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[pilotbum]

I am in the midst of a re-organization project of my music and I have always filed "Multiple Artist" albums such as soundtracks as Directory/(Multiple Artists)/Album/Track. However, on the albums that are not currently organized that way when I use the "Rename, Move & Copy Files F6" function and have "Use (Multiple Artists) for [Artist] on multi-artist albums" checked, it will not reorganize the files appropriately, rather it puts each track under the Artist/Album rule that I have set for single artist albums.

What am I doing wrong?

[wer]

You're just misunderstanding what MC is presenting to you.  It's a bit subtle, and therefore can be confusing, but I'll try and explain.

The fundamental unit in MC is the TRACK (or file).  Each track has an Artist tag.  Albums don't really exist in MC, in the same way that tracks do.  An Album in MC is just a bunch of tracks/files that happen to share certain tags.  If the tags match, MC thinks the files must belong to the same album.

When you work in RMCF, you are acting on TRACKS (files). You might be thinking in your mind you are acting on an album, but you are not: you are really acting on all the tracks that are in that album.

So think about a track. A single track never has an [Artist] value of (Multiple Artists). 

That phrase only pops up when you look at multiple tracks at the same time (as you are in your screenshot). MC tries to summarize the information for multiple tracks. It sees that the [Artist] field varies, so it says (Multiple Artists) but that is just a summary, like an average. In fact, exactly zero of the tracks actually has that tag in its [Artist] field.

The [Artist] field is the Artist (whatever you think that means) responsible for that TRACK. Which is not necessarily the same as the artist responsible for the entire album.

So your mistake is trying to act on a tag value that you're misunderstanding.  Now that you understand what you've been seeing, what you want to do is organize your files by a tag that does NOT vary amongst all the files in that album.
The correct tag to use would be [Album Artist] or [Album Artist (auto)].  [Album Artist] is the artist responsible for the entire album

All the tracks on an album should have the same value for [Album Artist]. If they don't, make it so.  If you have a Sinatra album of him singing duets with 10 different people, the [Artist] track may well be different for each track ("Frank Sinatra with Rosemary Clooney", for example). But the [Album Artist] tag for all of those tracks should be "Frank Sinatra".  If you have a compilation album, you must still enforce the rule. Your disc of random disco music might get an [Album Artist] tag of "Various" for example.  (I would discourage you from entering "(Multiple Artists)" in that field for compilations, so that you preserve your ability to distinguish what you have hard coded from what MC is dynamically summarizing.)

Then do your RMCF activities and your album organization by [Album Artist] and not by [Artist].  The reason why should now be obvious to you since you understand better what [Album Artist] actually is.

In your screenshot, your [Album Artist] field is blank. That is a mistake, because you see that MC thinks that the "Walk the Line" album is at least 3 different albums by 3 different artists.  That's wrong. Fix your [Album Artist] tag, and use that for your organizing.

Make sense?

Update: Since Rod posted below, I'll add this: I recommend you use [Album Artist] and NOT [Album Artist (auto)].  Using the Auto version, as he suggests, is perhaps easier, but it might not give you the results you prefer for compilation albums with all different artists, or even for the Sinatra duets example.  Better to fill out [Album Artist] correctly, and it will always be reliable and your albums will always be organized in the way that makes sense to you.
So:  [Album Artist]\[Album] ([Year])

[RoderickGI]

EDIT: Wer beat me by two minutes! Same advice.

Change your directory rule to:

[Album Artist (auto)]\[Album] ([Year])

[pilotbum]

Thanks. That took a couple reads to fully digest everything. Then I had to play with it a bit. I did always understand the difference between [Artist] and [Album Artist] but did not fully understand the ramifications of not having the album artist completely utilized.

The way I understand the [Album Artist (auto)] is it will automatically use [Artist] in lieu of [Album Artist] in the event [Album Artist] is blank, is that correct?

So my takeaway is for compilations such as a Soundtrack [Album Artist] should have Various or Various Artists for the tag?

Last question, WHAT IN THE HELL is the "Use '(Multiple Artists)' for [Artist] on multi-artist albums" checkbox for in RMCF action screen for if it basically does nothing? Because that is what I think I have understood from everything you guys wrote, IT DOES NOTHING?

[RoderickGI]

If an Album has Tracks with several different Artists, or even one Track with two Artists in the [Artist] field, even without anything in the [Album Artist] field, the [Album Artist (auto)] field wil be set to "(Multiple Artists)".

You don't need to put "Various" in the [Album Artist] field.

See https://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/Album_Artist_and_Album_Artist_(Auto)

[pilotbum]

That's the way I was expecting it to work, but it doesn't work that way. But then when I read the article in the link  you provided, if all the tracks aren't already in the same directory then it won't automatically organize a multiple artist album as (multiple artists)/[Album]/ in which case that checkbox in the RMCF window doesn't do anything?

I am trying to get all the tracks from a multiple artist album that are presently organized by artist in the same folder.

[RoderickGI]

Then do the move in two steps. One without using the Artist field, such as "[Album] ([Year])" so they all move to the same directory and get the "(Multiple Artists)" designation, and then one using "[Album Artist (auto)]\[Album] ([Year])".

[wer]

If an Album has Tracks with several different Artists, or even one Track with two Artists in the [Artist] field, even without anything in the [Album Artist] field, the [Album Artist (auto)] field wil be set to "(Multiple Artists)".

You don't need to put "Various" in the [Album Artist] field.

See https://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/Album_Artist_and_Album_Artist_(Auto)

So pilot, what Rod has been telling you is true. But that's a separate question from whether it's desirable behavior.  I myself don't like the way the [Album Artist (auto)] field works. To wit, if I have a Sinatra album with 9 tracks by Sinatra, and 1 track by "Frank Sinatra and Rosemary Clooney" then I do NOT want that album filed under "(Multiple Artists)".  Who would?

That was my point.

[Album Artist (auto)] is automatic and easy, but often the results are not what you want. It just works better if you fill out the Album Artist field, so that it is correct.  It's true you don't HAVE to put "Various" or "Various Artists" in the field. But I don't like the way "(Multiple Artists)" looks with the parenthesis, and I don't like the way it sorts with the parenthesis either.  That's why I replace it: it's just aesthetics.

But using a manually filled [Album Artist] field instead of [Album Artist (auto)] is about correctness and accuracy, and ensuring you have control.

I hope all this has helped.

[RoderickGI]

I agree with your Sinatra example Will. I do the same for those sorts of Albums. Well, close. I use "Frank Sinatra;Rosemary Clooney". 

But I live with the "(Multiple Artists)" categorisation, because it saves me work. It is sometimes annoying that those Albums sort to the beginning of the Album View though. Using "Various" sorts them out of the way, mostly.

[wer]

I can you understand you appreciating it saving you a little work. After all, you spend so much time typing here on the forums that leaves little time left for actual use of MC. 

But it doesn't save much work, just a tiny bit.

Since pilot has all of his [Album Artist] tags empty, he can select every file in his library, hit F2 on [Album Artist] and type:
=[Album Artist (auto)]

That will fill all his [Album Artist] tags in about 5 seconds, and then he can manually clean just the "(Multiple Artists)" ones as he sees fit.

And when you're ripping an album, it just takes a couple of seconds to set the [Album Artist] field.

So (auto) saves a teensy bit of work, but it's not a real timesaver like metadata lookup or RMCF.  Better to just use [Album Artist] and relax in the confidence everything is right.

That's my story and I'm stickin' to it.   

[pilotbum]

So I have been going through and doing a lot of manual cleaning album by album. There are thousands. Not all of the Album Artists are empty, but many are. First I'm just cleaning up the multiple artist albums and then I'll go back and try that F2 trick to fill in the rest.

Along those same lines, however, I'm curious how you guys organize your music for compilation type albums. For Example, the Sinatra example is easy if it is his album with a duet on a few tracks where the whole album is Sinatra. But what about compilations? For Soundtracks I have been making [Album Artist] Soundtrack. Other compilations I've been leaving the [Album Artist] blank and allowing MC to use (multiple artists). Is this how you guys do it? For example I have an album "Common Thread: The Songs of the Eagles" which is Eagles songs sung by country artists. Every track is a different artist. Would you leave Album Artist blank, Various Artists, the name of the Album?

Thanks guys for all your input and help. This is a hell of a project but I'm certain I'll be much happier with the results.

[wer]

First I'm just cleaning up the multiple artist albums and then I'll go back and try that F2 trick to fill in the rest.

Well if you do it in that order, cleaning first then copy, you will have to be more selective. You won't be able to copy to ALL albums, you realize, you'll just want to to do that to some (the empty ones).

Along those same lines, however, I'm curious how you guys organize your music for compilation type albums....

So this is a fair question.  But there's really no right or wrong answer here. It's just a matter of personal preference.

Undoubtedly, when Rod chimes in, he will offer some ideas that I think are ridiculous, and think the same of some of mine; but he is Australian so a certain amount of that is to be expected.

What I do is along the lines of what you seem to be describing.  For a true "compilation" album, I generally set the Album Artist to "Various".  I like it sorting not at the top of the artist list. My thoughts on "(Multiple Artists)" I have already revealed.

For your Eagles homage example, I would put that under Album Artist=Various, definitely.  My advice is never leave [Album Artist] empty. That's just sloppy, and can cause problems. It forces you to rely on [Album Artist (auto)] and as has been demonstrated, that field is sometimes just wrong.  Plus, if you only sometimes fill [Album Artist] then later if you try and actually use it directly you will sometimes get null results, and that is bad too.  Other than "it saves me 2 seconds" I can not think of any good reasons to leave it empty, and I can think of many good reasons why you should fill it in. So just fill it in.   (For those who will want to whine about the 2 seconds, you can create an auto import rule that automatically sets it equal to [Album Artist (auto)] on import, so those people can just hush.)

For soundtrack albums, I will generally assign them to "Various" if they are rock songs by a bunch of artists, like a lot of Scorsese movies, for example. But honestly I don't have a lot of those types of soundtrack albums.  If a soundtrack album is a bunch of themed classical/instrumental compositions by the same composer, I will generally set the composer as the artist.  For example, the soundtrack to "The Shipping News" I've filed under "Christopher Young". (nice music, you should give it a listen). I would concede that filing soundtrack albums with an album artist of "Soundtrack" is very reasonable... But the reason why I don't do that is that I have other compilation albums, with the Album Artist=Various (as I said), and generally I find it more pleasing and intuitive if those types of soundtrack albums are grouped with those compilation albums.  So I put them all under "Various" and apply a genre of "Soundtrack" as appropriate.  That seems to give me the best of all possible worlds, at least as it suits me.

As I said I set the Genre to most soundtrack albums to "Soundtrack" so I can find them easily. Even to this there are exceptions, though, as I file Tan Dun's compositions under his name and in the classical genre.

It is not important to me whether this (the rules or the exceptions) makes sense to anyone else.  It makes sense to me.  And that is the same rule you should apply. Organize your music the way it makes sense to you, so that you always find your music exactly where you expect to find it.

If you categorize an album in such a way that you have to always remind yourself "oh, it's not in that place, it's over in that other place" or you can't remember where it is when you want to navigate to it, then you have failed yourself.  Consistency and rigor is good, but slavish devotion to it to the extent it incommodes you is not. As you do your organizing, think of yourself as the cataloger, but remember who the customer truly is.

A well organized and tagged music collection, "curated" in other words, is indeed very pleasing. You will certainly be happier when you get done.  I gave some music to a friend of mine once, and he came back to me "Whoa, this is all so beautifully tagged! It has lyrics and liner notes and everything. It's really nice; I'm going to have to do this to the rest of my music."  So he actually appreciated it, even though subsequently it cost him weeks of time tagging all his own music to bring it up to standard!

[RoderickGI]

Undoubtedly, when Rod chimes in, he will offer some ideas that I think are ridiculous, and think the same of some of mine; but he is Australian so a certain amount of that is to be expected.

Well, you know, it is really hard reading everything upside down.    The alternative of hanging from the ceiling to read makes the blood rush to my head, and then my eyes don't work.   

I have a personal rule that every Album must be in its own directory. Therefore [Album Artist (auto)] always works correctly for true compilations and single Artist Albums. For Albums that have one main Artist, but have Tracks with multiple Artists, such as with duets, I fill in the [Album Artist] and [Album Artist (auto)] still works. So I fill [Album Artist] by exception, while Will fills them all the time. That is just a personal choice.

I treat soundtrack Albums as compilations, and set the Genre to "Soundtrack", although sometimes I have multiple Genres on a Track by Track basis. I definitely do not put "Soundtrack" into the [Album Artist] field. One of my other personal rules is that unless it is absolutely impossible, I always only use a field for its intended purpose. As "Soundtrack" isn't an Artist, it doesn't belong in the [Album Artist] field. When I have data that really just doesn't belong anywhere I will create a new field and use that instead, even if lots of other tags are empty.

Will will disagree with me on that as well, but as he says, that's okay. As long as you don't decide to use tags in a way that would break MC functionality, anything is fine if it works for you. I spent too many years training people on how to use software, and fixing people's hacks in databases, because they couldn't find the correct field to use or couldn't be bothered adding a field, to accept data smeared all over the place. Old habits die hard. 

[EnglishTiger]

One reason for always making sure the [Album Artiust] Tag/Field is made use of:- In "Artists View" which has the wrong name on it because it presents the "data" by [Album Artist (Auto) and not by [Artist] any Album(s) where MC assumed the Album Artist is (Multiple Artists) will appear first with (Mutliple Artists) being shown as the Album Artist.

But in a "Panes View" that has the [Album Artist] list in the Top Panel where MC assumed the [Album Artist (Auto)] is (Multiple Artists) they will be at the bottom of the Album Artist List as "Unassigned" not (Multiple Artists)

Just out of curiosity I thought I look and see what that "Use (Multiple Artists) for [Artist] on muti-artist albums" actually did. So I emptied the [Album Artist] tag/field from my "The Best of Motorhead Album", it contains tracks by 4 different artists/groups, checked to make sure MC was now "assuming" that the [Album Artist (Auto)] was (Multiple Artists), selected that "option"  and then told MC to copy the album to another disc

Surprise, Surprise when I Imported those tracks back into MC27 on every track the Artist in the copy was the same as in the original and not (Multiple Artists). So it looks like that "option" does S.F.A. in MC27 and presumably some earlier generations.

[pilotbum]

Well if you do it in that order, cleaning first then copy, you will have to be more selective. You won't be able to copy to ALL albums, you realize, you'll just want to to do that to some (the empty ones).

How do you figure? The way I was going to go about it was get all the Album Artist fields on albums with multiple artists completed correctly and then do the F2 trick you mentioned on the rest of them. I figured if I do it that way, then I know that every empty field is fine to auto fill.

I was asking how you guys do it because as software/database veterans I figure it's better to get good advice now and do it right the first time rather than go through all this again later. When I started I was doing a multi-step process by filling in [Album Artist] with "Various," getting everything in the same folder then deleting the Various to get them in (multiple-artists) folders and leaving them empty. I knew when I started doing that I may be making a mistake but it is also an easy mistake to fix. I think I'll continue down that path while I decide how I want to do it and fix it when I'm done. It'll be easy to do. But then again... I'm always open to suggestions...

*Along the same line of questions, how do you guys tag tracks that aren't on an album, like a live recording that was never released/sold or stuff that just is not part of a complete album?

**And another question... (sorry, I keep trying to figure out "best practices"...)... Multi-Disc Albums... I used to rip each disc into separate folders naming them Artist/Album (Disc x)/Track and now I've changed that practice to just putting them all in the same folder ensuring the Disc# in the tag field is appropriately filled. I've found that the "look up" feature whether it be cover art or album details from the online databases works better that way. What are your thoughts on that one?

[wer]

How do you figure? The way I was going to go about it was get all the Album Artist fields on albums with multiple artists completed correctly and then do the F2 trick you mentioned on the rest of them. I figured if I do it that way, then I know that every empty field is fine to auto fill.

That's what I mean; only the empty fields would be safe to fill. I originally thought all your Album Artist fields were empty, so I'd told you Ctrl-A to select all; you wouldn't be able to select ALL if you did your cleaning first. (If you clean some values of field A, and then paste new values into ALL field A tags, you have overwritten all the ones you cleaned.)  So I was restating you couldn't select ALL files, just the uncleaned files.

*Along the same line of questions, how do you guys tag tracks that aren't on an album, like a live recording that was never released/sold or stuff that just is not part of a complete album?

I don't really have stuff like that.  I'd probably create a fake album for it just to organize it.

**And another question... (sorry, I keep trying to figure out "best practices"...)... Multi-Disc Albums... I used to rip each disc into separate folders naming them Artist/Album (Disc x)/Track and now I've changed that practice to just putting them all in the same folder ensuring the Disc# in the tag field is appropriately filled. I've found that the "look up" feature whether it be cover art or album details from the online databases works better that way. What are your thoughts on that one?

Some people will say I'm talking heresy. I don't care; you have to suit yourself.

I don't believe in "Multi-Disc Albums". I think they are a relic of fixed-length physical packaging. Just look at some classical recordings that resort to tortured track orders in order to fit things onto fewer CDs.

So when I rip a multi-disc album, I do one of two things.

A) I delete the disc# tag and increment the track numbers as appropriate, so that everything is shown as one long album. For example, The White Album shows as a single album/disc with the highest track # being 30.

B) If it's a classical box set, for example von Karajan's 1963 cycle of Beethoven symphonies, I may split it into multiple Albums; each symphony becomes its own album. I change the track numbers accordingly; I don't let an album start with track # 26.

Continuing with method B, I feel free to "correct" track numbers if efforts to conserve discs made the publisher do something silly. For example, on the Ashkenazy/Previn Rachmaninov Piano Concertos box set, they mostly organize, they organize CDs by the type of work. However, they took a couple of things and put them on the wrong CDs, totally out of place, because that's where they could cram them in without adding another disc. I change the track numbers of those works to put them back where they would have been if CDs had a bit more capacity.

So I'm not sure that there is a "Best Practice" for dealing with multi-disc box sets.  There are many different ways of handling it.

This same concept always also comes up when anyone asks about how to tag classical music, which is often. There is no "best" way; there are as many ways of doing it as there are music collectors.

Regarding Rod's comment about every album has its own folder... I agree with this, and that is how I do it as well. I think giving very album its own folder would be a "best practice". This lets you keep things like artwork nicely organized, and lets you have a folder.jpg for each album cover.  However, despite the fact that Rod and I agree that every album should have its own folder, that does not necessarily mean we agree on exactly what should constitute that Album. (As you see, I engage in some manipulation there.)

[EnglishTiger]

**And another question... (sorry, I keep trying to figure out "best practices"...)... Multi-Disc Albums... I used to rip each disc into separate folders naming them Artist/Album (Disc x)/Track and now I've changed that practice to just putting them all in the same folder ensuring the Disc# in the tag field is appropriately filled. I've found that the "look up" feature whether it be cover art or album details from the online databases works better that way. What are your thoughts on that one?

I have a lot of Multi-Disc albums and decided that the methods most Media-Players/Web-Sites use to label/name them was badly thought out and very inefficient. It didn't take me too long too work out that if I added just 1 Tag/Field to each track I could rip all the tracks from a 5CD boxset into the same Folder/Album - that Tag/Field I decided to call "Disc #", two or three years later MC finally got around to Implementing the Disc # Tag/Field.

What's not to like about it - for a 5CD boxset you get 1 Album/Folder, you only need 1 Image and MC has less work to do. Plus of course just like MC and the Operating System your brain doesn't have to remember and deal with the excessive information a system that doesn't use the Disc # Field/Tag requires.

At present there are 486 Albums in my MC Library but my "physical CD collection" contains 806 discs.

[JimH]

... It didn't take me too long too work out that if I added just 1 Tag/Field to each track I could rip all the tracks from a 5CD boxset into the same Folder/Album - that Tag/Field I decided to call "Disc #", two or three years later MC finally got around to Implementing the Disc # Tag/Field.

"Disc #" has been a standard tag in JRiver for at least a decade.

[RoderickGI]

"Disc #" has been a standard tag in JRiver for at least a decade.

Indeed. Sixteen years actually.

11.0.109 (10/25/04)
4. NEW: Added 'Disc #' field for more elegant handling of multi-disc sets.
8. Changed: Default sorting includes 'Disc #' before 'Track #' so that multi-disc sets sort properly.

I guess EnglishTiger has been using JRiver for a lot longer than the forum.     Or just changed forum identity as some stage. 

[RoderickGI]

*Along the same line of questions, how do you guys tag tracks that aren't on an album, like a live recording that was never released/sold or stuff that just is not part of a complete album?

Same as Will. I don't have lots of that stuff, but just make up an Album for it. For example, a live recording would have the Album set to the performance name, and then the tracks listed in order of play.

**And another question... (sorry, I keep trying to figure out "best practices"...)... Multi-Disc Albums... I used to rip each disc into separate folders naming them Artist/Album (Disc x)/Track and now I've changed that practice to just putting them all in the same folder ensuring the Disc# in the tag field is appropriately filled. I've found that the "look up" feature whether it be cover art or album details from the online databases works better that way. What are your thoughts on that one?

I used to do something like you did, using a directory structure of \[Album Artist (auto)]\[Album]\Disc [Disc #]\, but I also found that cause me some issues with lookups and such. I still have a Preset for the RM&CF function with the expression. "[Album Artist (auto)]\[Album]\If(!isempty([Disc #], 1), Disc [Disc #],)\", but I am moving away from that to using just "\[Album Artist (auto)]\[Album]\".

I've experimented with file naming in various forms to make the sorting correct when I am just looking at the file in Windows Explorer. I've pretty much settled on using "[Disc #]-,)[Track #] - [Name]" for the file name. I haven't changed my whole Library yet, because I'm still thinking about including [Album Artist (auto)] in the file name, in the form "[Disc #]-,)[Track #] - [Album Artist (auto)] - [Name]", just so I can look at any files and know what they are. This also helps when synchronising files to an external player, such as a car audio system, many of which sort only by filename.

I fill the [Disc #] field if there are 2 or more discs. MC sorts correctly using [Disc #][Track #] automatically wherever a [Disc #] or [Track #] sort is used. That is hardcoded into the program.


Oh, I should mention that I pretty much try to follow the convention used in MusicBrainz Picard. It uses a sensible set of rules, generally.

[EnglishTiger]

Rod I use [Disc #] - [Track #] - [Name] when naming Files/Tracks, which means the tracks on a Multi-CD Album are presented in a more logical order in win file explorer. But I use [Album Artist]/[Album] for the folder names/structure.

And you guessed right I have been using MC for a lot longer than I've been contributing to the forums.

[RoderickGI]

One reason for always making sure the [Album Artiust] Tag/Field is made use of:- In "Artists View" which has the wrong name on it because it presents the "data" by [Album Artist (Auto) and not by [Artist] any Album(s) where MC assumed the Album Artist is (Multiple Artists) will appear first with (Mutliple Artists) being shown as the Album Artist.

But in a "Panes View" that has the [Album Artist] list in the Top Panel where MC assumed the [Album Artist (Auto)] is (Multiple Artists) they will be at the bottom of the Album Artist List as "Unassigned" not (Multiple Artists)

Just out of curiosity I thought I look and see what that "Use (Multiple Artists) for [Artist] on muti-artist albums" actually did. So I emptied the [Album Artist] tag/field from my "The Best of Motorhead Album", it contains tracks by 4 different artists/groups, checked to make sure MC was now "assuming" that the [Album Artist (Auto)] was (Multiple Artists), selected that "option"  and then told MC to copy the album to another disc

Surprise, Surprise when I Imported those tracks back into MC27 on every track the Artist in the copy was the same as in the original and not (Multiple Artists). So it looks like that "option" does S.F.A. in MC27 and presumably some earlier generations.

EnglishTiger, you've referred to [Artist], [Album Artist], and [Album Artist (auto)] more or less interchangeably in this post. They aren't interchangeable.

You can change any View to use the filed that best matches how you use MC. For me, that means using [Album Artist (auto)]. For Will, that would be [Album Artist]. At least in certain Views, depending on what you are looking for. In your Panes View, where you have no value in the [Album Artist] field, then any View that displays based on that field will put those files into the unassigned bucket, because no value is assigned to that field. If the Panes View looked at [Album Artist (auto)] then those Albums and their files would appear at the top of the View, as per the "Artists View".

The "Use '(Multiple Artists)' for [Artist] on muti-artist albums" does exactly what it says it does.
If you have a directory rule of "\[Artist]\[Album]\" and are moving files that have [Album Artist (auto)] set to "(Multiple Artists)", then MC will substitute the value "(Multiple Artists)" instead of using the contents of the [Artist] field in the rule. So in effect, the rule "\[Artist]\[Album]\" becomes "\[Album Artist (auto)]\[Album]\". It is very easy to see that in the RM&CF function, when working with a "(Multiple Artists)" Album.

Naturally, files copied and imported will have same [Artist] field as the original files, as that data is stored in the tags. But if you looked at the [Album Artist (auto)] field for the copied files, it would say (Multiple Artists). MC doesn't fill the [Artist] field with the value "(Multiple Artists)" at any time.

Rod I use [Disc #] - [Track #] - [Name] when naming Files/Tracks, which means the tracks on a Multi-CD Album are presented in a more logical order in win file explorer. But I use [Album Artist]/[Album] for the folder names/structure.

Then you should always fill the [Album Artist] field like Will does. Although if you did, then the rule "[Album Artist (auto)]/[Album]" would give the same result. Either way you shouldn't be seeing paths like I do, such as "\Music\(Multiple Artists)\Forrest Gump\1-01 - Hound Dog.flac".

And you guessed right I have been using MC for a lot longer than I've been contributing to the forums.

 

[wer]

So pilot, " 'tis clear as is the summer sun! " 

Rod loves disc #'s, I hate them, etc etc.  I don't know if all these conflicting opinions will do you any good, other than to give you a nudge to find your own way.

The beauty of MC, and this is why I picked it many years ago, is that it is the most flexible program available in terms of how your music is organized and presented; whatever convoluted organizational scheme you can think up, you can implement in MC.  You'll just have to dive in and have at it.

[pilotbum]

Actually this has been a lot of help in terms of me figuring out how to find my own way, as you put it. I've got a good direction to go now.

I too want the conventions to work with MusicBrainz so I'm sticking with disc numbers. The problem is my collection has ammassed to over 100,000 tracks, thousands of artists and albums and cleaning it is taking time. But I'm making good progress. I've combined my collection with others over the years which has resulted in many duplicates that I'm also cleaning out. There is a lot of music types I'll never listen to. But like a lot of other data I don't like to delete stuff. Nonetheless there is a lot of organizing to do.

I agree that this MC is the best and most comprehensive software out there, especially for managing your media collection. Funny thing is I bought my first MC license back in 2002 when it was Media Jukebox (can't remember the version number) so I know it's capabilities, just never really employed them.

[EnglishTiger]

EnglishTiger, you've referred to [Artist], [Album Artist], and [Album Artist (auto)] more or less interchangeably in this post. They aren't interchangeable.

Rod - you wrongly  assumed that I thought those 3 fields/tags were interchangeable. I Have always known that [Album Artist (auto)] is unique to MC and is a Database Field not a Tag and that it can vary depending on where it is presented independently of the content of the [Album Artist] Tag. For example in the attached "Panes View" Image there is visible evidence that I had entered "Bryan Adams" as the [Album Artist] for that Album, but if you look at the line that I have highlighted it quite clearly says "by Various Artists". But if I select an album where all the tracks have only Bryan Adams in the [Artist] tag that "header" line will consistently say "by Bryan Adams". Which to me is proof that it is getting that info/data from the [Album Artist (Auto)] Field and not the[Album Artist] Tag, i.e in some situations/circumstances [Album Artist (Auto)] can contain Information/Data that is different the that in the [Album Artist] Tag.

So just like wer at the cd ripping stage I always enter the [Album Artist] but I also always enter a [Disc #], but I no longer use MC to rip discs; where I had to expose those fields to make them usable and then select all of the tracks on that CD to be able to enter those tags and make any necessary changes to the Album Name to make it comply to my requirements/rules. I use dbpoweramp where I just type those values in the relevant box at the top of the page if they are not present or contain the wrong "value", make any necessary changes to the Album Name and it applies them to all of the tracks for me.

One of the reasons why I started using MC was because, unlike the competition that was around at the time, it let me play, organise and manipulate my Music Collection the closest to how I wanted it done. But it didn't take me long to work out or find, by reading postings in the forums, that I could get even closer to what I wanted if I switched from letting MC do things it's way, and when it wanted, to only doing what it was told to do when it was told to do it.

Oh and yes I do know that you can make a View do just about anything and have done it; in my Tree under Audio there is a view called "Album Artists", I simply renamed the existing "Artists" view, and one I called "Artists" which is a modification of the "Artists View" from the Library Views, I altered it to use [Artist] and not [Album Artist (Auto)] as the 1st parameter.

When expanded Album Artists has 184 entries, including Various Artists; whilst Artists has 2526 entries

[pilotbum]

Stupid question: What skin is that?

What do you use to rip discs now and why did you switch?

[Awesome Donkey]

Stupid question: What skin is that?

Modern Cards: Dark Edition is the skin.

[wer]

Tiger said he uses dbPowerAmp to rip.

I do too.  I find it to be a better ripper than MC. Better metadata retrieval, better at dealing with problematic discs.  Lots of people use MC to rip though.

[pilotbum]

Tiger said he uses dbPowerAmp to rip.

Whoops... missed that...

[EnglishTiger]

Modern Cards: Dark Edition is the skin.

Modern Cards: Dark Edition was the starting point - I made some modifications to it 

[pilotbum]

Modern Cards: Dark Edition was the starting point - I made some modifications to it 

AH-HA! That's why I asked! I could tell it wasn't the same as my Dark Cards: Dark Edition!

[dtc]

Tiger said he uses dbPowerAmp to rip.

I do too.  I find it to be a better ripper than MC. Better metadata retrieval, better at dealing with problematic discs.  Lots of people use MC to rip though.

I use MC to do most rips of standard disks. It is very easy and works for most disks.  For disks that MC does not handle well, I use dBpoweramp.  As wer said, it has more options for metadata and is better with really damaged disks, but since I do not use Auto Import, it is a little more effort to use with MC, since it becomes a two step process. So it becomes a secondary option when necessary.

[RoderickGI]

Rod - you wrongly assumed that I thought those 3 fields/tags were interchangeable.

Well, honestly I thought you did understand those fields, which is why I only said you referred to the field more or less interchangeably in your post, and not that you had them mixed up. I read your post as basically using logic similar to "A=Red, B=A, so why is C Black?".

Now, in the example you used about the "Various Artists" in the Album heading of the Panes View you have hit on a quirk of MC. That "Various Artists" in the heading for an Album does not refer to the [Album Artist (auto)] field, or indeed any field. It is more of an English statement about the Album, and is hard coded into MC. Whenever there is more than one Artist listed in any Track in an Album, MC will display "[Album] by Various Artists".

That is another reason why I never set the [Album Artist] to "Various" or "Various Artists". That just confuses what is going on in MC, and makes it look like MC is using the [Album Artist] field in that Album heading.

[pilotbum]

Now, in the example you used about the "Various Artists" in the Album heading of the Panes View you have hit on a quirk of MC. That "Various Artists" in the heading for an Album does not refer to the [Album Artist (auto)] field, or indeed any field. It is more of an English statement about the Album, and is hard coded into MC. Whenever there is more than one Artist listed in any Track in an Album, MC will display "[Album] by Various Artists".

That is another reason why I never set the [Album Artist] to "Various" or "Various Artists". That just confuses what is going on in MC, and makes it look like MC is using the [Album Artist] field in that Album heading.

How does MC know if there is more than one artist listed in a track? I thought it was just a text field or is there a separator to use in the field that tells MC it has multiple artists?

On a somewhat unrelated question, what format do most of  you use to rip to and what level of encoding? Is there an advantage to ripping to completely uncompressed if disc space isn't an issue?

[wer]

Just use flac at default compression.

[RoderickGI]

How does MC know if there is more than one artist listed in a track? I thought it was just a text field or is there a separator to use in the field that tells MC it has multiple artists?

Indeed. [Artist] is a List Type field. All List Type fields can have multiple values, separate by a semi-colon, no space. See https://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/Library_Fields#Field_Types

No advantage to uncompressed FLAC. I use default compression.

[pilotbum]

Indeed. [Artist] is a List Type field. All List Type fields can have multiple values, separate by a semi-colon, no space. See https://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/Library_Fields#Field_Types

Great... I don't imagine there's a way to replace all my multi-artist albums that have "and" or "&" or "," with a ";" automatically is there?

[RoderickGI]

Well, not completely automatically, but very easily. After all, you wouldn't want to replace the "&" in "Gladys Knight & The Pips" or "Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds".

Use the Replace() function to do it on mass, once you have selected the files you want to be updated, carefully.

For example, if you want to fix an [Artist] field that has "Mary & Barry" in it, just select the file that contains that, then edit the [Artist] field and enter into the field:
=replace([Artist],&,;)

The field will be updated to "Mary;Barry". It will be displayed with a space separating them as "Mary; Barry", but that is just the display, assuming that you are using a recent version of MC27.

Search to find the files you want to replace characters in, then select only files you really want to update. For example, select a View that shows all files, such as "Audio > Files" then enter "[Artist]=&" (without quotes) into the search box at top right. Review the result. Select the files you want to update, and then edit the [Artist] field as above.

To replace commas in the [Artist] field you will need to "escape" the comma, so that MC doesn't treat the comma as part of the expression. The expression would be:
=replace([Artist],/,,;)

Backup your Library before you start.
Test with just one or two files until you understand the process.

[pilotbum]

In my quest to clean my library I have found a bunch of music files that have the file extension “*.mp3[1]”. I don’t know how they got like that. Almost 2,000 of them. Is there an app or utility that I can use to do a batch rename so that the filename remains the same but can fix the extension to *.mp3?

[wer]

Dozens. Google search for file rename utility.

Or you can do it in MC.  You can do a find and replace on the filename field, after you have selected them all.

Just replace .mp3[1] with .mp3

[pilotbum]

Well, not completely automatically, but very easily. After all, you wouldn't want to replace the "&" in "Gladys Knight & The Pips" or "Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds".

Use the Replace() function to do it on mass, once you have selected the files you want to be updated, carefully.

For example, if you want to fix an [Artist] field that has "Mary & Barry" in it, just select the file that contains that, then edit the [Artist] field and enter into the field:
=replace([Artist],&,;)

The field will be updated to "Mary;Barry". It will be displayed with a space separating them as "Mary; Barry", but that is just the display, assuming that you are using a recent version of MC27.

Search to find the files you want to replace characters in, then select only files you really want to update. For example, select a View that shows all files, such as "Audio > Files" then enter "[Artist]=&" (without quotes) into the search box at top right. Review the result. Select the files you want to update, and then edit the [Artist] field as above.

To replace commas in the [Artist] field you will need to "escape" the comma, so that MC doesn't treat the comma as part of the expression. The expression would be:
=replace([Artist],/,,;)

Backup your Library before you start.
Test with just one or two files until you understand the process.

Ok, I'm trying to fix my Genre's now. There are many that were imported with a "/" as the separator between multiple Genres. I'm struggling with the replace syntax--I can't get it to work. I've been putting "=replace([Genre],/,;)" No luck. Then I tried "=replace([Genre],/,,;)" Still no luck. What am I doing wrong?

[EnglishTiger]

Ok, I'm trying to fix my Genre's now. There are many that were imported with a "/" as the separator between multiple Genres. I'm struggling with the replace syntax--I can't get it to work. I've been putting "=replace([Genre],/,;)" No luck. Then I tried "=replace([Genre],/,,;)" Still no luck. What am I doing wrong?

Pilot under the Audio heading in the tree there should be a library view called "Genres" if you select that one and expand it you will see a list of all the genres being used. Scroll down to a Genre you want to modify/edit, right click on it and select the "Rename" option which will allow you to make any required changes you want/need including replacing "Genre1/Genre2" with "Genre1;Genre2" and MC will automatically apply that change to all the tracks using the unedited genre

[wer]

Or just use Find and Replace against that field, having selected all the files you want to change.

[pilotbum]

Pilot under the Audio heading in the tree there should be a library view called "Genres" if you select that one and expand it you will see a list of all the genres being used. Scroll down to a Genre you want to modify/edit, right click on it and select the "Rename" option which will allow you to make any required changes you want/need including replacing "Genre1/Genre2" with "Genre1;Genre2" and MC will automatically apply that change to all the tracks using the unedited genre

I figured that out but there are hundreds of these "/" separators in the genres... was hoping for a "quick & easy" syntax to do it...

[RoderickGI]

"=replace([Genre],//,;)"

[pilotbum]

"=replace([Genre],//,;)"

That's what I was looking for! Just knocked 300+ genres out of my list! Thanks Rod!

While I'm on the subject of fixing Genre's... There's no auto fill from an online database like Last.fm, disccogs.com or musicbrains.org is there?

[wer]

Why didn't you just use the find and replace tool and avoid all that trouble?

[glynor]

Do those values in your [Genre] field correspond to folders in your file path (or something that was in the file-path at one time? It almost sounds to me like, at some point, you attempted to use the Fill Properties from Filename tool and mucked it up quite badly, which resulted in [Genre] getting filled with some portion of the file path.

[pilotbum]

Do those values in your [Genre] field correspond to folders in your file path? It almost sounds to me like, at some point, you attempted to use the Fill Properties from Filename tool and mucked it up quite badly, which resulted in [Genre] getting filled with some portion of the file path.

Nope.

[glynor]

Interesting. I'm just wondering how you got all that trash in your [Genre] values in the first place.

Anyway, FWIW...

"=replace([Genre],//,;)"

The reason this worked and your attempt didn't is that the / character is "special" in the Expression Language. It is an escape character. You can prefix a forward-slash onto any character that otherwise has special meaning (like commas, quotation marks, square brackets, etc) so that they are treated as text and not for their special purpose.

Therefore, since forward-slash is, itself, a "special character" you must also prefix it with another forward-slash in order to "disable" that behavior, so that it actually outputs a slash (and doesn't do the escape thing on whatever comes next). Hence the //.