Artist Info on Compilation Albums

I can't help you directly with your specific question. But I had a miserable experience with iTunes at trying to rip CDs with lots of "featuring" artist. If there's 20 tunes of that type on the CD, you'll obtain 20 "albums" in iTunes with only one tune in each of them.

A workaround I found is to use another ripping software to do the job... after cleaning up the mess in iTunes, of course. As it's almost impossible to predict when it's going to happen. I use EAC to rip in FLAC when I have to (I'm using iTunes only to rip in Apple Lossless).

Bye.

I-tune is not the best ripping software, whatever format...

Artist vs Album Artist.  Any player/ripper worth its 0s and 1s should handle both tags.

Album Artist = "Various", "Multiple", "Soundtrack", "Varese" etc...

Artist = "John Zorn", "Mike Patton", "LSO", "Uri Caine" etc...

All you have to do on iTunes is click the compilation box and it works perfectly - no idea why it doesn't work on US though, it should do as Patrick says. In iTunes if you leave the the Album Artist field blank it will default to Various and file it at the end of Library, whereas if you insert "Various" it will file under V.  The Vortexbox does this too. 

Surely the UnitiServe must have an app or web interface that lets you edit the tags and insert your preferred cover art? If it doesn't it needs it. Does it support the compilation tag? 

The uServe certainly does have an app that lets you edit tags and album art -- it's the "desktop client" that presently is Windows-only.

A compilation can use the Album tag to name it, and "Various Artists" as Artist.  I am at work right now and so I can't connect to see how "Artist" is handled on an individual track basis on such compilations but I'm sure others will chime in.

Of course, but it had to get out. I feel better now.

dBPoweramp FTW!

Bye.

I have an NDX which streams CD's ripped from a Uniti Serve and on compilations artist is simply shown as "Various Artists" . An earlier post suggests that you can change this via the desktop client but i cant see how to. Can anyone help ?

Terry,

Set "Album Artist" to either "Various' or "Stockhausen" etc.

Then set "Artist" to the actual artist playing.

I cant say how things will sort for you though.

In J River this would put the album in "Multiple Artists" in Artist View.

-Patrick

There's no need for a work-around. Just select all the songs once they're ripped and go to "get info". Edit the "Album Artist" field to whatever you like (usually the main artist, but if it is a true compilation album, you'll have to choose something that makes sense e.g. "Tarantino" or "Various Artists" for the Pulp Fiction soundtrack). I've just tested this again it works perfectly for me.

Bizarre.  Both "Artist" and "Album Artist" are widely used and very standard tags.  I don't think I have ever thought about using "Performer" because of that.  I would use that for Classical possibly, to list the Orchestra or Ensemble, but I dont view that tag (and wouldn't want to) in any of my views.  Also, I always tag my "Album" name with any relevant info about performer, conductor, record label etc...

A media player should use "Artist" and "Album Artist" interchangeably until there is a conflict.  Then it should list the album as "Various Artists" or "Multiple Artists".  Most players look for one or the other and if not there defaults to one with existing tags

John Zorn - Voices in the Wilderness is a various artist album of Tzadik artists playing compositions by John Zorn.  Although it is technically "various", I want the album to be found under "John Zorn", not "Multiple Artists".

If you have a various artist/comp album and want it to show up under a particular artist rather than "Various", as with the above, I would set BOTH "Artist" and "Album Artist" to John Zorn then write the actual artist playing into the "Track Name" tag.

+1 on that Winkyincanada. That is exactly how it works on for me. If I then search for a track by name or an artist on the Apple remote running on an iPad I get all the results but they are then grouped by Artist and/or tracks and or albums that include the search term. If I choose an artist it drills down even further or I can just play the album or song straight from the search results.

Doesn't seem messy to me. 

@Nick B

I'm interested in this as I may be contemplating a Naim server in the future. What seems to be alluded to in the 'Naim Extended Music Database' white paper from 2008 is that Naim came to their own solution that differs somewhat from what is commonly used elsewhere.

If I read correctly, 'Performer' is a notion that you can find at the album and/or at the track level. 'Artist' seems to be a more "vague" notion at the album level. It is a bit as if 'Artist' would relate to the "marketing" side of the album (who is "selling", if I may say so), and 'Performer' would relate to whom is actually "working". And I suppose that you can have more than one 'Perfomer' per album or track.

If I'm taking Patrick's example (coz' I like JZ very much), the 'Artist' could be John Zorn (and also the composer I guess), the 'Performer' at the album level could be 'Various Artists' and the 'Performer' at the track level could be each individual band paying tribute to Zorn's music.

If the white paper is correct, if you browse or search John Zorn, you should see this tribute album.

I do something similar in iTunes (for iPhone syncing): I use ARTIST and ALBUM ARTIST sometimes differently. For instance, I can group all Charles Lloyd formations under the ARTIST Charles Lloyd, but the ALBUM ARTIST can be either Charles Lloyd, or Charles Lloyd Quartet, etc.

The Naim way rings a bell indeed, as I don't like to have more than one information in each tag if possible, but I don't know if I got it right ?

In any case, the problem of not reading correctly common tags in files ripped elsewhere sounds like a bug to me.

Thanks

Maurice

Yes, the search is flawless, on the iPad or directly on the host PC. Never misses. I don't know how I could want more than iTunes offers in regard to library management. I have about 1000 CDs on my Mini and it is still instantaneous, either on iPad orby screen sharing with the Mini.

I think this is a stretch.... Artist? Performer? Who cares? Adherence to a common standard is much more important than esoteric definitions.

I rarely intervene with iTunes' tagging, It does a great job. It is just those compilations that give me a little grief from time to time.

Some like more info, some less.  To each their own.

I like knowing it is Boulez at the helm conducting Stravinsky.  I also like knowing which release I am listening to in the case that I have more than one version of a favorite.

Stravinsky - Le Sacre du Printemps {Boulez}

or

Steely Dan - Aja {MCA - Hoffman}

Steely Dan - Aja {MFSL UDCD 515}

I realize this doesn't work for you because iTunes wont find art for those albums with brackets.

-Patrick

What I find I'm doing increasingly is browsing for album information on the internet while I'm listening. "Who's that on bass?". Are there any other albums where they feature?" etc. I just Google it up. Often (but not always) find myself on the Wikipedia page about the album and/or artist. I don't really need much local information.

I don't often bother with different labels/pressings so that isn't an issue for me. Where I do have two versions e.g. Pearl Jam -Ten, Pearl Jam -Ten Redux, I just edit the album name to differentiate if iTunes doesn't get it.

Yes, I'm doing something like this too (with square brackets but whatever).

It's a pity though, because standard (or at the very least "suggested") tags -- either ID3v2.4 or Vorbis comments -- are already there for these kinds of information. It's just most software seem to make no use of them beyond basic artist/album artist/album/track/genre/release date.

It's true that a lot of info can be found online, but I think it would nice to be able to browse the collection through less than trivial criteria (all Hoffman-mastered albums; all albums with this bass player; all albums from Souljazz Records; etc. to your liking).

Coherent information is hard to maintain, that's why I think Naim's decision to go with licensed AMG pro data is a good one.

Maurice

The All Music Database is used by a lot of people. iTunes, Amazon, Naim, Yahoo!, Windows Media Player. It has a lot of information available from Basic data to Editorial data like biographies and reviews. I am not sure how much of this information is mined and presented by each of the licensees.

I agree with Patrick that some people like lots of this stuff and sometimes I do so to satisfy this need I use an app on the iPad called "Discovr Music" which presents the connections between albums/artists etc in a "mind map" that then takes you to all sorts of new artists and music.

Hmmm... 'About iTunes' says Gracenote CDDB, not AMG or Rovi. But whatever, the number of providers of such information is limited, and I presume Rovi's AMG and Gracenote's CDDB are among the most complete. (I find Discogs, a crowd-sourced database, is good too. MusicBrainz not that much.)

I too would like to know how much is used by which software.

Sure it is easy to find information on the Internet -- be it through apps --, what I would like to have is this information about my own collection. Browsing the cover sheets if you like, and putting this information to good use like in creating playlists, or browsing specific information, or finding correlations I didn't know about. The technology is here, it just seems not to be used which is a pity IMO.

For instance, I've discovered a jazz bass player I didn't know about, Trevor Ware, in a new album I've just bought. I most certainly have other albums where Mr. Ware is playing, and if my CD collection was ripped I'd like this information to be easier to find. This is not public information from AMG, except if stated in some reviews, or if a work is under Trevor Ware's own name.

I don't mind using these types of identification rather than the actual tags.  The reason being that it is a little messy to start showing a ton of tags in clean media views.  There are only so many columns I want to show.

For control points they may or may not (most dont) support things like "Performer", "Composer" or BOTH "Artist" AND "Album Artist", "Bitrate" etc...

Typically, those are:

- Artist

- Album

- Track #/Track Name

- Year

- Genre

Anything else is superfluous for my needs.  So, any info I find pertinent to a release I put in the "Album" tag.  Search features of course find those and they can also be used in Smartlists or other playlists.

For example, there are a few record labels that I always want easily searchable and also in the "Album" tag for quick reference.  Tzadik, Winter & Winter, Anticon, Ipecac, WARP etc...

Also, I insert any bitrate info into "Album" tags so they are searchable as well.  A typical example of an album tag would be:

"Dreamers {Tzadik 7074 - Vinyl 24-96}"

or

"Remain In Light {HDTracks 24-96}"

Then I can set-up active smartlists (playlists) that look for (or exclude) certain things.  I have a "hi-res" smartlist that looks for "24-48" and "24-96".  I have an "Audiophile" smartlist that looks for "Diament", "Hoffman", "MFSL", "DCC" etc.  I have a "Easy Zorn" list that excludes "Naked City", and "Painkiller"

J River's smartlist are super powerful and of course not static, i.e. they update on the fly given tags.

-patrick

Google "tuneglue".  Sweet.