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[fnordfnordfnord]

I've got a particularly famous recording of a particularly famous symphony. It goes something like this:

Track 1
Artist: Berliner Philharmoniker
Album Artist: Berliner Philharmoniker
Title: Symphony No. 9 - 1. Allegro ma non troppo

Track 2
Artist: Berliner Philharmoniker
Album Artist: Berliner Philharmoniker
Title: Symphony No. 9 - 2. Molto vivace

(etc.)

Track 5
Artist(s): Berliner Philharmoniker; Gundula Janowitz; Hilde Majdan; Waldemar Kmentt; Walter Berry
Album Artist: Berliner Philharmoniker
Title: Symphony No. 9 - 4b. Presto - Allegro assai

Track 5, you see, features several soloists, and they're tagged as artists (those are multiple artist tags, not one tag containing several artists).

I've been told that in Media Center 17, an album like this should be marked as "Single artist", but it's not - MC is marking it as "Multiple artists". It really shouldn't: although it may superficially look like it, this is not what you'd ever call a multiple artists album. The whole work is by a single orchestra with a single conductor; certain tracks just happen to feature certain soloists. (Don't even get me started on the Bach choral works.)

I've been directed to http://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/Album_Artist_and_Album_Artist_%28Auto%29, but that page doesn't really tell me what I want to know: what logic Media Center uses to determine if an album has "Multiple artists". If I know that, maybe I can determine if there's something I can do to satisfy MC that this really is a single artist album - or if I need to petition J River for redress of my woes.

[Matt]

Look at the files in a grid view.

Add the columns Artist, Album Artist, Album Artist (auto), and Album Type.

Is the Album Artist empty for all the files?  Does emptying it make the calculated columns Album Artist (auto) and Album Type snap into line?

[fnordfnordfnord]

All files are tagged with the same Album Artist (Berliner Philharmoniker). Album Artist (auto) contains that tagged album artist, as expected. Album Type is Multiple artists (complete). Clearing the Album Artist does not help; that just changes Album Artist (auto) to Multiple Artists.

[Matt]

All files are tagged with the same Album Artist (Berliner Philharmoniker). Album Artist (auto) contains that tagged album artist, as expected. Album Type is Multiple artists (complete). Clearing the Album Artist does not help; that just changes Album Artist (auto) to Multiple Artists.

Are you sure the first / primary artist value is exactly the same for all the files?

[fnordfnordfnord]

You anticipate me. I just noticed that the first artist tag for track five is not actually Berliner Philharmoniker; making it so changes the album to Single artist. My bad luck to choose as an example the one instance in my entire library where the primary artist isn't the first one listed.

However, even with the album type marked as Single artist and having an Album Artist explicitly set, the album still shows up in the library view as being by "Various Artists" and is treated as a compilation when synced to my iPod. Another example of this is the previously mentioned Beatles compilation Past Masters, with Album Artist: The Beatles and Artist: The Beatles except for two tracks with Artist: The Beatles; Billy Preston. This gets marked as a single artist album but again gets shown in the library view as "by Various Artists" and synced as a compilation.

This also leaves me with the John & Yoko problem, where the Album Artist is John Lennon and Yoko Ono and the artist for each individual track is either John Lennon or Yoko Ono. To my thinking this should be considered a single artist album, but as there can be only one Album Artist there doesn't seem to be a way to deal with this through thoughtful tagging.

[fnordfnordfnord]

Oh yes, and

Are you sure the first / primary artist value is exactly the same for all the files?

seems to give the exact answer to my original question: the logic used is that if the first artist for each track is the same as the album artist, it will be considered a single artist album. Is this it?

[Matt]

first artist for each track is the same as the album artist, it will be considered a single artist album.

Single artist = all the same primary artist.

Multiple artists = different primary artists.

You should leave Album Artist blank unless you have a good reason to fill it in.

[fnordfnordfnord]

Album Artist is filled in so I get correct behaviour from Zune when synchronising music to my phone. It (like Windows Media Player) depends on Album Artist to correctly group tracks with different artists into a single album.

Can you suggest anything pertaining to the apparently incorrect behaviour of continuing to treat an album as a multiple artist album in certain scenarios (the default Album grouping view, handheld sync) even where the album type is correctly indicated as single artist?

[Alex B]

Are you sure the first / primary artist value is exactly the same for all the files?

... the logic used is that if the first artist for each track is the same as the album artist, it will be considered a single artist album. Is this it?

I just tested this and it works for me. The Album Type value changed from "Multiple artists (complete)" to "Single artist (complete)" when I added an identical semicolon separated main artist value to all tracks of a "multiple artists" album which previously did not contain semicolon separated artists values (just a different artist for each track.)

What actually seems to be the problem? Is just the "Multiple artists (complete)" value in the Album Type field bothering you or does this affect something else?

[fnordfnordfnord]

I was misled somewhat by a poorly chosen example, and I now understand how Media Center decides whether an album has single or multiple artists and can tag accordingly. I also misspoke about the handheld synchronisation; upon closer inspection now, the only albums being undesirably marked as compilations are ones that have into the "John and Yoko" problem. This is a very real problem though, and I can't see any way to deal with it nicely within the constraints of Media Center. I either have to tag each track's author incorrectly as John and Yoko, or live with the album acting as a compilation.

I would still say that the Album view should not display "by Various Artists" for single artist albums but should use the Album Artist instead, but that's minor.

[Alex B]

You should leave Album Artist blank unless you have a good reason to fill it in.

A good reason is e.g. the need to see "Berliner Philharmoniker" as the album artist.

Can you suggest anything pertaining to the apparently incorrect behaviour of continuing to treat an album as a multiple artist album in certain scenarios (the default Album grouping view, handheld sync) even where the album type is correctly indicated as single artist?

A tagged value in the "Album Artist" field can be used for overriding the automatic "(Multiple Artists)" value in the "Album Artist (auto)" field when preferred. MC uses this "auto" field for the default album grouping and normally it makes the album show up under the tagged album artist name regardless of the track artist values. Does this not work for you?

[fnordfnordfnord]

In the third pane, using the default view of Group By -> Album, the album type is apparently ignored. In examples like those discussed, I see "[Album] by Various Artists" even for albums where the type is shown as single artist, whether or not Album Artist is set explicitly.

Even after fixing the tagging for the Beethoven to have it show up as a single artist album (and sync to my iPod as such), I'm see: The 9 Symphonies by Various Artists  1963".

[Alex B]

I would still say that the Album view should not display "by Various Artists" for single artist albums but should use the Album Artist instead, but that's minor.

Oh I see, you mean the group header. You are correct, it shows "Various Artists" even when the primary artist is the same for all tracks and the album type is "single artist". See the attached screenshot.


Log in to the forum if you can't see the attachment.

[fnordfnordfnord]

Yes, exactly. I'm suggesting this is not optimal behaviour for an album that has been identified as "single artist".

[Alex B]

I guess the header code just checks the Artist field values that are beneath it. Probably the code does something like "If there are more than one value show Various Artists". When the album logic was fixed to work with the recently introduced multi-value artist tags this didn't change because it uses a separate code. The developers should change this code to read the Artist value only up to the first semicolon.

[rick.ca]

Yes, exactly. I'm suggesting this is not optimal behaviour for an album that has been identified as "single artist".

There's no "right" answer to this. What you've pointed out is inconsistent, but it's not really a "single artist" album. There are, in fact, multiple artists. How you expect to refer to the artists collectively will depend on the circumstances. If it doesn't for you, it certainly will for other users. This is why there's an [Album Artist] field for overriding what the program will otherwise determine from the contents of [Artist]. Group by [Album Artist (auto)] • [Album]. If you don't like the result in a specific case, set [Album Artist] to what you want it to be (e.g., John Lennon & Yoko Ono). That shouldn't be an issue if you're already tagging [Album Artist] for the sake of Zune.

If the only real issue here is syncing to iPod, you might be out of luck. I don't know much about the issue, so I'll leave that for others, or for you to read about in iPad, iPhone, iPod.

[medvedik]

I agree to you Rick till a certain level. John Lennon & Yoko Ono is a special case.

But if you have an album of a certain artist, and one song is a duet, the album still is of that one artist, even if there are multiple artists involved. So to my opinion the default header should give that artist name, and not "by various artists" (I know, it's easy to change it).

[Alex B]

I don't have a strong opinion about this. Either way seems right to me. When a semicolon delimited artist list exists and not all tracks have exactly the same list obviously there is variation in the track specific artist values. However, if the consensus is to account only for the primary artists and ignore the other listed artists that's fine for me too.

I wasn't even aware that the global album analyzer & multiple artists detection code was changed to account only for the primary artist (I guess I missed that bit of information when the changes were discussed), but as Matt explained and my testing proved this seems to the case.

I think the right answer would be to maintain consistency. Clearly the current behavior is inconsistent from the user point of view because MC may show two different "various/multiple artists" detection results for a single album.

And if the group header code works as I guessed, the fix would be easy: just ignore any string that starts with a semicolon in the Artist field.

[MrC]

I dunno, but I think having both artists here looks entirely appropriate.

[Matt]

I'm not really sure what to do here.

We have a general function that calculates a summary for a field given a set of files.  It's used for category thumbnails, list grouping headers, etc.

This function returns [Varies] any time the field is a string and all the files don't have the same string.  The same function is used for Genre, Artist, Keywords, etc.

The grouping expression changes "[Varies]" to the more friendly "Various Artists".

When dealing with list fields, we could try to do some type of special summary that provides more details.  For example, it could have a list of values shared by all the files, then have something like "etc." tacked to the end if there are values not shared by all.

Regardless of how we proceed, this is a display-only issue and will not effect album categorization, handheld upload, etc.

[Alex B]

I dunno, but I think having both artists here looks entirely appropriate.

I think the group header code sees only one artist, exactly as the other "album analyzer" code did before the Artist field supported semicolon delimited lists.

For example:
   Track 1: Brian Eno
   Track 2: Brian Eno; Peter Schwalm
   etc...
- would change it to "Various Artists"


BTW, at first I didn't understand your reply at all, but I wasn't logged in to the forum and didn't see the attachment.

[MrC]

AlexB, I was thinking it worked just as Matt described (a summarizer function), and various segments of the code rely on it.  Regarding the attachment issue, any suggestions for the future?

Matt: are you willing to open up the Summarizer() and Group Header UI so user's can a) discover what MC does by magic today, and b) create their own formatted headings more readily?

[Matt]

Matt: are you willing to open up the Summarizer()

Performance is mission critical there, so I don't think so.

and Group Header UI

This would be a nice feature.  There are three expressions and a sorting for a list group header, so the UI would be a little involved to code and intimidating to use.  This is why we only offer a few defaults and then simple field-based grouping now.

[MrC]

Ah, Ok.  I can live with however it works.  For those users that care, this can be documented well enough to help them.

[Alex B]

I'm not really sure what to do here.

We have a general function that calculates a summary for a field given a set of files.  It's used for category thumbnails, list grouping headers, etc.

This function returns [Varies] any time the field is a string and all the files don't have the same string.  The same function is used for Genre, Artist, Keywords, etc.

The grouping expression changes "[Varies]" to the more friendly "Various Artists".

When dealing with list fields, we could try to do some type of special summary that provides more details.  For example, it could have a list of values shared by all the files, then have something like "etc." tacked to the end if there are values not shared by all.

Regardless of how we proceed, this is a display-only issue and will not effect album categorization, handheld upload, etc.

As I said, I don't have a strong preference on this issue, but I would like to see consistent behavior. As far as I can see, the Group header shows this data only when the files are grouped by Album. If the group header says Various Artists, also the album specific Album Artist (auto) and Album Type fields should show "various/multiple artists". BTW, I wonder if MC should show "Various Artists" everywhere in the UI. It seems to be a common term. I have rarely seen albums called "multiple artists" albums, except inside MC and in the discussions here.

Actually, why does MC now check only the "primary" artist when it detects a "multiple artists" album for the actual library fields? IMHO, if some of the listed artists are not worthy of considered as artists they should be presented in some other field, for example in Soloists.

[MrC]

BTW, I wonder if MC should show "Various Artists" everywhere in the UI. It seems to be a common term. I have rarely seen albums called "multiple artists" albums, except inside MC and the discussions here.

I brought up this discrepancy a while back, and posted a screenshot showing the various Varies terms.

I've concluded since then:

1) it is good that MC uses (Multiple Artists) as it sorts nicely ASCII-betically and stands out
2) with "Various Artists" being an actual string value in tags, the discovery of a physical value (vs. MC's virtual value) becomes less obvious and discoverable.
3) the group header string "Various Artists" (as in ... by Various Artists) should not be capitalized standard font, since it is not an actual value, but is representative of something else.  I feel it should be lower case italicized to disambiguate.

    Album X by various artists

better still for consistency in MC:

   Album X by multiple artists
   Album Y by Gaudy Rock Stars

[Grayson]

Hi:

I have a related question.  I get multiple thumbnails of the same album cover under Artists.  Is this because MC is reading the albums as having multiple artists?

How best to resolve this?

Grayson

[medvedik]

I dunno, but I think having both artists here looks entirely appropriate.

In this case it's appropriate. But as you look at the next picture, maybe it isn't so and IMHO should be Massive Attack, but if it's too difficult or anything, it's no problem to me as it is.

[fnordfnordfnord]

There's no "right" answer to this. What you've pointed out is inconsistent, but it's not really a "single artist" album. There are, in fact, multiple artists. How you expect to refer to the artists collectively will depend on the circumstances. If it doesn't for you, it certainly will for other users. This is why there's an [Album Artist] field for overriding what the program will otherwise determine from the contents of [Artist].

I have set the [Album Artist], but (in the Album grouping view) it does not override what the program automatically determines from the contents of [Artist]. That's my whole point here.

Obviously, there's scope for ambiguity about what counts as "single artist" and "multiple artists". I don't think a strict interpretation of "single artist" is really suitable, especially these days when every other hit single "feat."ures somebody-or-other. William Shatner's credited guest appearance on track five doesn't turn "Fear of Pop, Vol. 1" from a single artist into a multiple artist album. Media Center does (assuming the [Artist] tags are ordered correctly) get this right as far as the "Album type" field goes, but that doesn't carry over into how the album's artist is displayed in the third pane's default "Album" grouping.

For what it's worth, my preferred behaviour for the album view would be to display the [Album Artist] if it is set (as this is pretty much the entire reason for the existence of the [Album Artist] tag), and use the results from the summariser if it is not.

(Not directly relevant to the immediate discussion, but I'd also like to be able to somehow explicitly designate albums as being "single artist", but that's mainly for the sake of being able to control how things get synced to the iPod - something that, at present, is possible in iTunes (ugh) but not in MC.)

[rick.ca]

I have set the [Album Artist], but (in the Album grouping view) it does not override what the program automatically determines from the contents of [Artist]. That's my whole point here.

[Album Artist] always overrides [Artist] in [Album Artist (auto)]. By "what the program automatically determines from the contents of [Artist]," you must be referring to one default grouping which uses [Artist]. If [Artist] has multiple values, then it should show 'Various Artists'. Given the special nature of [Artist], it seems reasonable if the first artist value is the same for all tracks, then it should be considered a single-artist album—and [Album Artist (auto)] is set to that first artist. As has already been pointed out, where that's the case, it would be nice (for consistency) if the group caption would do the same. I suspect that will be done, if it's not too complicated. But, in any case, you do have the ability to group by anything you like, including [Album Artist (auto)]. That also provides the opportunity to include other useful information in the caption.

I don't think a strict interpretation of "single artist" is really suitable, especially these days when every other hit single "feat."ures somebody-or-other.

If you take such a liberal interpretation of 'Artist' so as to include 'featured' artists, then you're going to have such problems. There's meaning to 'featuring' (and other terms applied to performers who are not 'members' of 'Artist') which is best retained by storing it in a separate field. If there's any need to combine them (e.g., to show all artist associated with a track), this can be done using an expression (e.g., an expression field [Artists]). This also provides more flexibility in how tracks are selected. A smartlist, for example, could select tracks where particular artists are in [Artist], [Featuring] or both.

(Not directly relevant to the immediate discussion, but I'd also like to be able to somehow explicitly designate albums as being "single artist", but that's mainly for the sake of being able to control how things get synced to the iPod - something that, at present, is possible in iTunes (ugh) but not in MC.)

As I said before, you should investigate that as a completely separate matter. I don't do iStuff, but there's so much discussion about it, I'd be shocked if this is all that mattered when it comes to synchronizing them.

[fnordfnordfnord]

I'm referring to the default "Album" grouping, in which albums are displayed as... albums. Since the very point of the existence of the [Album Artist] tag is to specify what should be displayed as the artist for an album, it seems a perfectly obvious thing to... display the contents of [Album Artist] as the artist for the album.

If you take such a liberal interpretation of 'Artist' so as to include 'featured' artists, then you're going to have such problems. There's meaning to 'featuring' (and other terms applied to performers who are not 'members' of 'Artist') which is best retained by storing it in a separate field. If there's any need to combine them (e.g., to show all artist associated with a track), this can be done using an expression (e.g., an expression field [Artists]). This also provides more flexibility in how tracks are selected. A smartlist, for example, could select tracks where particular artists are in [Artist], [Featuring] or both.

If you insist on allowing a piece of software to try to automatically determine whether an album is 'multiple artists' or not, then you're going to have problems. It is simply not a problem that can correctly be solved algorithmically in all cases unless you're prepared to settle for a very simple, naive model of library curation. This is, however, orthogonal to the matter of [Album Artist] display.

Also, this is not my "liberal interpretation' of 'Artist'". This is the officially documented, defined tagging standard for WMA (including lossless) files. A track with multiple artists gets multiple [Artist] tags. There is no provision for shunting certain disfavoured artists into some slightly more ghetto tag. [Album Artist] exists to specify what artist should be displayed when that is not the same as the [Artist]s. It's a simple yet powerful system that allows you to be thorough in attributing performances and still keep the album information display short and sensible. The iTunes de facto tagging standard works the same way (mostly - iTunes makes you list multiple artists in a single tag, but that's not really important here), and let's be honest: that's quite the most widely adopted tagging scheme in the world. I'm not just making this stuff up.

Essentially what you're suggesting here is that if I want to play in Media Center's sandbox, I have to play by Media Center's rules. That's a defensible position, but it's not one that I care for - and it's not what I hoped I was buying into when I purchased the product. There is a well-established, documented tagging scheme for WMA, and I use it. I'm more interested in interoperability - in fact, I simply require it, as my phone is not supported by MC - than in binding myself to one application's particular view of the world. There's a standard semantics for [Album Artist] supported by the vast lion's share of music player applications in the world, and it's a perfectly good and useful semantics. I honestly can't understand the resistance to using it. Leave [Album Artist] blank and get the existing artist summariser behaviour. Fill it in and get it displayed the way anyone accustomed to using [Album Artist] from elsewhere would expect. Best of both worlds. And if you want to list auxiliary performers in a different field, nothing's stopping you. Everyone wins.

As for the other, orthogonal bit: personally, I couldn't care less about 'multiple artists' functionality, except insofar as it gets in my way. It doesn't really add any value for me. (Can you tell I don't listen to DJ mixes?) If I could turn it off altogether I'd shut up and go away. Windows Media Player and Zune simply have no such concept, and I'm fine with that. iTunes lets me explicitly tell it that an album is or isn't a compilation, and I'm fine with that too. Media Center pushes upon me its own educated-but-inevitably-sometimes-wrong guesses without any way to escape, and that annoys me.

[Alex B]

You can actually make the group header show precisely the Album Artist and Album tags if that is what you want. You would just need to create a new calculated library field and group by that field.

A calculated field displays the result of the expression rule. For example, grouping by a field that is based on the [Album Artist (auto)] - [Album] rule would work similarly like the default Album grouping, except that it would display the Album Artist tag value. You can use the "auto" field because it always shows the tagged Album Artist value, and in addition, if a "various artists" album doesn't yet have the Album Artist tag it will automatically show the (Multiple Artists) value and thus keep the album tracks correctly grouped.

I'll post some examples & screenshots in a short while. (Edit: probably tomorrow. I don't have time for that today.)

Regarding the automatic "Album Artist (auto)" field, you can find a link to an old thread that explains it here: http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=59513.msg402038#msg402038 . The thread precedes the semicolon delimited Artist list feature, but otherwise it is still useful.

[MrC]

fnordfnordfnord, hang in there a bit and allow some of the dust to settle from the recent big changes regarding support for artist lists.  The devs anticipated there would be gotchas here and there, and had been hesitant to embark on this endeavor for exactly these reasons.

It seems the primary hangup here is that the header says "Various Artists".  For now, its easy enough to set the header to be what you want.

[rick.ca]

fnordfnordfnord, hang in there a bit...

Let's skip my orthogonal reply about turning MC into iWMP, and go with this one.

[icstm]

Guys,
sorry for jumping in here but why is setting Album Artist field not a recommended action?

I find it very useful to ensure each album behaves as required.
Not only for situtions where an artist does a song featuring another artist, but also where the Album artist may be the cast and each track might be a solo or the whole ensemble.

Also what does the complete mean in single artist complete. <--- [edit] read this in the wiki

[fnordfnordfnord]

fnordfnordfnord, hang in there a bit and allow some of the dust to settle from the recent big changes regarding support for artist lists.  The devs anticipated there would be gotchas here and there, and had been hesitant to embark on this endeavor for exactly these reasons.

See, I've only just started watching at episode 17. I don't know the backstory. It's good to hear this is is not a settled issue. Thanks.

[rick.ca]

sorry for jumping in here but why is setting Album Artist field not a recommended action?

I don't think anyone is saying that, and your comment suggests you're using it exactly as intended. What's not recommended is using it instead of [Artist]. In other words, populate [Artist] according to whatever concept of "Artist" you wish to use, and then use [Album Artist] to override that in any situation where you want [Album Artist (auto)] to be something different (than what the program will determine from [Artist]).

What some people don't seem to understand is concepts of "Artist" can vary significantly based on situation and/or preference. It's therefore not desirable for the program to make unnecessarily arbitrary assumptions how [Artist] is being used and how it should be displayed. In the interest of those who frequently record multiple artists, the program's reasonable compromise is to treat an album where the first listed artist is the same for every track as single-artist album. Surely that's most often the case (i.e., according to the user's concept of "Artist" the other artists are contributing-, featured- or guest-artists—the existence of which do not change the fact the first artist is considered the "Album Artist"). Where it is not, it can be overridden.

[icstm]

excellent, that is how I like to use it!