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[Paul S.A. Renaud]

I am looking for a way to be give an album more than one album artist, but be able to include the album in each of the album artists list.

[mwillems]

Usually the way to do that is by separating them with a semicolon (that works with genres and artists, for example).  I've never tried it with album artist, but it's worth a shot.

[RoderickGI]

[Album Artist] is a string field, which means it can only have one value. Of course you can type in multiple Artists, but MC will consider the whole text string as one Artist. So "Prince" and "Prince;Enya" would be two different Artists.

MC is set up that way because by definition, Album Artist is just one Artist, not multiple.

If you want to set multiple Artists, which would be on a Track rather than an Album, enter them into the [Artist] field, and then each Track that refers to those Artists will show up in the Artists Views, under each Artist. That is the intent of the functionality.

If you haven't already, read this very carefully: https://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/Album_Artist_and_Album_Artist_(Auto) and search the Wiki for related articles, like this one: https://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/Multiple_Artist_Albums

[Paul S.A. Renaud]

Usually the way to do that is by separating them with a semicolon (that works with genres and artists, for example).  I've never tried it with album artist, but it's worth a shot.

The semi-colon does not work for album artist

[Paul S.A. Renaud]

[Album Artist] is a string field, which means it can only have one value. Of course you can type in multiple Artists, but MC will consider the whole text string as one Artist. So "Prince" and "Prince;Enya" would be two different Artists.

MC is set up that way because by definition, Album Artist is just one Artist, not multiple.

If you want to set multiple Artists, which would be on a Track rather than an Album, enter them into the [Artist] field, and then each Track that refers to those Artists will show up in the Artists Views, under each Artist. That is the intent of the functionality.

If you haven't already, read this very carefully: https://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/Album_Artist_and_Album_Artist_(Auto) and search the Wiki for related articles, like this one: https://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/Multiple_Artist_Albums

Thanks for answer. I already use Artists per track. Even there it would be useful in to seperate artists. For instance, I have a lot of classical chamber music. One example: Violin sonates by Henryk Szeryng and Arthur Rubinstein. I use to have Rubinstein as Album Artist and ignore Szeryng. Now I have Henryk Szeryng & Arthur Rubinstein as Album Artist, but then I generate a lot of new Album Artists. The order is important there as well as "&" or "and". Would love to have this solved exactly like "Genre" where it works fine.

[RoderickGI]

Would love to have this solved exactly like "Genre" where it works fine.

[Artist] works exactly like [Genre], so if [Genre] works the way you want, use [Artist] and not [Album Artist].

I know, you already are using [Artist] with multiple Artists in there. Then base your Views and searches on [Artist] and not [Album Artist]. In fact, leave [Album Artist] empty and [Album Artist (auto)] will be set to "(Multiple Artists)", which reflects more correctly what the Album is, based on what you are saying you want.

Even there it would be useful in to seperate artists.

It does.

To be very clear, in the example you just gave, your [Artist] field should contain "Henryk Szeryng;Arthur Rubinstein", without the quotes of course. Then all Views that use [Artist] will show the Track for Henryk Szeryng and separately for Arthur Rubinstein.


Entering more than one Artist into [Album Artist] will just end in tears. I think you missed the point where I said:

MC is set up that way because by definition, Album Artist is just one Artist, not multiple.

To back that up, a quick Google finds this independent definition:
"Album Artist' tags are stored inside mp3s and other music files. They denote the artist for a musical release, as distinct from artists for the tracks that constitute a release."

Ref: https://www.blisshq.com/music-library-management-blog/2010/10/12/how-to-use-album_artist/


TL;DR  You're trying to use [Album Artist] wrong.

[Paul S.A. Renaud]

Thanks. I was wrong with "Artists". The semicolon works fine. My problems is that my "Artists" metadata is a mess. Only conclusion for me is 50.000 tracks to clean up. .

I still do not buy the notion that "Album Artist" is one. It is one entity but could consists of one of more persons, ensembles, etc. for the whole album.

[RoderickGI]

It certainly could be one ensemble, group, or band, when that is a known entity. Sometimes that is the most appropriate value.

For non-classical works, it gets even messier when the band has member changes over time, and you want to track those changes, or who was in the band at the time of the recording.

For Classical music, I wouldn't even know where to start. The variations are so great. For example, one Chamber Music ensemble could have different members in every recording and could pull from a much larger pool of musicians at any time. How would you track those Artists, and would you even want to? A friend of mine would say yes, but he can discuss specific recordings, who was in them, how they contributed, and at what stage of their career they were at! All of that is probably better placed in the [Comment] field, rather than track it in [Artist].

Nobody likes to do the big clean up. I still have lots to do in my collection. But, it is the correct solution, so it must be done! 

[EnglishTiger]

It certainly could be one ensemble, group, or band, when that is a known entity. Sometimes that is the most appropriate value.

For non-classical works, it gets even messier when the band has member changes over time, and you want to track those changes, or who was in the band at the time of the recording.

For Classical music, I wouldn't even know where to start. The variations are so great. For example, one Chamber Music ensemble could have different members in every recording and could pull from a much larger pool of musicians at any time. How would you track those Artists, and would you even want to? A friend of mine would say yes, but he can discuss specific recordings, who was in them, how they contributed, and at what stage of their career they were at! All of that is probably better placed in the [Comment] field, rather than track it in [Artist].

Nobody likes to do the big clean up. I still have lots to do in my collection. But, it is the correct solution, so it must be done! 

Rod for bands whose line-up changes surely a better way of keeping track of "who was in the band at time of recording" is to use the Band Tag and not the Artist or Comment Tag

[RoderickGI]

I agree. However, I'm not sure when the Band field was added so older Libraries would need a bit of work. Also, I don't think it is a commonly used tag in other applications, if files need to be used, say, in a car audio system and the user wants some information displayed when it is played. For use just in MC, that would be a good idea.

But take one small example, Queen. Typically almost every Track I have ever seen from anywhere has the Artist set to "Queen", and not the members of the group. Because they are core tags used everywhere, it makes a lot of sense to set the [Album Artist] to Queen, and if you want to track group members, put the individual names in the [Artist] field. Those two fields are universal, so they will be seen by all applications.

I meant the comment field could be used for descriptions of the state of the group at the time of the recording, similar to a mini version of the descriptions available on Last FM and similar.