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MBS - support to read "artists" / "albumartists" tag


steve1977

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steve1977

This feature is related to the music library and MBS reading of MP3 tags. There is a desire that multiple artists can be separated out for proper fetching, indexing and searching. 

 

Curently, MBS reads the "artist" tag (e.g., "Chakuza & RAF Camora feat. Joshi Mizu") and tries to identify through regex how many artists are part of it. While this works well, it can never be perfect. For example, MBS will never be able to tell the difference between "Chakuza & RAF Camora" (two artists) and "Jam Spoon" (one artist) just by reading the "artist" tag.

 

There is a separate - currently unsupported - tag, which would allow to make this differentiation. This tag is "artists" (pls note the S in the end of the tag). Let me explain with an example how this tag works:

 

Album Artist: Chakuza & RAF Camora feat. Joshi Mizu
Album Artist Sort Order: Chakuza & RAF Camora feat. Joshi Mizu
Album Artists: Chakuza/RAF Camora/Joshi Mizu
Artist: Chakuza & RAF Camora
Artist Sort Order: Chakuza & RAF Camora
Artists: Chakuza/RAF Camora

 

So, I am requesting MBS to read the "artists" tag to determine that there are two artists (chakuza and raf camora) with this song. While cotinue to use the "artist" tag to display the song artist (i.e., chakuza & raf camora).

 

Any chance to see this being implemented? Thanks in advance!!!

 

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steve1977

XBMC/Kodi is going ahead implementing support for the "artists" tag and probably soon also for "albumartits" tag. Any chance that MBS can follow this route. Please see bellow discussion on Picard forums.

 

http://tickets.musicbrainz.org/browse/PICARD-586

http://tickets.musicbrainz.org/browse/PICARD-700

 

It would be really fabulous for MBS to be able to separate multiple artists that contributed to the same song / album. Thanks!!!

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can you produce the output from ffprobe for one of these audio files?

 

the command line args you need are

 

-show_format -show_streams -print_format json

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digger11

can you produce the output from ffprobe for one of these audio files?

 

the command line args you need are

 

-show_format -show_streams -print_format json

 

Here is an example

ffprobe.txt

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ok, we'll read the artists tag starting with the next release. also we'll start reading the MBZ track id's in case we find a use for them in the future.

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ginjaninja

This feature is related to the music library and MBS reading of MP3 tags. There is a desire that multiple artists can be separated out for proper fetching, indexing and searching.

Curently, MBS reads the "artist" tag (e.g., "Chakuza & RAF Camora feat. Joshi Mizu") and tries to identify through regex how many artists are part of it. While this works well, it can never be perfect. For example, MBS will never be able to tell the difference between "Chakuza & RAF Camora" (two artists) and "Jam Spoon" (one artist) just by reading the "artist" tag.

There is a separate - currently unsupported - tag, which would allow to make this differentiation. This tag is "artists" (pls note the S in the end of the tag). Let me explain with an example how this tag works:

Album Artist: Chakuza & RAF Camora feat. Joshi Mizu

Album Artist Sort Order: Chakuza & RAF Camora feat. Joshi Mizu

Album Artists: Chakuza/RAF Camora/Joshi Mizu

Artist: Chakuza & RAF Camora

Artist Sort Order: Chakuza & RAF Camora

Artists: Chakuza/RAF Camora

 

So, I am requesting MBS to read the "artists" tag to determine that there are two artists (chakuza and raf camora) with this song. While cotinue to use the "artist" tag to display the song artist (i.e., chakuza & raf camora).

 

Any chance to see this being implemented? Thanks in advance!!!

So is it being suggested...that if artistS or albumartistS exist then these would overide/take precedence over artist and albumartist and be split exclusively on / as the only separator that mbz uses? Sounds ok..

 

Would the original artist tag just be used as a dumb string in the ui (showing multiple artists but loosing intention/meaning of multiple artists)? I look forward to the day when clients show artist(s) against tracks as meaninful hyperlinks to take users to artist views eg. From compilations or tracks 'featuring'...so dumb strings dontsound so great.

 

 

I assume from the requezt and the related post, the holy grail...is not so much for the artistS and albumartistS tags to overide but more so to inform the split in original tags?

 

In this way the original artist/albumartist tags are not so much dumb but the exact way the album metadata was intended to be appreciated with all the nuances around words like feat. Or with or featuring (as originally intended)...but also brought to life by actual understanding of the artists hidden within the flowery text...This sounds great but challenging to match all the ways artist names appear eg in albumartists tag and albumartist tags. Unless its always the case that exact string matches work with no cleverness required.

Edited by ginjaninja
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steve1977

I am not sure whether follow you. "Artist" and "Artists" would not be an either/or, but both tags are required.

 

"Artist" tag will serve as what is being displayed when hearing the song (e.g., xxx by yyy feat. zzz). "Artists" tag allows MBS to compile an artist list. This artist list would not include "xxx feat yyy" as an artist), but would include xxx as one artist and separately yyy as one artist.

 

This will be the "holy grail" of music tagging :-)

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ginjaninja

I am not sure whether follow you. "Artist" and "Artists" would not be an either/or, but both tags are required.

 

"Artist" tag will serve as what is being displayed when hearing the song (e.g., xxx by yyy feat. zzz). "Artists" tag allows MBS to compile an artist list. This artist list would not include "xxx feat yyy" as an artist), but would include xxx as one artist and separately yyy as one artist.

 

This will be the "holy grail" of music tagging :-)

 

Makes sense, I am just saying that I think in the fullness of time, hyperlinks where the actual artists xxx and yyy appear in the artist tag string

eg

Chakuza & RAF Camora

 

would be good. So the user can navigate the UI\their library quickly and easily.

so eg. you can not only see the nuanced wording eg.

Chakuza & RAF Camora feat. Joshi Mizu

but also 

Chakuza & RAF Camora feat. Joshi Mizu

 

If the strings between separators in the artistS tag can not be easily understood/fit into the artist tag..then showing the artist tag in the ui would necessarily loose this functionality (which i know we dont have yet, but it would be great to see)

 

Do you think that the way the artistS tag works mean there will always be a direct string match to those music people in the artist tag?

 

eg were not going to see a situation like

 

Artist: Chakuza & RAF Camora

Artists: Chakuza/Camora, Raf

 

ie where they dont match..

 

maybe im worrying unnecessarily and a mismatch is never going to happen.

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steve1977

I think I understand most, but not all of your comments. I do 100% understand how the artistS tag works, which is absolutely brilliantly done by the MB Picard guys.

 

How MB Picard is done, you will always see a 100% match between the artist and artistS tag. So, the case you are describing above will never happen.

 

MB Picard is built exactly the way how you are describing the hyperlinks.

 

In the "database", MBZ saves the info as follows:

Artist: Chakuza, Connector: &

Artist: RAF Camora, Connector: none

 

When Picard creates the artist and artistS tags, it creates both tags from the same source:

Artist tag: Chakuza & RAF Camora

ArtistS tag: Chakuza / RAF Camora

 

So, this system is always 100% consistent in the way how it pulls the info as it accesses the same database. It may be easier to understand if you go to MBZ and check out how the artists are shown (http://musicbrainz.org/release/3b44628d-4b64-4ef6-844a-ed6e17801b7b). You will see how the artists are hyperlinked and the connectors are shown.

 

Tagger heaven :-)

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  • 2 weeks later...
fraenhawk

What was decided to be supported for this? Semicolon or Slash? I've seen other threads where it looks like MBS is now partially supporting multiple artists, but I want to make sure my Picard is set up for the correct separator before I go through my whole library. In this thread it looks like you've got yours set to the default slash, but in the other thread it looks like semicolons are being parsed.

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steve1977

Good question. Let's wait for Luke to answer. I will follow " / ", "/", "; " or whatever else Luke decides. Picard can be configured either way, so let's wait for Luke's decision. I am happy either way and have no preference!

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ginjaninja

Good question. Let's wait for Luke to answer. I will follow " / ", "/", "; " or whatever else Luke decides. Picard can be configured either way, so let's wait for Luke's decision. I am happy either way and have no preference!

Last time i checked the mbz database...(you can download it in its entirety)...there was a few artists with '/' but none with semi colon..so ';' is a good candidate for this reason.
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fraenhawk

Last time i checked the mbz database...(you can download it in its entirety)...there was a few artists with '/' but none with semi colon..so ';' is a good candidate for this reason.

I'm not talking about what's in its database, I mean in Picard you can tell it that when it combines multiple items to create a single tag what you want the delimiter to be for the client programs to read. Is the Artists pre-stored in MBZ or is it creating the tag on the fly from multiple line-items? If it's creating them on the fly, the the database wouldn't be any help.

 

Picard defaults to a / delimiter so it would be nice to know what MBS is expecting before re-processing my music library too far.

 

edit: oh, you mean that @@Luke might have picked the opposite to avoid conflict with existing /s.

Edited by fraenhawk
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steve1977

That's a good point. I am only back to my computer tomorrow. I will follow in tagging whatever way @@Luke has taken the artists tag. I am fine with " / ", "/", or "; " whatever way he prefers. Thanks again for implementing!!!

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steve1977

Unfortunately, it only partially works in the beta yet (Version 3.0.5518.2). What works nicely is that the "artists" tag is being read and the "artists" view includes the artists separately, that's great!

 

There are two things that are not working yet:

 

1) When clicking on the album, multiple artists are shown, but separated by a ",". Instead, MBS should read the "artist" tag (without "S") after clicking on the album. This shows "feat.", "&", etc. properly.

 

2) When playing the song, it even only shows the first artist. Yet again, it should pull from the "artists" tag.

 

 

Thanks in advance!!!

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thefirstofthe300

After browsing the code and based on what I am observing semicolons are not working for multiple tag separators for the artists tag. Instead a forward slash seems to work. @@fraenhawk @@steve1977 @@ginjaninja

 

Sent from my Nexus 7. Pardon my spelling. :)

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  • 3 weeks later...
steve1977

Unfortunately, issue above remains in beta 3.0.5518.7. Any chance to see this fixed before the actual release?

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