Bugzilla – Bug 10724
MB changed MUSICBRAINZ ALBUM ARTIST - should we adopt?
Last modified: 2009-06-17 09:36:20 UTC
In Formats, we still check for MUSICBRAINZ ALBUM ARTIST. MusicBrainz changed the tags being used a while ago to: ID3v2: TPE2 Vorbis Comment: ALBUMARTIST APEv2: Album Artist iTunes MP4: aART Windows Media: WM/AlbumArtist We are still checking for (Slim/Formats as of SC7.3.2-24686): FLAC: MUSICBRAINZ_ALBUMARTIST Movie: ----:com.apple.iTunes:MusicBrainz Album Artist MP3: TXXX:MusicBrainz Album Artist OGG: MUSICBRAINZ_ALBUMARTIST MusicBrainz' Picard Tagger — when retagging files — will NOT overwrite/delete the "old style" tags but instead write the new ones additionally. Thus, we might get "MUSICBRAINZ_ALBUMARTIST=Various Artists" (old frame) PLUS "ALBUMARTIST=In Extremo" (new frame) after a retagging a FLAC file, for example. We can see in the forums that this leads to lot of problems with "Various Artists" and Compilations, since users normally do not know about all these intrinsics. There's 3 strategies to handle this situation: 1. Leave as is. The worst one. We'll never get rid of complaints, and we *should* support a working Album Artist. 2. Change our Formats to "the latest and greatest". The cleanest solution, only it will require users to re-tag probably a lot of files that were tagged using older tagger versions. 3. Try to be "the Swiss Army knife" of Music Library Systems (again). The most user-friendly (and sales-friendly) version, but it will require lots of work and careful engeneering for the dev team, also probably introduce even more problems communicating "the inner workings" and "which tag does what" to the normal end user. Which will it be? In case of (3), I guess it might be be possible to leave the "old" MUSICBRAINZ ALBUM ARTIST mappings in the code for compatibility to "older files", and also add the "new" ones. Utmost care has to be given to PRIORIZATION in this case: If we found BOTH "MUSICBRAINZ_ALBUMARTIST" AND "ALBUMARTIST" in a FLAC file, for instance, we need to be sure that "MUSICBRAINZ_ALBUMARTIST" gets thrown away and "ALBUMARTIST" used instead. Or if we found "TPE2" in an MP3, it first has to be checked if the user wants to interpret "TPE2" as Album Artist (instead of Band). If no, we'd need to check for "TXXX:ALBUMARTIST", "TXXX:MusicBrainz Album Artist", and probably also "TXXX:ALBUM ARTIST" (for foobar2000 users) and somehow prioritize them. In this case, I'd suggest (from practical experience) using the following prio scheme: "TPE2" exists and user has set this as "album artist preference" -> use it "TXXX:ALBUMARTIST" exists -> use it "TXXX:ALBUM ARTIST" exists -> use it "TXXX:MusicBrainz Album Artist" exists -> use it Else -> No Album Artist (or other checks) Similar things will also have to be done for the other file types, of course. And cross-checked with the behaviour of current other taggers.
The number of people likely to be confused by another preference is vastly larger than the number of people who have used two versions of musicbrainz. Andy to consider these suggestions.
*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 10749 ***
I agree with Christopher: Let's keep the UIs as "clean", "logical" and usable as possible and find a way to handle it all without breaking anything. Probably a two-step approach: 1. Internal (or default) logic that handles most use cases. 2. Additional possibilities for the technical minded, i.e. (file-)configurable tag mapping schemes.
This bug isn't a dupe.
We are now planning to make a 7.3.3 release. Please review your bugs (all marked open against 7.3.3) to see if they can be fixed in the next few weeks, or if they should be retargeted for 7.4 or future. Thanks!
Created attachment 4940 [details] Proposed patches for bug 10724, could be retrofitted to 7.3.3 I propose the included patch to solve the current problems with Album Artist mentioned above. The patch is designed to not break anything existing, EXCEPT the use of Album Artist (aART) as "overall track artist" if no track artist is specified in Apple M4A (movie type) files. Patch is against SC 7.4-25502 but should easily be possible to merge into 7.3.3 as well. Tested with LOTS of test cases. I feel it is bad practise to have different logic for M4A files (as opposed to other file types), also this change will allow using "aART" as intended with AAC, M4A, MP4 files -- as Album Artist. See forum discussion re M4A Album Artist here: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?p=407317#post407317
Patch applied in 7.3.3 change 25606.
Created attachment 4945 [details] Add'l fix for MP3 "ALBUM ARTIST" (foobar) issue Andy, awfully sorry, just found that we were still missing the foobar2000 "ALBUM ARTIST" vs. "ALBUMARTIST" issue in MP3 files (TXXX:ALBUM ARTIST used). Forum: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=61451 Could you please add this also and re-close the bug? Thanks!
See attachment re foobar "ALBUM ARTIST". Sorry again.
(We have done the "ALBUM ARTIST" vs. "ALBUMARTIST" mapping for FLAC, so for getting a "clean release" I think we should also do it for MP3 -- in order to make foobar2k users happy and not to confuse things too much.)
OK, change 25619.
Verified fixed with SqueezeCenter Version: 7.3.3 - 26228
This bug has been fixed in the 7.3.3 release version of SqueezeCenter! If you haven't already. please download the new version from http://www.logitechsqueezebox.com/support/download-squeezecenter.html If you are still experiencing this problem, feel free to reopen the bug with your new comments and we'll have another look.