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[hakuin]

Can anyone give me the scoop on the intended/possible uses of the fields/display columns "album artist" and "album artist (auto)"?  Do they have something to do with compilation albums that have various artists?  

I am sure this is an often asked question, but I searched the boards and didn't find an answer.

Thanks!

[Matt]

Album Artist (auto) can be used pretty much like artist.  The only difference is  it'll show "(Multiple Artists)" for CDs that have more than one artist.

MC automatically determines this by looking at the tags and disk location of your files.

You can override the automatic logic if you like by editing "Album Artist". (otherwise just leave it blank)

Hope that helps.

[ThatAdamGuy]

I'm a bit confused.  I thought this was a calculated value, and at least on my system, it appears uneditable.

And if it is / were editable, how would this field then be different than album artist?

Thanks for helping me get my head around this

- Adam, in the tedious but occasionally interesting process of ripping, tagging, and organizing 10-15K tracks

[loraan]

If, for all tracks in an album, Album Artist = Blank AND Album is the same for all of them AND they're all in the same directory, then Album Artist (auto) = Artist.

If, for all tracks in an album, Album Artist = Blank AND Album is not the same for all of them AND/OR they are not all in the same directory, then Album Artist (auto) = "Multiple Artists"

If, for all tracks in an album, Album Artist = "XXXX", then Album Artist (auto) = "XXXX"

Basically, Album Artist (auto) is an easy way of letting MC decide which albums are Multiple Artist albums and which ones aren't. You set the Artist field for each track and MC sets the Album Artist (auto) value for the album. You can override Album Artist (auto) by setting Album Artist on the tracks (for example, you might want a techno mix to have Album Artist (auto)= the DJ who mixed it, not Multiple Artists so you set Album Artist to the DJ's name on the tracks). The idea is that you can always use Album Artist (auto) without worrying whether you've remembered to set Album Artist for each individual track.

[ThatAdamGuy]

Ah, thank you for that thorough explanation!

So if I understand you correctly, one cannot directly edit the album/artist (auto) field, but this field will update if the user chooses to manually input something under "album/artist" right?

[loraan]

So if I understand you correctly, one cannot directly edit the album/artist (auto) field, but this field will update if the user chooses to manually input something under "album/artist" right?

Bingo.

By the way, I'm not sure what would happen to Album Artist (auto) if two songs with the same Album, in the same directory, had different Album Artists. Would it revert to "Multiple"?  I guess it would be easy to find out if I really wanted to know.

[mindracing]

Very interesting.

So, what is the definition of an album? Is it the name or the directory or either?

Is it possible to 'create' and album from songs in different directories. (not a playlist)?

When complilations are released they often make an interesting album of tracks I already have. Without making a playlist there seems to be no way of 'creating' the album without duplicating the files.

If the 'Album' field would allow names seperated by ; say, then it would be possible to create albums from tracks and not need to resort to playlists.

And, if a track is on several albums it would only need to be stored once.

[loraan]

Very interesting.

So, what is the definition of an album? Is it the name or the directory or either?
Is it possible to 'create' and album from songs in different directories. (not a playlist)?

If the songs all have the same value in the Album tag, then they're all an album. I believe that the only time the directories come into play is for the purpose of Album Artist (auto) and for Album Type -- that is, Complete and Incomplete. But I'm not 100% sure on that, so someone more knowledgeable should confirm it.

When complilations are released they often make an interesting album of tracks I already have. Without making a playlist there seems to be no way of 'creating' the album without duplicating the files.

I use playlists for that.

If the 'Album' field would allow names seperated by ; say, then it would be possible to create albums from tracks and not need to resort to playlists. And, if a track is on several albums it would only need to be stored once.

The default Album field doesn't allow this because it would break compatibility with other tagging programs. But, as discussed in other topics, you could create a custom "Albums" field, of the type "delimited list", and then use that instead of or in addition to Album.

[slikvik]

I'd really like an option in V10 to automatically fill in the AlbumArtist field automatically when I rip a CD so I don't need to rely on Auto.