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[nonightsweats]

Hi all. This is not a request for info to resolve an issue - more a request for opinions.

I have never stored info in the Album Artist field - I simply use the Artist field. So, for 99.9% of my stored files I have a blank album artist field.

If an album by a specific artist has guests that perform on specific tracks then I do not have both artist and guest in the artist field - I store the guest in the title eg (With Al Rennie) or in the comment field.

Is this something that other people do (or similar) or do they list specific quests in the Artist field?

For compilations, multi artist albums, etc I do not use Various Artists in the album artist field - simply relying upon JRiver to manage this - and seeing them all under (Multiple Artists) in the Library views.

Likewise - is this what you would do or would you use VA, Various, Various Artists, etc in the Album Artist field.

BTW - In some cases I have multi CD compilations where one or more disks might be solely for a specific artist so these specific disks would be split out of (Multiple Artists) and into the alphabetical list. In these cases I have used Album Artist just to combine them all together in the Artist View.

The reason I ask is that I've just finished fixing up tags and fields and folders and so on for all my collection and this stuck out as a possible anomaly - when I obtain a new release it almost always has the specific artist in the Album Artist field (or Various Artists) and I manually remove them.

So just asking for opinions on the worth of using these fields.

[EnglishTiger]

I always make sure the "Album Artist" is filled out:-

For Classical Albums/Boxset I put the "Composer's Name" in the Album Artist filed to make sure all the Albums of music by the same composer are kept together.
For all true Non-Classical Compilations, the ones with Tracks by different artists I put "Various Artists" into the Album Artist field.
For Albums that are not True Compilations, i.e. Studio/Live Albums and "Greatest Hits" type anthems then I always put the Lead/Main Artists name in the Album Artist Field.

Where a Track is by more than one Artist I make sure the Artist Field contains a semi-colon delimited list of all the Artists performing/participating on that track. That allows me to search thru my library for every track that the Chosen Artist has performed on as a solo artist, part of a duet or any other combination of artists.

So in my Library for the "Kneck and Kneck" Album by "Chet Atkins and Mark Knopfler" the Album Artist is "Chet Atkins & Mark Knopfler" but the artists are "Chet Atkins; Mark Knopfler"

I also make sure that Track Names contain nothing other than the Actual Track Name - leaving, or adding, anything else, like "featuring Another Artist" can cause problems with Meta-Data Look-ups. Most of the time that stuff is only added to the track-list for a CD by the record companies to save money/space

[w_axlrose1]

I always fill out the Album Artist field as this ensures that tracks from a particular album are always kept together.

If an album is a compilation album (titled for example: Greatest 70s Rock) then the Artist field will be filled out with the artist of each individual track. Album Artist will be filled out with (Multiple Artists).

If an album is credited to a single artist but one or more tracks contain a guest credit (For example: Queen Greatest Hits) then the Album Artist is filled out as Queen. The Artist field will contain for example Queen;David Bowie in the case of the track Under Pressure.

[nonightsweats]

thanks for these replies

[Axilian]

I use album artist all the time - in fact my lists are set up to use that as the sort field . It's useful as for example if I wanted to group all classical music  by Chopin  no matter what orchestra I can just put Chopin under the Album Artist and they will all show up listed under Chopin

I suppose one could alternatively make Chopin  as a tag in say the genre field but that is just messy to me (though I do use that method for grouping together musing in custom classifications

[syndromeofadown]

I leave album artist blank for all albums except for compilations where I add one of the following to the album artist field:
Soundtrack
Various
vs
split

    the tag-fieldname used for declaring and describing albums/split-EPs or split-singles which contain various artists is "ALBUM ARTIST" (separated with space, not underscore)

    tag should only exist if an album contains various artists. It should NOT be created when an album does not contain various artists.

    the tag can contain the overall artist of an album (like e.g. "the foo-bar collective",) multiple artists (e.g. with split-EPs) or if an album does not have a clear overall artist (for example with compilations) just "Various Artists". Simply said: you're free to enter whatever you like as long as it describes the overall album-wide artist(s).

    every track in a V.A.-album has to contain this tag with the same value

    the track-specific artist should be entered into the ARTIST-tag

    the TITLE-tag should only contain the track-title
 

This is a quote from here:
https://wiki.hydrogenaud.io/index.php?title=Foobar2000:Encouraged_Tag_Standards#ALBUM_ARTIST

This system works well for me JRiver using album artist (auto).
It works with the android apps I use, but many apps will just ignore the album artist.