Ok, I guess nobody has a clue....
It seems "Album Artist" in Media Center 11 is
not mapped to MP3 ID3v2 TPE2. It gets stored in a proprietary comment tag inside the file. This is an issue for me since it screws up sorting on all my MP3 content. I don't want to manually add the additional proprietary Album Artist tags - it would take quite a long time, not to mention adding redundant metadata. The data is in the MP3 file, but I just can't get at it with MC 11.
MC's "Album Artist" does map to WMA's WM/AlbumArtist, though. So editing it in MC sets the correct "Album Artist" metadata in my WMA files. If I stick with WMA, MC 11 works closer to what I need.
Initially I'd need MC 11 to at least import MP3's ID3v2 TPE2 tags (which some users refer to as the "Band" metadata) as MC's Album Artist... writing it would be cool, too. (If necessary, this behavior could be an "optional" feature -- "Use ID3v2 TPE2 tag as Album Artist -- On/Off".) Could this be added in a future version? It looks like MC 11 won't fly for me until this happens. Can I submit an official feature request?
Microsoft's media documentation maps WM/AlbumArtist to MP3 ID3v2 TPE2, so this is the behavior products like Media Center Edition, Windows Media Player and Windows Media Connect follow...
This doesn't solve my multiple name issue, but it gets me closer... THANKS.