The Compilation Tag yet again

[colin_e]

I've been using MediaMonkey to rip and organise my music for 6 or so years.

The files are stored on a (now rather old) Synology NAS box and played via Squeezebox server and a Logitech Duet player.

In all this time one ongoing niggle has been the fact that compilations ("Various Artist" tracks where Album Artist <> Track Artist) don't work correctly.

As an example I have a set of tracks from the Unreal series of games. These have various different combinations of Artists on each track, but no single "Album Artist" common across all tracks. I have created an album called "Unreal", tagged as "Game Music", but if I browse to either this category or the "Various Artists" artist using theLogitech remote the category is empty.

Over Christmas I upgraded to the latest version of Squeezeserver running on a Raspberry Pi, and upgraded all the Logitech peripherals, but this issue continues to niggle.

Looking at the forum it's clear this problem has been rattling around for years. Basically MediaMonkey doesn't support the Compilation tag, and instead uses the combination of Artist and Album Artist.

Squeezeserver uses the Artist and Album Artist combo too, but in a subtly different way, it also interacts with the use of Album Artist = "Various Artists". It's slightly arcane, and basically expects you to use the Compilation tag to force presentation of multi-artist albums as compilations.

Looking at the forums, it's clear this problem has been around for many years, and neither Ventis nor Logitech show any desire to address it (Logitech have just End Of Life'd the Squeezebox line, so that route may be closed forever).


Despite spending quite some time trawling the MM forums i've yet to find someone describing a good clean solution for this. Is the only answer to use a non-MM tagging application that DOES support the Compilation tag?, it's an undesirable solution but I am a bit tired of browsing my music only to find all the compilation categories empty (no albums) in Squeezecenter, and I promised myself i'd find a solution over the course of this holiday.

Any pointers to a good solution for this?

Regards: colin_e

[rovingcowboy]

Cant the group tag be used as the comp.... tag

[colin_e]

Cant the group tag be used as the comp.... tag

Most of my files are in FLAC format. FLAC supports a specific COMPILATION tag (that is apparently expected to be set to "1" for a compilation. Squeezeserver looks at that tag specifically, I don't think you can just re-use another tag for that purpose.

MP3 is a bit more tricky. Apparently you can use a custom COMPILATION=1 tag, or possibly use an MP3 user-defined (Txxx) field with a description set to COMPILATION and Squeezecenter will recognise them. No mention of a group tag in the material I have found so far.

Regards: colin_e

[colin_e]

Note I installed the "Custom Fields Tagger" plugin to see if that would help, but it doesn't list the COMPILATION field either, and although the field list is customisable by tweaking the code, it seems to indicate it will only work with fields it knows about, so i'm not sure that's going to help.

[nohitter151]

MM does not support any "Compilation" tag, so you won't find a MediaMonkey solution until the MM devs add support for this field, or allow scripts to write to tags that MM doesn't natively read/write.

It seems the only solution for the foreseeable future is to use another application to write this tag.

[oeyoeve]

MM does not support any "Compilation" tag, so you won't find a MediaMonkey solution until the MM devs add support for this field, or allow scripts to write to tags that MM doesn't natively read/write. It seems the only solution for the foreseeable future is to use another application to write this tag.

Could someone please Confirm to me that the compilation Tag is actually supported naitively for MP3 files - either in ID3v1 or ID3v2 ?
(And please - if you are not 100% sure - do not answer)

[nohitter151]

MM does not support any "Compilation" tag, so you won't find a MediaMonkey solution until the MM devs add support for this field, or allow scripts to write to tags that MM doesn't natively read/write. It seems the only solution for the foreseeable future is to use another application to write this tag.

Could someone please Confirm to me that the compilation Tag is actually supported naitively for MP3 files - either in ID3v1 or ID3v2 ?
(And please - if you are not 100% sure - do not answer)

http://id3.org/iTunes%20Compilation%20Flag

[dpurcell]

Thanks for raising this, Colin. I'm also a Squeezebox user (and new to MM), and like how it handles the Compilation tag. I have the Album Artist for all of them set to Various Artists, fwiw.

Here's my related problem with the way MM handles this: I like sorting by Artist for people like Elvis Costello. The Artist tag for all of his records is Elvis Costello, while the individual Album Artist tags vary (EC & The Attractions, & The Imposters, etc.). When I view by Artist, people like EC display correctly, but then I get an individual entry for each artist on a comp. Not good. When I view by Album Artist, the comps display correctly (all under VA), but I have several entries for Elvis Costello, Dave Douglas, etc.

Is there a way around this in MM? Thanks, all.