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Author Topic: Tracks with multiple artists will use (Multiple Artists) for Album Artist Auto  (Read 10191 times)

jherbert

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This is killing me:

3. Changed: Tracks with multiple artists will use (Multiple Artists) for Album Artist Auto.

My whole collection is built on the previous behaviour.

I use "Various Artists" for samplers featuring different Artists in the album artist field.

I leave the album artist field blank in all other cases and enter multiple artists in the artist field seperated by a ";".

Unchecking "use (Multiple Artists) Artist on multi-artist-albums" does not help.

Media Center uses the first artist in the artist field to generate album artist auto, which is just perfect.

How to get that behaviour in the latest relase?

Populating the album artist field with the first artist found in the artist field is not an option, as those changes would have to be propagated to one mirrored set of my files plus two backup sets, which would take some time with 3 tb + of data.
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6233638

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It looks like there will be further changes in the next build: http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=89953.msg617947#msg617947
 
I agree that the new behavior is not correct, and albums which share a Primary Artist on every track, and include collaborators on others, should be listed by the Primary Artist, and not (Multiple Artists)
 
However, albums which share the same list of multiple artists on every track, should be listed under (Multiple Artists) rather than the first one on the list.

This should be listed under Daft Punk rather than (Multiple Artists) for example.
Code: (Random Access Memories) [Select]
Track # Name Artist
1 Give Life Back to Music Daft Punk
2 The Game of Love Daft Punk
3 Giorgio by Moroder Daft Punk
4 Within Daft Punk
5 Instant Crush Daft Punk; Julian Casablancas
6 Lose Yourself to Dance Daft Punk; Pharrell Williams
7 Touch Daft Punk; Paul Williams
8 Get Lucky Daft Punk; Pharrell Williams
9 Beyond Daft Punk
10 Motherboard Daft Punk
11 Fragments of Time Daft Punk; Todd Edwards
12 Doinʼ It Right Daft Punk; Panda Bear
13 Contact Daft Punk


Whereas this should be listed under (Multiple Artists) rather than not be listed under "Al Di Meola", as it previously was:
Code: (Passion, Grace & Fire) [Select]
Track # Name Artist
1 Aspan Al Di Meola; John McLaughlin; Paco de Lucia
2 Orient Blue Suite Al Di Meola; John McLaughlin; Paco de Lucia
3 Chiquito Al Di Meola; John McLaughlin; Paco de Lucia
4 Sichia Al Di Meola; John McLaughlin; Paco de Lucia
5 David Al Di Meola; John McLaughlin; Paco de Lucia
6 Passion, Grace & Fire Al Di Meola; John McLaughlin; Paco de Lucia

Populating the album artist field with the first artist found in the artist field is not an option, as those changes would have to be propagated to one mirrored set of my files plus two backup sets, which would take some time with 3 tb + of data.
If you go to: Tools → Options → Library & Folders → Manage Library Fields → Album Artist
You can disable the option to "save in file tags" which should let you enter Album Artist data without affecting your backups, as the tags changes should only be stored in MC's library.
 
But I'd wait and see how things play out in the next build or two. (this is why the "stable" branch of updates exists)
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Sky King

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I am having similar issues.  Thanks for the point-outs!
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MrC

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However, albums which share the same list of multiple artists on every track, should be listed under (Multiple Artists) rather than the first one on the list.

...

Whereas this should be listed under (Multiple Artists) rather than Al Di Meola, as it previously was:

Code: (Passion, Grace & Fire) [Select]
Track # Name Artist
1 Aspan Al Di Meola; John McLaughlin; Paco de Lucia
2 Orient Blue Suite Al Di Meola; John McLaughlin; Paco de Lucia
3 Chiquito Al Di Meola; John McLaughlin; Paco de Lucia
4 Sichia Al Di Meola; John McLaughlin; Paco de Lucia
5 David Al Di Meola; John McLaughlin; Paco de Lucia
6 Passion, Grace & Fire Al Di Meola; John McLaughlin; Paco de Lucia

I completely disagree with this position, and this was hashed out back in MC17, as I mentioned in another thread.  The usage of a semicolon vs. an & should not be the factor that constitutes a Multiple Artists type behavior.  The term (Multiple Artists) has always been in MC an indicator of a Compilation type album.  The usage of a semicolon instead of a & or "and" just facilitates the built-in list splitting behavior in MC so that each of the artists above can be found in the category list.  The Passion, Grace & Fire album above is not a multiple artists compilation.  Rather, these artists *reunited* as a band unit, and as each track contains the exact same artist "string", should be treated as a singular "artist" or band.

Multiple Artists is the catch-all bucket for albums whose artists vary across tracks.   Album Artist (auto) is album-centric, not track-centric, and this new behavior not only changes its semantics but also affects Renames and locations in Categories.
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6233638

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I completely disagree with this position, and this was hashed out back in MC17, as I mentioned in another thread.  The usage of a semicolon vs. an & should not be the factor that constitutes a Multiple Artists type behavior.  The term (Multiple Artists) has always been in MC an indicator of a Compilation type album.  The usage of a semicolon instead of a & or "and" just facilitates the built-in list splitting behavior in MC so that each of the artists above can be found in the category list.  The Passion, Grace & Fire album above is not a multiple artists compilation.  Rather, these artists *reunited* as a band unit, and as each track contains the exact same artist "string", should be treated as a singular "artist" or band.

Multiple Artists is the catch-all bucket for albums whose artists vary across tracks.   Album Artist (auto) is album-centric, not track-centric, and this new behavior not only changes its semantics but also affects Renames and locations in Categories.
Yes, I suppose you are right.
 
They've put out three albums together, so they should be kept separate from the general (Multiple Artists) category.
Without a specific "band name" as such, you end up with a long string listing all three artists together though, which I don't especially care for.
 
I think (Multiple Artists) is better than the pre-145 solution though, where the album was only being listed as an "Al Di Meola" album, as he was considered to the the Primary Artist, being first in the list.
 
So I suppose there are four conditions to consider:
 
  • When all tracks are by the same single Artist, that should be the Album Artist.
  • When all tracks contain the same Primary Artist, but have a mixture of secondary artists, the Primary Artist should be used.
  • When all tracks contain the same string of multiple artists, the entire string should be considered the Album Artist, rather than using the Primary Artist, or (Multiple Artists)
  • When different tracks have entirely different artists (i.e. lacking a "primary artist") they should be considered a (Multiple Artist) album.

It would be nice if #3 could be "smartly" formatted to be something like "Al Di Meola, John McLaughlin, and Paco de Lucía" instead of using semicolons for Album Artist (auto).
 
Oh and browsing my library, here's another one which is a nuisance:
 
Code: (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo Soundtrack) [Select]
Track # Name Artist
1 Immigrant Song Trent Reznor; Atticus Ross; Karen O
2 She Reminds Me Of You Trent Reznor; Atticus Ross
3 People Lie All The Time Trent Reznor; Atticus Ross
4 Pinned And Mounted Trent Reznor; Atticus Ross
5 Perihelion Trent Reznor; Atticus Ross
6 What If We Could? Trent Reznor; Atticus Ross
7 With The Flies Trent Reznor; Atticus Ross
8 Hidden In Snow Trent Reznor; Atticus Ross
9 A Thousand Details Trent Reznor; Atticus Ross
10 One Particular Moment Trent Reznor; Atticus Ross
11 I Canʼt Take It Anymore Trent Reznor; Atticus Ross
12 How Brittle The Bones Trent Reznor; Atticus Ross
13 Please Take Your Hand Away Trent Reznor; Atticus Ross
14 Cut Into Pieces Trent Reznor; Atticus Ross
15 The Splinter Trent Reznor; Atticus Ross
16 An Itch Trent Reznor; Atticus Ross
17 Hypomania Trent Reznor; Atticus Ross
18 Under The Midnight Sun Trent Reznor; Atticus Ross
19 Aphelion Trent Reznor; Atticus Ross
20 Youʼre Here Trent Reznor; Atticus Ross
21 The Same As The Others Trent Reznor; Atticus Ross
22 A Pause For Reflection Trent Reznor; Atticus Ross
23 While Waiting Trent Reznor; Atticus Ross
24 The Seconds Drag Trent Reznor; Atticus Ross
25 Later Into The Night Trent Reznor; Atticus Ross
26 Parallel Timeline With Alternate Outcome Trent Reznor; Atticus Ross
27 Another Way Of Caring Trent Reznor; Atticus Ross
28 A Viable Construct Trent Reznor; Atticus Ross
29 Revealed In The Thaw Trent Reznor; Atticus Ross
30 Millennia Trent Reznor; Atticus Ross
31 We Could Wait Forever Trent Reznor; Atticus Ross
32 Oraculum Trent Reznor; Atticus Ross
33 Great Bird Of Prey Trent Reznor; Atticus Ross
34 The Heretics Trent Reznor; Atticus Ross
35 A Pair Of Doves Trent Reznor; Atticus Ross
36 Infiltrator Trent Reznor; Atticus Ross
37 The Sound Of Forgetting Trent Reznor; Atticus Ross
38 Of Secrets Trent Reznor; Atticus Ross
39 Is Your Love Strong Enough? Trent Reznor; Atticus Ross; How to Destroy Angels
I have manually tagged this with an Album Artist of "Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross" but could/should Media Center be able to detect that automatically?
They're listed on every track of the album (and listed separately, as they have individual work under their own names) but I suspect that Media Center would either consider that to be a (Multiple Artists) album, or a Trent Reznor one.
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MrC

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That's a nice reply.

I've always treated Artist and Album Artist as values used to categorize albums and tracks, and not as a catch-all for various contributors.  I also do not place preferential treatment on any Artist in the list, and avoid thinking in terms of "primary artist".  That's what Album Artist is for (to override automatic behavior, and force primacy).  The main reason that MC selected the first item in the list of artists (when Artist became a list-type field) was to facilitate operations like Rename, which could easily generate insane path lengths.  So only the first value was used, in effect, it was listitem([Artist], 0).

In your Immigrant Song track, I would not list Karen 0 as an artist, since I would not want to trigger the Multiple Artists behavior, so instead would place her in a Featuring field.  Alternatively, we could just use Album Artist to override, since other players or software won't take Featuring into account.

A number of people have also wanted nice formatting of semicolon separated lists in the form of A and B, and A, B, and C, and have employed expressions to do this.  I think I recall writing on for user marko for his images and people values in Keywords.  However, I'm reading some conflict in your request:

   "Without a specific "band name" as such, you end up with a long string listing all three artists together though, which I don't especially care for."

   vs.

   "It would be nice if #3 could be "smartly" formatted to be something like "Al Di Meola, John McLaughlin, and Paco de Lucía" instead of using semicolons for Album Artist (auto)."

I think the logic required to do auto-detection of Album Artist from, for example, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo Soundtrack, might get a little tricky from the point of view of user comprehension (most are baffled by Album Artist (auto) already).  In essence, the logic would have to find the longest common list sequence and use that.  Maybe that's sufficient, but maybe that's very difficult to intuit or explain.
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6233638

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I've always treated Artist and Album Artist as values used to categorize albums and tracks, and not as a catch-all for various contributors.  I also do not place preferential treatment on any Artist in the list, and avoid thinking in terms of "primary artist".  That's what Album Artist is for (to override automatic behavior, and force primacy).  The main reason that MC selected the first item in the list of artists (when Artist became a list-type field) was to facilitate operations like Rename, which could easily generate insane path lengths.  So only the first value was used, in effect, it was listitem([Artist], 0).

In your Immigrant Song track, I would not list Karen 0 as an artist, since I would not want to trigger the Multiple Artists behavior, so instead would place her in a Featuring field.  Alternatively, we could just use Album Artist to override, since other players or software won't take Featuring into account.
I just find that things get too complicated when you try to split up the data into separate fields like "Artist" and "Featured Artist".
If it all goes into the Artist field as a list, it keeps things nice and simple, and you can just do a search on Artist, or create a view that is grouped by Artist rather than Album Artist (auto) if you want, for example.
Prior to build 145, albums tagged like my Random Access Memories example were not being listed under (Multiple Artists) but by the Primary Artist if it was the same for all tracks. (i.e. Daft Punk) That was the correct behavior, in my opinion.
 
Using a separate "Featured Artist" tag mostly seems like a way to work around the current Album Artist (auto) system that is in place.
I can see the merits to that system, but it seems like a lot of work, and I would prefer to see improvements made to Album Artist (auto) instead.

Rather than split the Artist data into separate groups to get Album Artist (auto) to behave a specific way, I would have probably chosen to add an Album Artist tag.
 
I think that generally people are more likely to include featured artists in the Artist field, rather than creating a custom field for it.
Of course those are probably going to be in the format of "Daft Punk feat. Pharrell Williams" rather than "Daft Punk; Pharrell Williams" if they are importing data from another program, but that's another issue.

A number of people have also wanted nice formatting of semicolon separated lists in the form of A and B, and A, B, and C, and have employed expressions to do this.  I think I recall writing on for user marko for his images and people values in Keywords.  However, I'm reading some conflict in your request:

   "Without a specific "band name" as such, you end up with a long string listing all three artists together though, which I don't especially care for."
   vs.
   "It would be nice if #3 could be "smartly" formatted to be something like "Al Di Meola, John McLaughlin, and Paco de Lucía" instead of using semicolons for Album Artist (auto)."
Sorry if that wasn't clear. I was not particularly fond of the idea of Media Center displaying: "Al Di Meola; John McLaughlin; Paco de Lucía" for Album Artist (auto)
After reading your post though, I do agree that using the full list for the Album Artist is a better solution than lumping it in with compilations under the (Multiple Artists) heading.
However I do think that while it's not ideal, (Multiple Artists) is itself an improvement over listing that as an "Al Di Meola" album, which is how it was handled before.
 
I would be a lot happier using the full list if Media Center formats it nicely, such as "Al Di Meola, John McLaughlin, and Paco de Lucía", which I think it would be the best general solution for albums that are tagged this way.
If you wanted it to be displayed differently, that would be best handled manually via the Album Artist field.
 
While you might be able to use expressions to do that type of formatting, it would be nice if Album Artist (auto) did it automatically.
It wouldn't make much of a difference for "power users" such as you or I, who are comfortable using expressions, but I don't think most users would be doing that.
 
I think the logic required to do auto-detection of Album Artist from, for example, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo Soundtrack, might get a little tricky from the point of view of user comprehension (most are baffled by Album Artist (auto) already).  In essence, the logic would have to find the longest common list sequence and use that.  Maybe that's sufficient, but maybe that's very difficult to intuit or explain.
Yes, that's why I wondered not only if Media Center could do that (I suspected it might) but whether it should.
The issue then becomes that it's likely to end up being listed as a Trent Reznor album instead if it's only picking the Primary Artist - or worse - listed under (Multiple Artists).
 
Ultimately, there is always going to be some manual tagging required no matter how smart Album Artist (auto) tries to be, so perhaps the easiest solution would just be to fill out the Album Artist field with "Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross" as I have currently done.
 
 
Still... I do like the idea of it filling that out automatically.
If we agree that an album such as Passion, Grace & Fire with "Al Di Meola; John McLaughlin; Paco de Lucía" should be grouped by that rather than (Multiple Artists) - especially if it's formatted nicely.
And an album such as Daft Punk's Random Access Memories (tagged as the example above) be grouped under "Daft Punk" for Album Artist (auto)
Then if it's possible, I do think that soundtrack should also be treated as "Trent Reznor; Atticus Ross" for the Album Artist (auto) as well, since they are both listed on every track.
 
I think the general confusion around Artist/Album Artist tags comes from other Applications using "Artist" as a heading when they are actually displaying "Album Artist" information, so I'm not sure that this would make things any more complicated.
Most people seem to understand how things work once you explain that they need to group their albums by "Album Artist (auto)" rather than "Artist"
I think making Album Artist (auto) a little smarter would improve things for most people, rather than complicating things.
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jherbert

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Two more things to consider:

- path length maxing out when using a string of multiple entries in the artist field to populate auto artist
- compatibility with  other applications and devices. While "featured artist" might be a solution using jriver, it will fail with most of the apps and devices around
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6233638

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- path length maxing out when using a string of multiple entries in the artist field to populate auto artist
Well that only matters if you are renaming using [Album Artist (auto)]
It's easy enough to use ListItem([Artist],0) instead, if you want the old behavior.

- compatibility with  other applications and devices. While "featured artist" might be a solution using jriver, it will fail with most of the apps and devices around
I actually wonder if this might be better.
If there's no Album Artist tag, and Artist only contains the primary artist info, with others going in a "Featured Artist" field, then it will be listed correctly in another application.
 
But I think most of us using Media Center are not too concerned about other applications now.
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jherbert

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It's easy enough to use ListItem([Artist],0) instead, if you want the old behavior.

This is very helpful and will most probably solve the problem for me.

There is another issue the developers might want to look into:

It seems that mediacenter puts incomplete albums with a single artist in the (multiple artists) category. At least this is happening on my installation.
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6233638

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OK, build 146 definitely doesn't help things.

Albums like Random Access Memories are being listed under (Multiple Artists)
Albums like Passion, Grace & Fire are being listed under the first artist name. (Al Di Meola)

This is the worst of the 145 and pre-145 behavior combined. :-\
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