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[Quixote]

I wanted to get some opinions about what Album Artist should portray.  I'm at a critical point in my Album tagging and I wanted to get some opinions from those who have already met up with this problem.  The dilemma comes when I hit "Various Artists" albums.  However, there are many of types of Various Albums.  What would you use for the [Album Artist] field in the following situations:

[1] Now, Vol. 15 (Has current hits from various artists)

[2] Forrest Gump [Original Soundtrack] (Has various artists across album)

[3] Planet of the Apes [Score] (Danny Elfman does the Score)

[4] Les Miserables [Original London Cast] (I have other Cast versions too i.e. Broadway)

[5] Into the Woods [2002 Revival Cast] (Cast is year specific)

[6] Go Simpsonic with the Simpsons [TV Soundtrack] (Release as an album from the TV series)

[7] American Idol Season 4: The Showstoppers [TV Soundtrack]

[8] Smallville Season 1: Episode 01 [TV Soundtrack] (my compilation of songs from a tv episode)

[9] My Chillin' 80's Tunes [Compilation] (my own compilation of songs)


Thanks for any feedback.

[Robert Taylor]

This was discussed some time ago, and everyone has their own way they like things.

Personally, I manually set the "Album Artist" field to "Various Artists" on any compilation albums, regardless of whether they are Soundtracks etc.

The individual Artist fields are always set to the correct Artist.

The Planet Of The Apes Score I would just tag as being by "Elfman, Danny" (Don't whatever you do get into a discussion about Firstname/Lastname - you'll be there for hours  )

Any view schemes I create refer to the "Album Artist (auto)" field, so that all my compilations appears under the tree etc. as "Various Artists". If I want a list of TRACKS by artist, then I just use the "Artist" field in the view scheme etc.

It's been working great for me for the last 3-4 years...

[Deivit]

One of the nice features of using "Album Artist" is for the tribute albums.

For instance, the album "A Nod to Bob", which is a tribute to Bob Dylan. I've set the "Artist" fields to the correct Artist for each track, as Lunch said before, whereas I put "Bob Dylan" in the "Album Artist" field. This way, the album will show up under "Bob Dylan" in any view scheme using "Album Artist (Auto),

The same thing can be used with albums suchs as:

"Motown Plays Beatles" ---> Album Artist = The Beatles
"Tapestry revisited" ---> Album Artist = Carole King

you got the point.

I also use the "Album Artist" field to unify under one only name the different incarnations of an artist with his groups. For instance, jazz albums, you can have albums by "Dave Brubeck" "Dave Brubeck Trio" "Dave Brubeck Quartet" "Dave Brubeck Quintet" "Dave Brubeck Octet" "Dave Brubeck with Paul Desmond" "Brubeck Brothers" and so on. In this case, I set the "Album Artist" to "Dave Brubeck" whereas the "Artist" field for each album is set to the real group.

Hope it helps.

[tcman41]

Pretty interesting stuff but to be honest not really sure what it all means.

I tag every track as artist - name - track#.

I then run files/album thumbnails as my main view scheme with the following four columns at the top, genre, artist, album & year. I find that this is the easiest and fastest scheme to find anything that i am looking for.

For the thumbnail text i run [Album Artist (auto)] which will give back a artist name of (multiple artists) for any album that contains more than one artist.

I know this is not exactly what you guys are talking about but i figured i just throw this in here, lol

TC

[okvaal]

Interesting thread, because I've been changing and re-changing my system a couple of times. I liked the idea of using Album Artist and Artist as in the Dave Brubeck case (see above), but I would have considered DB as the Artist, and the trio etc, as the Album Artist, as they would be specific for the album, but I guess this may be done according to one's preferrences.
Then I also suppose you would tag i.e.  Bach as an album artist and Segovia as an artist? The latter makes sense, but Bach as an album artist sounds a bit funny, doesn't it?

bow,
ole k
(who could have spent hours discussing and trying out new ideas regarding views in MC)

[enervation]

[1] Now, Vol. 15 (Has current hits from various artists) "Now"

[2] Forrest Gump [Original Soundtrack] (Has various artists across album) "Forrest Gump"

[3] Planet of the Apes [Score] (Danny Elfman does the Score) "Planet of the Apes" (with 'Artist' as "Danny Elfman"

[4] Les Miserables [Original London Cast] (I have other Cast versions too i.e. Broadway) "Not sure on this one "

[5] Into the Woods [2002 Revival Cast] (Cast is year specific) "Into the Woods"

[6] Go Simpsonic with the Simpsons [TV Soundtrack] (Release as an album from the TV series) "The Simpsons"

[7] American Idol Season 4: The Showstoppers [TV Soundtrack] "American Idol"

[8] Smallville Season 1: Episode 01 [TV Soundtrack] (my compilation of songs from a tv episode) "Smallville"

[9] My Chillin' 80's Tunes [Compilation] (my own compilation of songs) "<myname>"

May be a little inconsistent but works nicely for me

Basically, if it's a soundtrack, I put the album artist as whatever it's a soundtrack for, e.g. shrek, simpsons. The album title is then something like "Shrek 2 soundtrack" and "Go Simpsonic with the Simpsons" respectively.

[JONCAT]

I like the Album Artist feature to unify various incarations of an Artist like the Brubeck example, however there are two reasons I don't:

1. Once you assign an Artist to the Album Artist field it makes MC claim that as an album, so your Statistics are wrong. Not a big deal if you don't use that feature and it is a nice feature. Basically you'll end up with all thise various artists cd's that Brubeck appears on labled as Brubeck albums in Statistics.

2. I just don't dig how the artists on the Multiple Albums cd's just don't show up in your Panes but are hidden in Multiple Artists. I simply use entire View Schems and disk locations for Various Artists so I can have all the artists available in the View Schemes.

To each his own of course....

Would be nice if there was a workaround for number 1, and there probably is considering how powerful MC is.

Dr. C

[mountainfair]

Well, we were talking about album artists in this post:

http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=32482.50

and this question came up around album artist tags:

Are you saving 'album artist' as tags, or just updating the MC fields?  Pros and cons here? 
Will other apps / players support this?  Obviously need to learn more here...

Alex said that the 'album artist' tag is proprietary, but I find many mentions of it in a google search, just that none of them are very definitive. 

This page seems to indicate that album artist is part of the ID3v2.4 specification, unless I am misunderstanding:

http://musicbrainz.org/docs/specs/metadata_tags.html

or this one:

http://tdt.sourceforge.net/archive.htm

Can someone from JRiver set this straight?

Does anyone know of other programs that support this tag?

[mountainfair]

Are many people basically using the album title as the 'album artist' in the cases of multiple artist albums?

what would you do with these examples:

1. Putumayo - Asian Groove [have 30 + other putumayo label discs all similarly themed]
2. Rough Guide to the Music of Turkey [have 20+ other rough guides to world music]
2. Six Degrees - Arabian Travels [have 10 + other six degrees label discs]
3. Buddha Bar - Chill out in Paris 2 (disc 2) [dont have disc one, have 10 + other buddha bar series discs]
4. The Beat Generation Vol. 1
5. Trance Planet Volume 4

In essence, what do you do when it is part of a series, but the album title is different than the series title?

What are people doing when it is not part of a series but part of a particular label release?

Some good discussion on this topic was also posted here:

http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=32357.msg222066#msg222066

[mountainfair]

So,

Apparently Album Artist is not proprietary, it is used by windows media player.

As far as I can tell it is not supported by Itunes, Ipods or mac.  If anyone has any more info on this tag with apple products, particularly ipod, please post.

It is also available in many stand alone tag editors like Tag&Rename.

[hit_ny]

1. "VA"
2. "VA"
2. "VA"
3. "Claude Challe"
4. "VA"
5. "VA"

Pretty much in the spirit of Lunch's post above. I think of album artist as the compiler of the album or DJ.

[mountainfair]

I am trying to understand the pros and cons - this was not at all the answer that I expected - I thought people would vote for the album name, label name or series name...

What does this approach of putting VA get you?  How is it better than putting either the album name, label name or the series name? 

I have only come up with this so far -

Agains VA:
Seems like if you put something other than VA, you get the ability to search for it. 
Other than VA, you can sort so that the VA albums become part of the total alphabetical tile list, instead of separated as VA.
Without VA you can search amongst all of your VA albums with another field

For VA:
Your VA albums are displayed separately in the tile list and can be browsed in their own order by album title
What do you mean by compiler?  How does it function as a compiler?

Actually, I think I need you to explain the upsides.

Is this more about principle and logic than functionality for you?

Just trying to undersand the pros and cons.

[Alex B]

So,

Apparently Album Artist is not proprietary, it is used by windows media player.

As far as I can tell it is not supported by Itunes, Ipods or mac. If anyone has any more info on this tag with apple products, particularly ipod, please post.

It is also available in many stand alone tag editors like Tag&Rename.

The way MC writes the Album Artist tag to the files is proprietary:

Media Jukebox: Album Artist

(Or something like that. The exact format varies according to the used tag format.)

Since with Media Center it is not necessary to use Album Artist with single artist albums or if the default (Multiple Artists) is fine, I don't think that matters much.

I have not seen other programs that use such an intellectual Album Artist system.

A program named Mp3tag can read and edit MC's custom tags and copy them to other tag fields.


P.S. My Album Artist for the buddha-bar albums is buddha-bar. I could use the DJ's name too (like Album Artist: Sam Popat, Album: buddha-bar VIII), but I have a separate custom field for the DJ and I like to keep the buddha-bar albums together when I use my "Album Artist (auto) - Album" view scheme.

[hit_ny]

What does this approach of putting VA get you?  How is it better than putting either the album name, label name or the series name? 

Album Name goes into the Album Tag, label, series are custom tags (that i have) and are filled too.

I started using the VA tag as i dont like (Multiple Artists) at the top. In the music industry they are known as VA's.

[Robert Taylor]

I like to view my collection as "albums" ie. what I would have if I was still using vinyl or CDs.

I don't want my folder for Elton John (read John, Elton) to include random tracks here and there of whatever compilations he might be on.

Also, when I use "Rename Files from Properties", I want the compilations / soundtracks etc. to all be located within one folder on my hard drive as Various Artists.

My hard drive folder structure looks like my old CD shelf used to look (stuffed to capacity and groaning under the strain)...

[hit_ny]

P.S. My Album Artist for the buddha-bar albums is buddha-bar. I could use the DJ's name too (like Album Artist: Sam Popat, Album: buddha-bar VIII), but I have a separate custom field for the DJ and I like to keep the buddha-bar albums together when I use my "Album Artist (auto) - Album" view scheme.

Interesting, you have AA doing dbl work here, series as well as AA. Did this come about because of 11.1 ?