from your post what you put where...

If there's more than one artist, ie. if all the tracks but one have the same [artist] and one has feat. xyz, MC will interpret this as a (Multiple Artists) album. If you then select the entire album and place the main artists name in the [album artist] field, this will over ride the built in MC logic and the [album artist (auto)] field will now show the main artist's name instead of (Multiple Artists)

This thread, while old,  explains the system in great detail and still applies today. If after reading, you have any further questions, could you ask in this thread rather than that old one, thanks.

Hope it helps.
-marko.

[yooz]

Example 1 (with Album Artist put  in by Hand)
..gives me Back that this is a "Multiple Artist" Album
shouldn't "Album Artist" override that,
so that I can use this "Album Artist" field to get out a "Single Artist" Albumtype again ?:

Artist	Album Artist
Dido	Dido
Dido	Dido
Dido feat. xyz	Dido
Dido	Dido
Dido	Dido
Dido	Dido

----------------------------------------------------------------
Example 2 (with FlipFlop Fields)
..gives me Back that this is a "Single Artist" Album
shouldn't this work the other way round cause for my understanding
the "Album Artist" could be either one or "Multiple Artists" like the auto fill in
that is done with a Sampler Album to auo change the "Type" of Album?

Artist	Album Artist
Dido	Dido
Dido	Dido
Dido	Dido feat. xyz <--I think if I do it this way It should render the Type of the album to "Multiple Artists"
Dido	Dido
Dido	Dido
Dido	Dido

[marko]

OK, I'm with you now...

You're referring to the [album type] field, yes?
[album artist] only overrides MC's default logic for populating the [album artist (auto)] field, which is used when the [album artist] field is empty.

The [album type] for 'Example 1' is correct because there are multiple artists. That is an unescapable fact.

-marko

[Alex B]

And the example number two would break the album to two separate albums in "Album Artist (auto)" based views. You really should have only one album artist for each album.

The number one is the correct way to do it. Make sure that your views are based on "Album Artist (auto)" instead of "Artist" and MC will automatically show all your "Dido" albums under the same artist name.

I posted this example a few years ago:

... I just bought this record: "Louis Armstrong & Friends - What A Wonderful Christmas." I filed it like this:



I wanted this album to show up besides the other Louis Armstrong albums instead of "multiple artists" or "Louis Armstrong & Friends". Also, I saved the disk files in the "Louis Armstrong\What A Wonderful Christmas" path, not in "Louis Armstrong & Friends\...". With this filing system I can search for track artists as well. ...

The default value in the "Album Artist (auto)" field was (multiple artists), but because I typed Louis Armstrong in the separate "Album Artist" field the automatic value changed to what I wanted.

[dcwebman]

And depending on your needs, like syncing to a handheld, you may want to consider what zirum suggested and I followed in this post:
http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=39865.0

It's a little more work to have a separate Artists field but I think it allows more flexibility with being able to create views on every artist regardless if they're the primary or a featured artist in a song.

[AoXoMoXoA]

Or as an alternative you could use "Joe Artist - Song Sung (feat- xyz)"

[Artist] = Joe Artist
[Album Artist] = Joe Artist
[Name] = Song Title (feat. xyz)

Of course having the featured artist in [Artist] or in [Name] will both display differently when playing, and effect different search results, so you must decide what best fits your needs and use habits.

[MusicHawk]

As I've explained in detail here and there, I solved this problem by abandoning both the standard Album Artist fields. They never helped me so are no longer in my views, though MC does its thing with them anyway.

My solution is simple: One standard field Artist, one custom field Artists (multi-value/list type field).

Artist -- Has the exact artist as stated for the individual track (might be the same for an entire album, might not) so I have this info complete and exactly right. This is what displays during playback, and what I see on my iPod. But it is not a field I ever use to manage my music.

Artists -- Has the artist's name in a standardized format (I like lastname, firstname) so this field is the same across all tracks/albums or even appearances on other albums by the artist, no matter how it was stated on the original recording. This is a multi-artist field so every notable artist on a particular track is listed in this field. This makes it very simple to identify tracks with varying guests artists/duets, and to handle compilation albums and random individual tracks -- and later find them instantly.

My main view for managing music is Artists, which first groups Artists by first letter (A-Z), then within those groups by the Artists field values (in my case, Lastname, Firstname). The really cool thing about using Artists in a view, being a multi-value field, is that MC creates virtual database rows for each name in that field. For instance, if the Artists field has this: "Dido;xyz" denoting two Artists on the track, the track will be listed in the Artists view under D\Dido AND under X\xyz. This makes it easy to see all tracks by "Dido", both solo and with others, and the same for "xyz".

In fact, this capability to use multi-value fields and have them treated as virtual rows in database views is about 95% of the reason I use MC. I finally feel like I'm in control of my large library (80K+ tracks).

I do the same thing, multi-values in a field, then a view based on it, with standard field Keywords, and with custom field Composers (rather than the built-in single-value Composer field).

[yooz]

Okay I understood all this...but...lol...I'm referring to the fact of the "Album Type"-Formula..for my understanding this inside MC coded Formula should do it the other way round..because If I have Example1 ... I deliberately tried to say the programm:

"Hey even If there is one song sung with another Person - The Albums Artist is still the Mainartist so show me that this is a Singleartist Album and not a Sampler"

and the programm answers:

"I don't care the "Album Artist" Field is Only and ONLY to overwite the "Album Artist(Auto)" field by Hand and this has nothing to do with my calculation of the "Album Type" Field so far..so go and ask in the forum if I would be allowed in future to change that!"

*fg*

[hit_ny]

The really cool thing about using Artists in a view, being a multi-value field, is that MC creates virtual database rows for each name in that field. For instance, if the Artists field has this: "Dido;xyz" denoting two Artists on the track, the track will be listed in the Artists view under D\Dido AND under X\xyz. This makes it easy to see all tracks by "Dido", both solo and with others, and the same for "xyz".

So how would you get a list of tracks Dido did ONLY with other artists ?

If i understood your system, clicking on Dido will find ALL tracks Dido did as main artist as well as with others.

[MusicHawk]

So how would you get a list of tracks Dido did ONLY with other artists ?

I've never needed to do this automatically. But likely a Smartlist could be built that applies MC function ListCount(...) to the Artists field. If the returned value is greater than 1, there's more than one artist in the track's Artists field, therefore it's "with other artists". Here's a list of MC's functions: http://wiki.jrmediacenter.com/index.php/Media_Center_expression_language

If this is a once-in-a-while need, doing it manually is easy. Create a spare empty Playlist to use as a holding container. Open the Artists view, which should have the Artists column (among others). It's easy to see tracks in the Artists column that have more than one value -- therefore are "with other artists". Add the desired tracks to the playlist. For most artists, there won't be a huge number of such tracks to consider (jazz artists being a notable exception.)

[hit_ny]

Good point, forgot about the listcount thingy.

I see a very good need to do this with Jazz combos as most of them usually lead in other projects.

Lots of data entry tho