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[Jim L]

Hi all,

I've recently updated all my multiple artist tags in MC19 to be lists, via the semicolon delimiter, e.g.:
"Foo Fighters feat. Brian May and Roger Taylor" would become "Foo Fighters; Brian May; Roger Taylor"

This all works brilliantly in combination with the Album Artist tags in MC and allows me to search on Artist or Album Artist, as expected.

However, I am running into trouble when I sync to my iPod classic. The album in question is listed under two "Artists":
"Foo Fighters" (with 13 tracks)
"Foo Fighters; Brian May; Roger Taylor" (with 1 track)
...which means that unless I search on Album, the tracks aren't all listed together.

I just want the Album Artist value to be honoured on my iPod. Has anyone managed this in combination with multiple artists per track?

[Jim L]

Sorry to followup on my own post.

If I change the artist to:
"Foo Fighters & Brian May & Roger Taylor" then the album is marked as a compilation on the iPod, presumably because Mix Album is then 1. For a semicolon delimited list it's not set to 1.

This isn't ideal either, as the album is then only listed under Compilations.

Does "Mix Album" take precedence over "iTunes Compilation"?

[MrC]

Mix Album is just an MC value - iTunes knows nothing about this tag.  Use iTunes Compilation.  I set Compilation (for my squeezeboxes) and iTunes Compilation for various artist albums.

Album Artist is just a string value - I wonder if the semicolons are causing the trouble in Album Artist?

[Jim L]

Hi MrC,

I'm only using a semicolon in the Artist tag. I guess the iPod/iTunes doesn't recognise the delimiter.

[MrC]

I don't see that iTunes is accepting/using anything after the first semicolon, at least in mp3 files.

[Jim L]

Given the following:

Conversion: FLAC to MP3
Album: A
Album Artist: X
iTunes Compilation: 1
Track 1 Artist: X
Track 2 Artist: X; Y; Z

When I transfer the album to my iPod Classic 160GB (2.0.4) using MC 19.0.37 (not iTunes), I end up with the following:

Artists
X (contains track 1 only)
X; Y; Z (contains track 2 only)

Albums
A (contains both tracks)

Compilations
<None>

I've confirmed that TCMP is set to 1 in the MP3 tags.

The end result is that I have to search for the album in the Albums list in order to hear all the tracks. This is somewhat laborious when there are hundreds of albums.

Is there any way for the Album Artist and/or Compilation to be honoured when syncing to the iPod? Something other than just the iTunes Compilation flag seems to be influencing how things are marked as compilations.

Perhaps the semicolon is causing issues. If the use of a semicolon-delimited Artist isn't valid on an iPod then should it be converted or stripped when transferring?