Artist and Album Artist Fields

[StephenJK]

Paul,

Thanks for getting the comma's to work with the folder names.  It's not a big priority, but would it be possible to have an additional field for the album details? 

There isn't an option for entering "Artist" in the file or folder name. 

The program I use for ripping CD's, for example, allows me to use the following selection.

[album artist] \ [album] \ [track] - [artist] - [title]

That lets me enter something like "Power Station, The" for the Album Artist, but then "The Power Station" for the Artist.  As I say, it's not a big deal, but many programs provide both fields.

This is especially useful with Classical titles, where the Album Artist can be with the conductor first, but the Artist can be the soloist or vocalist.  It provides more options for searches and sorting.

Stephen

[Paul Sanders (AlpineSoft)]

OK, we'll consider it.

[Paul Sanders (AlpineSoft)]

PS: You might consider using the track artist for this purpose, although you need to enter it for every track on the album.  You might also find 'Edit Album Notes' in the Album menu useful.  This winds up in the 'Comments' field in tagged saved tracks.

[Paul Sanders (AlpineSoft)]

Added 'artist alias' a while back, in (I think) V8.5.  Sorry I failed to post back at that time.

[StephenJK]

The Artist Alias field works fine, and can then be made part of the save path and syntax for the album.  In other words, I don't need to rename the folder for the album as it is now the Artist Alias and what I want it to be.

There is still a minor issue in that the folder name that I normally use is Album Artist, that's the one that would be Dylan, Bob for example. 

Because there is no field for an Album Artist entry, while the folder name is now correct the Album Artist text in the metadata is still the Artist text.  That means I need to edit every song so that the metadata for Bob Dylan is changed to Dylan, Bob.

[Paul Sanders (AlpineSoft)]

Could you swap your usage of Album Artist and Artist Alias over?  That's the only thing I can think of that would resolve this but it's probably way too much work to modify your existing collection.

[StephenJK]

Paul,

I fix every album as I go along, that's not a problem.  Before Artist Alias I had to manually edit both the folder name and the metadata for the Album Artist.  All other fields are fine.  Now, all I have to do is edit the metadata for  the Album Artist.  We're making progress!

The issue isn't how I want it to be, but rather how music programs read the Album Artist field.  I use the Artist field for all CD's and LP's the same way, with the band name properly written, such as Joe Jackson.  But, with the Album Artist field I use Jackson, Joe.  That allows me to sort by proper name under Artist for whatever program that I'm using.  The Artist Alias field does not have a corresponding equivalent within other programs.

Hope this helps.

[Paul Sanders (AlpineSoft)]

OK, noted, thank you.