INTERACT FORUM

You can't really do what you want to do the way you want to do it.

But you can get the result you want within MC. This question comes up at least once a month and has been answered many times in depth.

Basically, you need to create a new delimited field, copy the artist info and delimit with a semicolon. Then you can use this field instead of artist in your views.

Works great and if you make it part of your workflow, it isn't that big a deal. Just create a playlist where artists is blank and do a batch copy on the results from the artist field to the artists field.

Check the 'Keyword' field.  I know you can semi-colon delimit that field.  It works great.

I meant to copy its' format for your custom field.

I'm interested in finding a solution for this as well. If I understand this, the solution is to create a new field with a datatype that supports lists instead of just a string (which is the datatype for the ARTIST field). Then copy the ARTIST field to the new field with the list datatype.

So, what fields support lists?

And, if you have albums that include tracks with multiple artists (like Santana's Supernatural) is there an easy way to convert the string into a list? -- I'm assuming you have to manually update each track.

What about new albums added to the media library? When you rip the album, MC uses YADB to get the album info. Does YADB store multiple artists per track? If so, is there a set delimiter that will work during import?

For a good example of the type of functionality I'd like MC to support, take a look at the way WMP9/AMG handles multiple artists per track.

Will the artist field ever suuport lists?

really in the future it'd be cool if all fields did. It would save space on my pc for songs on more than one album I have.

The problem is that allowing delimited data in standard tag fields (like artist, album, etc) would most likely break compatibility with other software. While I think that delimited fields would be a great feature, I would rather have MC follow the various tag format specifications so that the tags are readable/editable no matter what program I am using.

Have you ever looked at the way multiple artists per track are supported in Windows Media Player 9? They don't seem to have a problem with compatibility. Besides, MC is the only program I may need to use for managing my music. I can't see a reason to use any other tagging and editing programs. If the ID3v2 spec states that only one name is allowed in the artist field, it should be updated to handle a list. There are many tracks credited to 2 or more artists. It's about time the metadata reflected this. Anyhow, WMA doesn't have this limitation and I rip everything to WMA lossless. Could we at least get support for this with WMAs?

As stated earlier, this topic gets brought up all the time here.

So, what fields support lists?

You can check this yourself. Go to Tools --> Options --> Library
Click on any of the fields, press edit and look at data type. Technically, any field supports lists through MC, it's just that J River doesn't allow us to edit some of the default fields (like Artist & Genre). Any user created (custom) field, however, may be set to a delimited list ( ";" is the delimiter, not "&")

So as others have stated, there is a workaround (just create custom list field and use the copy fields function) but I believe this is clumsy and unnecessary when there is an easy fix: just let us change the data type for artist/genre etc IF WE WANT TO. I don't see any value in having to duplicate information inside the tag.

The problem is that allowing delimited data in standard tag fields (like artist, album, etc) would most likely break compatibility with other software.

Not true. Current ID3 tags don't store lists. It's up to the software to recognise a delimiter and construct the list. I think windows media player uses "/". So if my artist is stored in the ID3 tag as Bob / Fred, I will get two separate list entries in WMP, whereas in MC, I get "Bob / Fred" as a single entry.

If MC allows us to delimit default fields, I can enter "Bob; Fred" as my artist and get two separate list entries. Compataibility with other programs wouldn't be severed, the field would just show up as the single entry "Bob; Fred" in other media players.

Have the program developers ever given us a good answer to this recurrent question?

No, I don't think a satisfactory answer has been provided by development staff. I think it's about time this happened though.