Various artists
 

I am aware of the album artists tag, but why is it not possibel that winamp detects various artists automatically? Many others apps are able to do so.

artist/album-art view-preset shows albums in a weird way
 

Hi guys!
Not sure where to post the bug/feature (?) I found, as I didn't want to start a new topic.

I installed Winamp 5.5 (love it!). When I tried the the artist/album-art view-preset in the media library instead of artist/album I experienced a difference how albums get handled.

Bug:
- When I use the artist/album view-preset the albums get displayed correctly (e.g. only one entry for Bady Boys OST).
- When I switch to the artist/album-art view-preset the data presentation changes. Now I see the Bady Boys OST cover 15 times. I know each title has its own artist, but before it got displayed as one and now with album art its 15 entries? I don't get it. I thought album-art would be like album plus a cover picture.

Solution that didn't work:
I must say that before Winamp 5.5 my mp3s never had an album artist. So I corrected some for testing putting the real artist in that field or VA for compilations like Soundtracks etc. I updated the media library database but the bug is still there.

I would love to find out how to fix that. Thanks for any ideas, I totally appreciate it!

Greetings!

Setting the "Album Artist" field to eg. "Various Artists" should work.
It does here anyway.

Hi!
Thanks for your reply. I already did that, but the problem was not solved. But then I tried dumping the database and create it from scratch instead of just updating it. Then the presenation of the albums was correct.

I realized, that some files (mostly ogg) which I tagged with mp3tag still got shwon incorrectly. When I tagged them with Winamp 5.5 I saw that Winamp shows an empty album artist tag while mp3tag does show a properly filled tag. After retagging the album artist tag with Winamp, even ogg files showed correctly after I dumped and recreated the database.

Problem solved. But took some manual steps.

Cheers

Not really. I am still interested in making the detection of various artists an automated system rather then asking the user to manually tag compilations as 'various artists'.

It's automated when ripping CD's with Winamp
ie. CDDB automatically marks it as a compilation album
and Winamp sets the Album Artist to Various Artists.

If you're downloading files from elsewhere, then it's up to you or the provider to set the Album Artist field to Various Artists.

I understand, but isn't it actually quite easy to do it on the fly? Whenever Winamp finds an album that has different artist names, just let winamp show it as a compilation. Why depend on CDDB and user input?

The reason I am asking is that I do not want to change my files and tags. Another way of doing this would be to make virtual tag changes (only in the winamp database, but not in the files themselves), but that is not possible either, is it?

DJ Egg,

I am having a similiar problem. I have noticed with the 5.5 release there is a "compilation" selection under genre.

I have over 200 compilation CD's but only two of them are lised. Today I spent an hour going through my "compilation" folder to ensure my CD's were tagged properly - with Tag & Rename. Then rescanned my library. The same two CD's are listed.

Any suggestions?

Winamp doesn't use the Genre for Album Art, it uses Album Artist and Album Name.

I am still looking for a rationale why winamp is not programmed to detect compilations automatically, but instead asks to user to tell winamp what is a compilation and what not.

I'm getting the same problem. My tags are correct. For example, The Album Artist field is filled with "Various Artists" and when it shows up in the media library there are seperate Album Art for each track, not one for the whole album.

For all the wonderful customisation that winamp offers it seems bizzare that you can not view by album.

I have a folder with 100+ 80's songs in it and one album cover under one album name ( "The 1980s" oddly enough!).

Are you saying that there is no other way to view just one album art cover unless I rename all the artist name to Various Artists or something similar and lose the artist name altogether?






PS.. Otherwise love the new skin!

Winamp should assign that cover to all the 'albums' in that folder provided the image is called folder or cover (or all the files have the exact album name of "The 1980s" and the cover is named "The 1980s").

When Winamp goes to display these tracks in the Media Library it will see how many albums there are by the number of artists if the Album Artist field is not set. If it sees 100 tracks with the album name of "The 1980s" by 100 different artists it will say there are 100 albums with the name "The 1980s". However if you set the album artist field Winamp will see it as one album for every album artist.

When I select that option and have the text view it says that there is one album called "The 1980's" but when I toggle the view to album art it shows me the same cover 100 times!.

I have tried all views and combinations! What do you think it should be? And what should I select in the filters?

You would think that within the filters if you select Album & Album Art you would only get one Album picture showing

DOH!!! OK WORKED IT OUT!!!

I just twigged what Album Artist means, most of those tags were not filled in, so I did that, sorted by Album Artist as you suggested and all is right with the world again!

Cheers J_Darnley!!

But why use album artist at all? Why can't winamp automatically decide that if there are multiple artists with the same album tag in a single folder it has to be a various artists album??

What about two albums called "Greatest Hits", one by "Lousy artist A" and the other by "Lousy artist B"? Would you like both these to be combined into the same album?

There is no way to do this automatically as some people just have a sinlge folder on their PC will all their music in. Winamp could check online but then Winamp will have to fill in some sort of field so it doesn't have to do this again. Now imagine it checking all Artists-Album combos in your library and you will have a couple hundred requests.

I have one album with 512 different artists for 1446. Now I wouldn't Winamp querying an online database just so see if they are one album or not. I simply filled in the Album Artist field.

This case is really exceptional and should not be a reason to force the majority of people to do additional tagging. People who have multiple albums in the same folder will most likely have multiple albums with different titles in that folder as well and then it would be clear to Winamp that it is not a single album. These people should then do manual tagging.

Isn't it better to ask the exceptions for additional tagging than to ask the majority of people?

An easy solution to that problem is rename the album to "ZZ Top's Greatest Hits" or whoever the artist is.
That being said, it's not too difficult to select all of the tracks in a given album and change the Album Artist field either.
I have done both of these and I have over 33,000 songs and 1700 albums.
Didn't take as long as you might think.
I also found that everything runs faster the more folders and organization you have. Have a folder for each artist and a folder for each album. For compilations, just have a folder for each like "Top 100 Billborad Hits 1985". The more you organize your library, the smoother everything runs.

Instead of being listed under each individual artist, the compilation albums should be listed under 'Various'.

Could you not get Winamp to check the 'album artist' before the 'artist'?

I've yet to find two different compilation albums of the same title, so listing them all under 'Various' shouldn't be a problem.

Winamp uses "Album Artist" first, if that is blank it falls back to "Artist"

Well then it's broken.

I have the album artist set to 'Various', and the artists set to the correct names, but the tracks still show up under each individual artist, instead of being grouped under 'Various'.

What view is this in? If you configure Winamp to show artists then it will show artists not album artists. However the album art will always use album artist (and fall back to artist) to group them.

Set it to "Various Artists". See if that does the trick.

I think the thread has gone a bit off topic.

If I've understood gummbah this is what the suggestion is about:
Could we have a checkbox(similar to the one that says "use artist as album artist if not availible"), that apply to all tracks with empty 'album artist' tag, same album tag but different artist tags.
Having the box checked should make WA set 'album artist' to "various artist" for these tracks.

I don't think this suggestion is too bad myself but I do agree that greatest hits albums and maybe split albums could cause some problems. The solution to this could be to make the feature smarter, making it see if many of the tracks have the same artist tag. This could take a lot of extra coding for a small feature tho..
The simple solution could simply be to tag the these tracks with the correct 'album artist' tag, it's probably not that many albums that will have this problem anyway.

Btw, this thread should probably be under Winamp Wishlist.

Thanks that is what I meant. And there won't be a problem if you add three rules for deciding if tracks belong to a various album:

A number of tracks should be automatically grouped under a various artist tag when:

1) The tracks have the same album tag AND
2) The tracks are in the same folder AND
3) The tracks have multiple artist tags

A greatest hits album ususally is from the same artist. Greatest hits compilations are not just called greatest hits, but 'greatest hits of the 70s' or something.