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[Jumpsturdy]

I have a tagging issue with respect to a fifty album boxset of Blues music, All but nine of the albums have two artists per album (for instance 10 songs by Muddy Waters and 10 songs by Willie Dixon). The other nine however have all twenty songs by the same artist (i.e. 20 songs by BB King). None of the albums have anything tagged as Album Artist. However in the case of the nine albums with singular artists they end up grouped with the rest of the albums by that artist rather than included with the rest of the boxset under Various or Multiple Artists. That all makes sense to me.
Because I wanted them to be grouped together as a boxset, I was able to accomplish that in iTunes by adding a single space after the name of the artist on one song on each of the nine albums which then caused iTunes to treat the nine albums as if they had more than one artist and therefore move those nine albums from their grouping with other albums from the same artist to the grouping of Multiple Artists and therefore accomplish the goal of grouping the boxset together. However this did not work in Media Center. The nine albums remained grouped with their respective Artist. I then tried removing the space I had added after the artist name on the single track from each of the nine albums and put a period in its place. Still worked in iTunes but did not work in MC.
So the question is what do I need to do to convince MC that there are two artists on those nine albums so that it treats them as Multiple Artist albums and regroups them with the rest of the boxset. I had tried the added space because it was invisible; then chose the period because it was hardly visible. So obviously while I want to add something to the artist name on at least one song on each of the nine albums, the less visible the character the better. Any solutions or suggestions will be greatly welcomed.

[bMinor]

So the question is what do I need to do to convince MC that there are two artists on those nine albums so that it treats them as Multiple Artist albums and regroups them with the rest of the boxset.

Fill the Artist tag with the actual artist and tag 'Album Artist' of the whole box set as Various Artists.
That'll do it.

[Jumpsturdy]

Thanks for the reply. While tagging the Album Artist field as Various Artists will surely work, the concern I have is that to be consistent I would then have to do the same with the rest of my composite albums which would then move about 3000 albums into the non composite listings (under the Vs) instead of being at the end after Z. Just looking to find out how much of a change to an artist name is needed to have it treated as different from the other songs in the album. Clearly an added space or a period are insufficient; does there have to be two characters or more added to be recognized as different? What is the mechanism required by the software.
Thanks for any further replies.

[ferday]

FWIW the default for MC is (Multiple Artists) so it's at the front rather than in V

you asked - i just took an already tagged album, and changed the artist in one track.  first, with a . and then, with a space.  in both cases the album artist automatically changed to (Multiple Artists), so indeed MC is doing it properly. 

you are doing something incorrectly, but what, i don't know - it's probably more that you are expecting something to happen but you aren't changing the correct thing.  boxset grouping isn't necessarily the simplest thing sometimes in MC

[Jumpsturdy]

I have been successful in getting the nine albums to change to Multiple Artist by adding extra words (and Friends) to the artist field in one track, and as you said it then automatically changed to multiple artist. However, when I tried to remove (and Friends) from the one track an instead insert a period or a space the album switched back to a single artist album grouped with other albums or that artist. I am now intrigued that the space or period worked in your case but not in mine. Will have to think about that for a while. Can't understand why Album Artist (auto) worked differently for me than you.
And I can get this action to repeat; add a couple words to Artist in one track and it goes to multiple artist and change the words to space or period and the album flips back to single artist.