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[Matt]

Hey everyone,

I'm sitting around playing with Media Jukebox 9 and wondering about our implementation of the whole "Album Artist" thing in MJ 8.  Although it solved some of the sloppiness of mix CD's, it doesn't feel very smooth.  

For one, "Album Artist" is a confusing name.  Secondly, it's ugly that the tree always uses "Album Artist" in the default view schemes, but then is named like "Artist/Album" instead of "Album Artist/Album".  Then, it's gross how album artist is the artist if the album artist isn't filled in.  Lastly, it's confusing knowing what will happen when you drag-n-drop in the tree -- what are you setting, the artist or the album artist?

So, I'm wondering if there's some way we could accomplish the same thing with less confusion.

Would it be any better to have "Artist" and "Track Artist" instead?

Would it be cleaner to have one field "Artist", but store like "Soundtrack [Pink Floyd]" and then make MJ smart and be able to break out the individual pieces depending on what you wanted.

Does anybody have any cool ideas?

Thanks for any advice.

-Matt
JRiver, Inc.

Listening to: 'Yours' from 'Straight On Till Morning' by 'Blues Traveler' on Media Jukebox 9.0.37

[joe|PLS|mama]

"Would it be any better to have "Artist" and "Track Artist" instead?"

This is a good way to do it, I think.  I would recommend taking a look at the way this feature is handled in Exact Audio Copy.  It solves the problem of having to always change your file naming settings whenever you switch between ripping single artist albums and various artist albums.  I'd be happy to try to explain further if needed.

Rob

[phelt]

It's a surprisingly complicated issue. On the semantic side, "Album Artist" is technically correct in some instances (DJ mixes, for example) but inappropriate in other cases. Frankly, I don't care too much about the semantics, as long as I can sort my music. Track Artist does seem to make sense.

I also like EAC's alternate naming method - perhaps this could be reversed, so that albums with multiple track artists can be flagged and sorted appropriately. I don't have a feel for other folks' issues with multiple artists - I only run into this with DJ mixes in my own collection. It would be good to get some more usage examples, and try to spot pitfalls.

[PhatPhreddy]

I posted recently on this topic but it sank like the titanic and I figured I was the only one that did not feel it was as elegant as it could be...

I can see the relative merit is Artist / TrackArtist separators as then people who have many DJ albums or various artist albums can spec thier system differently from those that utilize conventional single artist albums...

In truth my current structure was working for me with all but DJ kicks albums.. With these they have the album partially by the DJ and partially by the "DJ" and partly  by both "origonal track producer before DJ rexixed and DJ" so one albums has a DJ artists with a handful of tracks and then lots of single folders with single tracks... This is the drawback of TrackArtist as a sorting field..

i am guessing I could lock Album only for my mix rips and manually drop them in artist folders but mix cd's and the combination of mix CD with remixed done by the DJ really makes for a hard time... Pick up a DJ kicks like Smith and Mighty or Thievery Corporation (reccomended) to see what I am getting at... Half the tracks on each album are partially done by the DJ so unless you are prepared to go to simple album rips you are stuck...

Also whilst at it for v 9... Has anyone thought about a disk at once rip with CUE sheets ?? Or disk at once to one big file and APE / APL system... I use EAC not for its secure rip feature but for the fact that this EAC and MA system keeps my albums as one file and cue sheet pattern.. Much easier storage and filesystem use...

[Mirko]

For mixed CDs I put the "mixer" in the comment field. In Album Artist I store the label, which is also important (for me).
Also the "featuring"-thing is put into comment.

So I have something like "feat. Roula; mixed by DJ Jeff" in the commentfield and "Trax Records" in Album Artist. The Artist itself (e.g. "Mike Meiers") is store where it belongs.

This is not an elegant solution. And I don't think this is transparent for other people.

I would suggest using the album artist - field only if there _is_ actually one. For mixed CDs this is definitly the Mixer himself. But if I put the mixer in album artist, where should I put the label into? I don't like using "customX"-fields, because I don't think they are stored in the MP3s-files (although this could be done using v2-tags).
Maybe an "album-commentfield" would be useful also.

To bring it to an end: Using the album-artist-view-sheme there should only be the ones "treeed" that actually _have_ an album artist. No mixing between artist (which is for one track only) and album artist. Then name the scheme "album artist" and it's done ;-)

[dedidio]

This would be my solution:

have only one 'artist' field - if one album has tracks where there is more than one artist then MJ sees this and puts the album as "Various Artists" - but keep this an internal thing and not stored in tags.

add an 'artist extra' field for things like 'featuring'

[eso]

As a simple solution, I would prefer "Artist" and "Track Artist". Please don't make MJ automatically split tags, at least not with an option to switch off such "smartness". I have often experienced that the "smarter" a software has been made, the dumber it will behave in many situations ;-)

How about making the Labels configurable? Then people could change all labels as they like (even after using MJ for some time now I still get confused sometimes because track titles are labelled "Name" and not "Track" or "Title" like in other programs).

Elmar

[phelt]

Just to add to the confusion...

Doesn't ID3v2 have a bunch of extended tags for classical music, like Composer, Conductor, etc? I just can't figure out which one DJ Tiesto should be...

IMO, if users could set the displayed names of the Custom fields, that would give folks the power to make their own decisions about info storage and display, without having to remember/decipher the rules that they assigned to "Custom #x".

Some of these issues seem to be related to ripping and automatic folder generation, file naming, etc. I don't do any of that (using EAC and manual organization), so I'm hoping folks will describe their processes/schemes.

PhatPhreddy: several people have asked about CUE sheets. I certainly cannot speak for the developers, but you are definitely not alone

[AlonsoN]

One of the things that I don't like about mixes is that the Artist ends up something like "Various Artists" and then you might end up with a random collection of unrelated albums under "Various Artists" which is just plain klunky.  Or maybe the Album Artist ends up as "Super Polka Mega Hits Of The Eighties" which besides being a crying shame is neither the Artist or Album Artist, but the Album.

The place where Album Artist works best for me is for Composer for Classical music.  Then I can get all the works for a given composer in one place, and then the Artist is the Symphony, group, etc.  Works unless the album has multiple composers.  Mo'better support for classical works would be great.

Maybe it would make some sence to put all mix albums in another section of the tree?  All single artist albums followed by all the mix type.  That would avoid the bunching of albums under Various and also the misnomer of having the Album name listed as some permutation of Artist(plain, Track, Album)  Just a thought.

[Mirko]

@phelt: You can actually rename the comment-fields. Look into the options.

Classical Music:
This is the biggest "problem" with all MP3-taggers I know. For classical music there are more important fields than for many other genres: Composer, Orchestra, Year, Conductor, (Inszinierung). These are all important, because in classical music the conductor e.g. decides about the interpretation of the songs and sometimes the orchestra is good or not so good (and you have to know this). E.g. "Ring der Nibelungen": There are many different versions recorded (although the same notes but different) and I personaly like to differentiate between those.

I don't think they all fit into the standard-fields (and where should I logically put Conductor into?). So. As far as I know the V2-standard allow _many_ more tag-fields. Why not use them? Provide the user with the option to extend the tag-list (maybe don't show them normally, but show them as an option). Also these "extended" tag-information should be able to use with view-schemes, sortings and filtering.

Conclusion: Add more V2-tags to the interface and let me choose, which ones to show per default. Don't show them all, that would only confuse many people who don't need them. Maybe let me choose a template of tags I wish to fill in (e.g. for "mixed CDs", "Classical music", "Samplers" and so on) and let the user do his/her own template.

Thanks for asking us.

HTH.