Bugzilla – Bug 3824
TRACKARTIST (and ALBUMARTIST) problems with MusicMagic
Last modified: 2008-12-18 11:11:39 UTC
Track Artists are problematic right now. 1. They are not searchable, and 2. clicking them in the web interface (at the 'Home / Song Info for...' level) results in an empty list. 3. They are left out of the 'Home / Albums / <album name>' list altogether: instead of '<song name> from <album name> by <artist1>, <artist2>', I see only '<song name> from <album name>' when Track Artists are present. 4. They seem to interfere with right arrow navigation in the SB3. From the song info level, I can't navigate with the right arrow at all on tracks with Track Artists but no Artist. Please refer to [url=http://forums.slimdevices.com/showpost.php?p=47590&postcount=14]this post[/url] for an explanation by Dan of roles as they pertain to contributors. (I believe the 'Track Artist' role was intended to reduce clutter in the Artist index due to Various Artists albums. Track Artists aren't listed in the browse Artists index.) Consider the following scenario: TITLE=Song7 ALBUM=Duets with Artist1 ARTIST=Artist1 ARTIST=Artist2 ALBUMARTIST=Albumartist (or, more likely, Artist1) [quote]There are 6 different roles that can map a contributor & role to a track: 'ARTIST' => 1 'COMPOSER' => 2 'CONDUCTOR' => 3 'BAND' => 4 'ALBUMARTIST' => 5 'TRACKARTIST' => 6[/quote] [quote]If a file has a TPE2 tag, or ALBUMARTIST tag, then use that in the 'Browse Artists' display - moving the 'ARTIST' for that file to the role of 'TRACKARTIST'.[/quote] So because there's an ALBUMARTIST tag, Artist1 and Artist2 become Track Artists (role 6). The track will be listed as 'Song7 from Duets with Artist1' in the browse list. Part of the problem here is that there is no one left as Artist (role 1). Pre-split-scan-merge, role 6 was _not_ applied in the same case. Artist1 and Artist 2 were left in role 1. They were listed in the browse Artists index, and the track was displayed as 'Song7 from Duets with Artist1 by Artist1, Artist2'. Clicking on Artist2 called up a full list of all Artist2's work. An interesting quirk: pre-merge behaviour can be reproduced if COMPILATION is set to 0. Artist1 and Artist2 remain in role 1 if I do that. Possible solutions: A. Implement searching and web/SB navigation for Track Artists. Consider displaying songs as '<song name> from <album name> by artist(s), track artist(s)' B. Reserve role 6 for VA albums? Poor semantically. Track Artists still not searchable, not navigable. C. Force desired behaviour using COMPILATION=0. Redundant when ALBUMARTIST is already defined. Doesn't solve Track Artist issues.
Created attachment 1377 [details] sample songs sample songs to demonstrate Track Artist problems
Bug 2638 ( https://bugs-archive.lyrion.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2638 ) explains the rationale for using TRACKARTIST by default when ALBUMARTIST is set: trivial contributors (artists not attached to a full album) should not appear in the browse Artist index. This makes sense. However, prolific studio musicians (Ry Cooder, Emmylou Harris to name several) appear on countless albums as important contributors. Clicking Ry Cooder ought to bring up Talking Timbuktu (Ali Farka Toure) and Buena Vista Social Club in addition to his solo work if the user has tagged him as ARTIST on those records. Ditto for Emmylou. 'Home / Artists / Emmylou Harris' should really list I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning (ALBUMARTIST=Bright Eyes, ARTIST=Bright Eyes, ARTIST=Emmylou Harris) and Desire (ALBUMARTIST=Bob Dylan...)--not just Blue Kentucky Girl (ALBUMARTIST=Emmylou Harris). Conclusion: with the exception of being omitted from the browse Artists index, shouldn't Track Artists be handled in the same way as other contributors?
(In reply to comment #0) > 4. They seem to interfere with right arrow navigation in the SB3. From the song > info level, I can't navigate with the right arrow at all on tracks with Track > Artists but no Artist. Problem disappears with Firmware 59--please disregard #4.
Subject: Re: TRACKARTIST (and ALBUMARTIST) problems The firmware has nothing to do with this. It's all on the server side.
(In reply to comment #4) > Subject: Re: TRACKARTIST (and ALBUMARTIST) problems > > The firmware has nothing to do with this. It's all on the server side. > My problems with navigating with the right arrow via SB have gone away. All the other TRACKARTIST reports still apply.
Fixes for the trackartist issues have been commited in change 8784
I'd like to confirm that this is working--quite nicely, too. This fix/enhancement was _very_ well thought out. Thanks!
Created attachment 1398 [details] FLAC files with many contributing ARTIST tags A rescan with 'Use MusicMagic' enabled raises the same trackartist issues, esp. with FLAC. In particular, clicking the hyperlinks at the contributor level results in dead ends and incomplete contributor lists. (I've attached some dummy FLAC files tagged with numerous contributing artists. I've used ; to separate artists instead of multiple tags, so MIP should be able to read all the info.) Should I reopen this bug, or post a new one under MusicMagic? Can anyone recommend any debugging strategies?
Running with --d_info and --d_musicmagic should give hints
Created attachment 1400 [details] library scans without MM, with MM enabled Scans of a small library: 2 albums containing multiple artists separated by semicolons, both with ALBUMARTIST defined. One album MP3, one album FLAC. --d_info and -d_musicmagic enabled. Scanned once without MM, then scanned again with MM enabled. After the scan with MM, the album containing FLAC files was listed under Various Artists. Clicking on contributing artists brought up empty lists. For what it's worth, I tried using BAND and ORCHESTRA instead of ALBUMARTIST (which MM does not appear to recognize) for the FLAC files. It didn't help.
And this is at the track listing level?
Yes--clicking on contributing artists at the track listing level fails to bring up a list of albums to which they contributed. Clicking the hyperlink for most 'minor' artists (who are not associated with full albums) at the track level leads to an empty list.
Ok, thanks
I believe this should be fixed now. Can you verify? Thanks
The MusicMagic problem with album artist/contributing artists persists in SlimServer Version 6.5.1 - 10207. After a scan using Musicmagic, clicking a link for a "Track Artist" (or using right arrow on the SB3) fails to bring up a list of albums to which the artist contributed. I've run a scan on one folder with and without MusicMagic enabled. When I examine the database, I find that after a MusicMagic scan, contributing artists are no longer listed in the contributor_album table. contributor_album values after normal scan: the album artist and seven contributing artists are listed. (The album is Buena Vista Social Club, BTW. FLAC with one ALBUMARTIST field and multiple ARTIST fields.) role, contributor, album 5, 1, 1 6, 2, 1 6, 3, 1 6, 4, 1 6, 5, 1 6, 6, 1 6, 7, 1 6, 8, 1 contributor_album values after MusicMagic scan: all but one of the contributors is dropped. As you might expect, contributor 8 works properly as a 'Track Artist'. The other contributors are listed as 'Track Artist' at the track level, but clicking the links at the track level leads to empty lists. role, contributor, album 5, 1, 1 6, 8, 1 The missing entries in the contributor_album table appear to be the problem. Let me know if I can describe it better or if you need any other information.
I recently switched to use MusicMagic and have now the following problem which may be related to this bug: 1. For albums having COMPILATION=1 and ALBUMARTIST set to Diverse (German for "Various") only the last artist of this album is searchable. The other artists are only found if they have additionally an own album (are not only artists of compilations). All artists having no own album are not found (except the last). This happens when using the remote and also when using the simple search in the web interface. It does not happen when using the advanced search in the web interface. 2. When I browse for such a compilation album, press RIGHT on the remote to go into the song info menu for a song of an artist which is only on this compilation, go down to the artist and then press RIGHT on the artist "empty" is shown. Even the album I started from is not shown (which obviously should be). This also happens when using the web interface (clicking on the artist name in the song info page). If the artist is not only on this compilation but has also an own album pressing RIGHT on the remote or clicking on the artist name shows only this own album. 3. I have one album with COMPILATION=1 but ALBUMARTIST not set. For this album all artists are searchable. This happens only when "use MusicMagic" ist on. When I select "use MusicMagic" and make a wipe and rescan all artst the problems of item 1. and 2. do not appear. As soon as I switch "use MusigMagic" on again and make a wipe and rescan the problem reappears. I use SlimServer Version: 6.5.1 - 10559 - Windows XP - DE - cp1252 and MusicIP Mixer 1.7.1.
I can confirm that I also see the same behaviour as Dieter has described above. With "Use MusicMagic" enabled I can't search for individual tracks' artists using either the player or web interface, but if I disable it and do a clear-and-rescan I can search as expected. Looking in the database I see that only one artist is recorded in the contributor_album relation for that album (it's the last track's artist, I think), but when MM is disabled then that table holds all the tracks' artists as expected. SlimServer Version: 6.5.1 - r10617- Linux - EN - iso-8859-1 MusicIP 1.7.1
Is somebody working on this? I love to use MusicIP (MusicMagic), it's such a great enhancement of Slimserver. But it is annoying that artists of compilations cannot be searched for.
Still no answer?? Severity of this bug is set to "minor" but for me it is "major". With this bug I cannot access most of the songs of my compilations by artist. I cannot browse for the artist since I do not include compilation artists in the browse artist list to reduce this list, and I cannot search for these artists since they are not found due to this bug. So please could somebody indicate whether this bug will be fixed shortly? I would _really_ appreciate that. Thanks a lot.
This bug is still assigned to 6.5.1 (which it will definitely not match). Are there any developments? I still cannot search for artists of compilations...
@Dieter (or anyone interested) Since the contributor_album table is poorly populated by the MusicMagic scan, I've been using the following as a workaround (for quite some time now): --scan withoiut MusicMagic --back up contributor_album table --scan using MM plugin --restore contributor_album table My batch file looks a little like this: scanner.exe --rescan --progress --cleanup pause mysqldump -P 9092 slimserver contributor_album > %temp%\contributor_album.sql pause scanner.exe --rescan --musicmagic --progress pause mysql -P 9092 slimserver < %temp%\contributor_album.sql del %temp%\contributor_album.sql pause (Your mileage may vary.)
@windowshade Thanks for that tip, I will try it this evening.. I have never used the command line scanner.exe but always make a complete wipe and rescan (since I had sometimes problems when only scanning for new and amende music). Will your batch file make a wipe and rescan or only search for new and amended music? Is msqldump and mysql installed together with slimserver? Otherwise I won't have it.
I still have the external mysql installed from the beta days; I don't believe those commands are included with the installed mysqld. That batch file probably won't work for you right out of the box--unless your configuration is exactly the same as mine. If you're not real familiar with using the Windows command line, you could install MySQL Administrator. It has a nice (if somewhat busy!) GUI and facilitates backup and restore. 1. Scan with "Don't use MusicMagic" selected 2. Use MySQL Administrator to backup ONLY the contributor_album table 3. Rescan (Look for new and changed music) with "Use MusicMagic" selected 4. Use MySQL Administrator to restore the contributor_album table from your backup file 5. Happy searching! Obviously, this is a big pain in the butt--hence the batch file. (And it goes without saying: don't do this at home. Of course you could lose data and then you'd have to rescan yet again. I won't know how to help if this breaks something else.)
I installed mysql and used your batch commands (of course I adapted the temp path) but it does not work. Even after having restored the contributor_album table from my backup file slimserver will still only find the last artist of a compilation but not all other artists (except they have another _own_ album). Can I check in any way if after the first rescan the dumped contributor_album table is correct? PLEASE, couldn't that bug be addressed by the slimserver developers. There is no response since 2006-10-4 where Dan thought this bug should be fixed now, but unfortunately it wasn't. If you have a lot of compilations and want to use MusicIP, the search function of slimserver is useless with this bug.
I tried again to save and restore the contributor_album table and this time when I search for an artist which has songs only on compilations I find _some_ of his songs but not all (for example two songs of Reamonn are now found but in fact there are six songs in my library, always one on a different compilation). So it seems the workaround is not reliable. Why isn't there any answer from the Slimdevices team? Isn't it important that the search doesn't work? Or is support for MusicIP not important? I really think about not using MusicIP anymore to be able to use the search, but I love to use MusicIP... So what should I do?
@Stuart: Can't your lazysearch provide a kind of workaround for this bug? I never use the regular search but only your lazysearch plugin. Since the keyword search of your plugin finds all artists (even artists of compilations) couldn't that also be possbile for the artist search (which uses at the moment the regular search and thus has the same problems as the regular search)? Dieter
@Dieter To be honest, I'd not thought about it - I'll look into it and drop a note back here.
I've been running 7.0a1 for a while and I no longer see this issue. Looking at my databases between the two SlimServer versions (both with MIP enabled), I see: SlimServer7: contributor_album=2,250 rows SlimServer6.5.2: contributor_album=593 rows Going back to 6.5.2 I can still reproduce the problem, so it definitely looks like something that may have been fixed in the current trunk versions.
So it may be an easier solution to switch to version 7 of slimserver? Although I previously used to install frequently beta versions of 6.5 I did not yet look into version 7. Is slimserver 7 already stable enough to be used without too much trouble? I also have to look whether all plugins I use are already compatible with version 7. I saw that fortunately your lazysearch plugin is compatible otherwise I wouldn't upgrade.
Well, it works for me (on Linux), and is stable in common usage (including MIP). A lack of other people's plugins is a drawback at the moment, though (particularly AlienBBC, Last.fm and AudioScrobbler). But it's easy enough to give it a go and roll back if you have any trouble. I can still look into fixing my 6.5 plugin version to work around this problem, if you'd like. Because this is a somewhat long report is it simply a matter of also searching the other artist roles at the same time, rather than just "role 1"?
I have to see if I find the time to try version 7. Unfortunately, I am very busy at the moment and so it can take some time (and my family wouldn't also be very happy when I'am sitting at the computer during my few free time trying to install slimserver). If it's not too impertinent it would be great if you could workout a workaround for your 6.5 plugin version. Since I never went into the "artist role" thing of slimserver I don't understand your question. But I think you have only to read comment #16 of this bug report. The complete problem is described there. Thanks a lot Dieter
OK - I'll see what I can do. I've got to keep your family happy!
Still the same gentleman as ever...
@ Dr. Strangelove, Brief synopsis: most entries for role 6 (TRACKARTIST) are dropped from the contributor_album table altogether after a musicmagic scan. It will be hard to search for (and even harder to find) data that is not present. Thanks for the Keyword LazySearch, by the way. Great feature. MY family LOVES your plugin. (I did a command line wipe & scan & forgot to rebuild the LazySearch index: my wife noticed within the hour.) You are a vassal of domestic bliss.
Well, in the name of domestic bliss could you chaps give the following a try: http://hickinbottom.demon.co.uk/lazysearch/browser/branches/2.3.1b1/LazySearch2.pm?format=raw This is a very ugly workaround that traverses track artists rather than album artists (you're right, Mr Windowshade, in that you can't use data that's not there!). I've not given it a great deal of testing, but it seems to work on my 6.5 installation with MIP. As this isn't a fix for the bug here it's probably wise to take this off Bugzilla to avoid cluttering this bug. Could you report back to stuart@hickinbottom.demon.co.uk? There's a good chance it's not doing what you expect but I hope I can come up with something that would work well enough to make do until it's fixed properly.
Just to clear things up - I was definitely wrong when I said that the problem no longer occurred in 7.0. I've retested it and I see that contributor missing from the contributor_album table just as I did in 6.5. Rescanning my library with "Use MusicIP" turned off leaves those records in the contributor_album table. Sorry for the confusion my comments have added.
Change 11663 should fix this.
Yes, I can confirm that seems to fix it for me. I've tried this commit in both the 6.5 and 7.0 branches. Thanks very much for the fix.
I will test it when the Windows installation package is available.
I tested the new version and it is a great improvement but unfortunately it is not yet completely fixed. All artists of compilations (albums having ALBUMARTIST=Various and COMPILATION=1) can now be searched and found. These artists are shown as ARTIST in track info. But I have some albums which are no compilations but one or some songs of these albums are duetts. For example, one album is an album of Tony Bennett but one song is a duett of Tony Bennett and Diana Krall. Tags are as follows: For all songs ARTIST=Tony Bennett and for the duett ARTIST=Tony Bennett & Diana Krall and "&" is set as separator for "multiple items in tags". In order to indicate this album as Tony Bennett album ALBUMARTIST is set to Tony Bennett but compilation is not set since the album should not be shown unter Various but under Tony Bennett. Previouslay this worked as expected but now the album is no longer listed when browsing for Tony Bennett. And when searching for Tony Bennett the album is not in the found albums of Tony Bennett. The album is only found when searching for or browsing by album but not for/by artist. The reason seems to be that in trackinfo Tony Bennett is not listed as ARTIST but as TRACK ARTIST and TRACK ARTIST seems not to be included in search and browse results. Artists of regular albums and of compilations are shown as ARTIST in trackinfo. This seems to be a problem of this "role" thing which I did not understand until now... Shortly spoken the probems happens if you set ALBUMARTIST to a specific artist but don't set COMPILATION=1. Is this issue related to the present bug or should a new bug report be opened?
I have the same problem Dieter has--and it extends to the "Don't use MusicMagic" scan. As well, the total number of artists dropped from 520 to 474; I suspect a number of contributing artists were drooped from the total.
> I suspect a number of contributing artists were drooped from the total. Ahem. Dropped.