Bugzilla – Bug 2055
When using "Multiple Items in Tags" option albums are incorrectly treated as VA albums
Last modified: 2008-09-15 14:36:01 UTC
When using the option "Multiple Items in Tags" for the artist of a non VA album this album is incorrectly classified as VA album by SlimServer, i.e. it is listed under "Various Artists" when browsing artists and an "Album Artist" "Various Artists" is shown for each song under song info. In addition the artists (for each artist one link) are shown under "Track Artist" instead of under "Artist" in song info. Example is an album of the artists "Ella Fitzgerald & Louis Armstrong" with "&" being defined as separator for the "Multiple Items" option. All songs are of the artist(s) "Ella Fitzgerald & Louis Armstrong". The artists are correctly splitted but SlimServer treats this album in addition as VA album which is not correct since all songs are of the same artist(s).
I tried now to prevent the incorrect automatic classification as VA album by manually setting ALBUMARTIST to "Louis Armstrong & Ella Fitzgerald". After a rescan the album is no longer listed in "Browse Albums" and neither Louis Armstrong nor Ella Fitzgerald are listed in "Browse Artists". In addition the album is also no longer listed under "Various Artists" when browsing artists. It seems that due to the manual setting of ALBUMARTIST to a value different from "Various Artists" the album is on the one hand no longer treated as VA album but since the separated artists are still interpreted as "Track Artists" they (and the album) are also not shown in the browse lists (since the options "Group compilations albums together" and "Don't include compilation artists in artist list" are set.
Why not stop using & as the separator character, and use multiple ARTIST tags for the other albums in your collection that you want to actually have multiple artist tags?
If I don't use the option "Multiple Items in Tags" but use for each artist a separate ARTIST tag, wouldn't that also lead to the automatic classification as VA album since the album has more then one artist defined? Moreover, it needs more effort to tag all albums in that way. All ripping programs I know (I use EAC) can only set one ARTIST tag automatically. When I rip a CD having these "&" artists (Ella Fitzgerald & Louis Armstrong, Gladys Night & The Pips) which I want to treat as two single artists (since I have e.g. a lot of "Ella Fitzegerald" only albums and I want to find ALL "Ella Fitzgerald" songs using Browse Artist or Search for Artist) I cannot create two different ARTIST tags automatically. So when I found the "Multiple Items in Tags" option in Slimserver I was very happy. None of the programs I used before had this sophisticated solution. And in most of the cases it seems to work perfectly. There is only the described problem with VA albums and the problem described in bug 1209. I will retag one album with multiple ARTIST tags and see what happens.
I tried to use multiple ARTIST tags instead of the "&" separator and now the test album is correctly NOT detected as VA album. The album is correctly listed under each of the both artists when browsing artist or searching for artists. In the song info both artists are listed as separater links under "Artist". The only drawback is that when using a title format including ARTIST for displaying on the Squeezbox (or in the web interface) only ONE of both artists is shown. I would likek to see "Summertime (Ella Fitzgerald & Louis Armstrong" instead of "Summertime (Louis Armstrong)" when using the title format "TITLE (ARTIST)". And, beside the effort of manuall taggin all files with multiple ARTIST tags, what is the "Multiple Item in Tags" option for when I cannot use it?
1. What is the difference beween using & as the separator character and using (manually created) multiple ARTIST tags? Shouldn't using & as separator character produce identical multiple ARTIST tags? 2. Regarding bug 1209, wouldn't it be possible to show not only the _first_ artist in the ARTIST formatting data element but _all_ artists separated e.g. by "/" if there are multiple ARTIST tags defined? This would immediately work with the manually created multiple ARTIST tags and also with the & separator as soon as the splitting is corrected.
1) You are wanting two different things at once. * Some artists to be separated by using the & * Some artists (like Louis & Ella) to not be separated. 2) Not easily - because we treat them as two different artists.
No I don't think that I want two different things at once. 1. If I use & as separator the artists should be splitted (like "Ella Fitzgerald & Louis Armstrong") since I have a lot of other _only_ Ella Fitzgerald albums/songs which should go along with the album/song of the duo. 2. If I do not want to separate artists (like "Simon and Garfunkel") I use "and" instead of "&" so that the artists are not separated. When displaying the title of a track along with its artist (e.g. using title formatting "TITLE (ARTIST)") I would like to see a list of _all_ artists after the title. That would be similar as in the song info page where already after the label "Artist:" _all_ artist are shown as links separated by a space. At the moment only _one_ artist is shown after the title when displaying TITLE (ARTIST) which means that the other artists are stripped. If _all_ artists would be shown, like it is already the case in the song info page, it would be ok. If in addition instead of the space another character like e.g. "/" would be used it would even be better since the artist name often contains alread a space between first name and family name. And "Ella Fitzgerald/Louis Armstrong" would be easier to read than "Ella Fitzgerald Louis Armstrong".
I just found a different but similar szenario which may be related to this bug and perhaps to bug 2066 and to bug 2056. I have an album of Tony Bennett with 18 tracks but on three of these track there is an additional artist (Duetts with Diana Krall). I set for all songs which are only of Tony Bennett the ARTIST tag to Tony Bennett and for the three remaining tracks I set two separate ARTIST tags, one to Tony Bennett and one to Diana Krall (as recommended by Dan in comment #2). Since I don't want to show up this album as VA album under Various Artists, I set the ALBUMARTIST tag to Tony Bennett. But now the album is _neither_ shown under Various Artists (when browsing artists) since the ALBUMARTIST is manually set to a value different from Various Artists _nor_ under Tony Bennett since for this album _Track_ artist is used and not the normal artist (and _track_ artist are not shown in the browse artist list). As result the album is not shown at all in the browse artist list. This is different from the behavior mentioned in comment #4 since in the album of comment #4 _all_ tracks of the album are tagged with the same two artists whereas in this new example some tracks are tagged with a single artist and some with this single artist and an additional artist.
Large Various Artists / Multiple Artists in Tags update checked in as subversion change 4258.