5.32 - ML setting Album Artist equal to Artist

[jph6t]

Originally posted by flocksoft
thank you to all Winamp team for SO MANY changes (in media library in particular)!

I like very very much the new filters in edit view (simple view, artist\album, album artist\album, genre\album, publisher\album); maybe to build own filters could be an extra step (something like year\artist or year\album)

a question: so far I don't use "artist album" field (so it's empty for all my files), but after applying "read metadata on selected items" I see in media library (not in file info view) the "artist album" column equal to "artist" column (all metadata guessing are disabled), in my opinion that column should remain empty

I disagree with flocksoft’s opinion, but I do think his issue warrents some thought.

I think the decision was correct to populate the “Album Artist” column in the ML with the value from the “Artist” tag, when the “Album Artist” tag is NULL.

By taking this approach, all of ones MP3s need only be tagged with “Artist” information in order for the “Album Artist” field to be useful. Thus songs with a tagged value for “Album Artist” can be used, compared, and filtered right along with those that have no value for "Album Artist".

However, I would like to have a way to view which files have a value in the “Album Artist” field. Currently I am not aware of a means to achieve this.

A Smart View with a query of: albumartist != ""
will return all the files that have been re-scanned in the ML, regardless of whether the file is tagged with a value for “Album Artist” or the ML auto-populated one with the value from the “Artist” field.

Thoughts? Suggestions?

[jph6t]

*bump*

Does no one else have an opinion on this?

[jph6t]

*bump*

No one else has an opinion on this?
The DEVs went to alot of trouble to add the Album Artist field.
Am I the only one using it?

[redstang]

I just noticed that it was added, and have been wanting this field for a long time, so I am hoping to make use of it. In my case, however, all my AlbumArtist fields are blank therefore I assume that I need to do a 'reread metadata' to get all of them to default the artist value in.

What bothers me is that Winamp doesn't appear to be showing me the same values in the id3v2 tag in the MP3 file when I do a view file info as what other software shows me. I.E. when I look at my files with other utilities, they show the AlbumArtist field as being populated, whereas Winamp does not. This makes me wonder what is really in the tags - is Winamp really not reading the tags correctly?

[LeadFoot]

How about having a checkbox to decide the behavior?

While I certainly have no opposition to filling the album artist with the artist info, there may be others who do not feel this way.

Personally, I think this may solve one of the nagging issues I have with keeping my collection in order, as I do not like to have a large number of artists with one or two tracks.

Being able to place "Various Artists" and have it sort by that, but still having the actual artist may be a perfect solution.

I for one am delighted that WinAmp now supports Album Artist as this is my preferred media library navigation method and, for me, was the main failing of WinAmp.

However, I play FLAC music files and use Tag & Rename (T&R) to manage the tags for these files. For Album Artist T&R creates an Ensemble tag and NOT an Album Artist tag. My hardware Sonos music system and its library system recognises this fine as it checks for:

ALBUMARTIST
ALBUM ARTIST
ENSEMBLE

WinAmp does not seem to check for an Ensemble tag and so thinks that Album Artist is empty and displays the full artist list. Is it possible to extend the WinAmp Album Artist tag recognition in flac files to those listed above? This is unfortunately a necessary evil of flac files with its open tagging system.

[jph6t]

Originally posted by jph6t
By taking this approach, all of ones MP3s need only be tagged with “Artist” information in order for the “Album Artist” field to be useful. Thus songs with a tagged value for “Album Artist” can be used, compared, and filtered right along with those that have no value for "Album Artist".

However, I would like to have a way to view which files have a value in the “Album Artist” field. Currently I am not aware of a means to achieve this.

*snip*

Thoughts? Suggestions?

Let's keep this thread on topic ...
we are discussing how best to work with/tweak what the developers already added.

[jph6t]

*bump*

I tripped over this issue again tonight. No I don't need a band-aid.

What I do need is a way to see which files have an actual value written to the
"Album Artist" field of their ID3v2 tag (vs those that are just displaying the value stored in the "Artist" field).

Do any of the Major Dudes or Forum Kings have an opinion/advice on this issue?

I recently installed Winamp v5.33.
v5.33 behaves the same as v5.32 in regard to this issue.

[jph6t]

Originally posted by jph6t
Do any of the Major Dudes or Forum Kings
have an opinion/advice on this issue?

Wondering where all the usual experts are.
Maybe all busy with something really great for 5.34?

[jph6t]

Originally posted by DJ Egg
Winamp 5.34 Beta, Build 1239 (Preview 4) is now available.

The 4th Beta Build of Winamp v5.34 enables a NULL Album Artist ML SmartView
(Query = "albumartist ISEMPTY").

However, there are some issues.
They are documented in the v5.34 Beta thread here.

[jph6t]

Related to the conversation around the setting of Album Artist,
is this feature request in the Wishlist forum.

[jph6t]

The above documented issue has been addressed with the release of v5.34.
Thank you DEV team!!!

In v5.34 the "Use Artist as Album Artist if not available" option was added
to the Winamp Preferences at Media Library > Local
(option circled in the below screen shot)