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[Severian]

Hello all: Got a question that seems to cross the line between tips-needed and feature-request.

My mission is this: I want to copy all information currently in my 'Artist' field into 'Album Artist'. I'd like to use this field to draw the line on albums that are compilations, soundtracks, tributes, et cetera--so that I can have 'Album Artist' show 'Various Artists' to group these albums together in one kind of view, and then I plan to manually scrub 'Artist' so that it more properly reflects song artist, and be able to use that at will as well. I've already mass copied those files with data in 'Artist' listed as 'Various Artists' into 'Album Artist', simple enough. But I need to copy the rest of them in order to make this work.

So, two part question--
1) Is there a way in MJ to mass copy the contents of 'Artist' into 'Album Artist'? If not, I'm wide open to suggestions.

2) The possible feature request is that this marvelous beast, 'Album Artist', seems to be a wee bit undersupported in MJ. I can set it in File Properties, I can create a view scheme using it, I can use it in Smartlists, but I can't figure out how to SEE it in the main view window...anywhere. Am I missing something, or should this be raised as a wish item?

Thanks,
Sev

[Matt]

1) No, but I'm not sure why you'd want to.  I mean, you don't need "Album Artist" filled in for everything, because MJ uses "Artist" whenever it isn't filled in.

2) More columns and more column customization is high on the list for MJ 9.x

Thanks Sev.

-Matt

[Severian]

I filled in Album Artist manually this weekend, so I discovered how it works.

I'm not in a position to post a screenshot of it at this time, which would save a lot of explaining, but why I want to is this: I have a bunch of compilations and soundtracks. I do not want the Artist tree to go into infinity because it makes an Artist node for every single song that has a different artist. I've tried this in the past, and that's what it does. I want a tree that shows basically the artists I'm truly collecting, and keep those compilation discs under 'Various Artists'...as I said. That way I can viewscheme using 'Album Artist' and the tree will be much shorter and more accurate because there will be a boatload of compilation discs kept under 'Various Artists'.

The way you've got it working now, it's like so: Imagine you've got one CD by Lunatic Calm. You also own the Matrix soundtrack. Lunatic Calm appears on the Matrix soundtrack. In the Matrix soundtrack you've defined Album Artist as 'Various Artists', and you've defined the Artist for each individual song properly, including the one by Lunatic Calm.

So: view by Artist/Album. What do you see under Lunatic Calm? Just the one CD and not the second entry for the Matrix soundtrack, because the 'Various Artists' entry you put in Album Artist is now overriding the display of what MJ considers to be the Artist. Thus, if you wanted to use your Artist field and viewscheme to view all individual CDs that have tracks by an artist no matter where they appear across your whole collection, you can't do it unless you abandon the use of Album Artist to help group compilations using 'Various Artist' or what have you. If, in this example, the Matrix soundtrack had no entries under Album Artist, then the tree would display both CD's under Lunatic Calm's entry.

When you've got both of these fields filled out, one overrides the other, which makes it pretty much without a whole lot of value, as MJ is currently implementing the display of it. Can we get this changed? Break the relationship between Album Artist and Artist. Just have it be like any other field. If there's no entry in it, it's unassigned; don't substitute one or prioritize one over the other.

[Ilmar]

Hi

I have a similar, but unrelated problem....

I have a large collection of classical music, and for me Artist = composer
so the performer takes second place and is squeezed in the album tag...

e.g.
Listening to: 'Antiphon:  Auctori vite psalmis' from '11,000 Virgins - Chants for the Feast of St. Ursula (Anonymous 4)' by 'Hildegard von Bingen' on Media Jukebox

So, in the absence of a composer tag in MJ, I should surely use the album artist for The Anonymous 4 (performer)

The lack of a composer tag, which I think was available in Winamp, was a major drawback with MJ, but I had to bite the bullet and choose between great organisation and fast database, or with winamp - plugins that were unreliable! So at some stage, when we have a composer tag, I will have to transfer the info on 40,000 files from Artist -> composer; and then find some way to get the performer from Album -> Artist!

Whilst classical music fans owe a debt of gratitude to popular music, as it has driven the music industry and mp3 developement and delivery, the composer is a neglected beast. Chart singles are now synonymous with the performer/artist and the composer is rarely mentioned if at all.

Any suggestions?

Ilmar

[TedP]

Until (if ever) MJ gets this functionality, check out MP3 TagStudio
http://www.magnusbrading.com/mp3ts/