Can MM stop automatically adding Album Artist?

[chrisdukes]

I have hundreds of compilations and DJ mixes. Sometimes I add the DJ to the Album Artist, but a lot of times I leave the field blank. Is MM filling it automatically?

I just deleted the Album Artist field for hundreds of tracks but they starting refilling. How do I stop this?

Thanks for any help!

[IanRTaylorUK]

Hi Chris,

The approach I take is to set the Album Artist field to "Various" and the Artist field to the "track artist" BEFORE I Organise using Ctrl+R!!!

In the case of multiple artists use ; as the separator and replace "Feat / with" the separator you choose. So you only have "multiple" artists in the Artist field.

Album Artist is important for me as it is used in the Organise definition. That is:

\\Network Share\Music\<Album Artist>\<Album>\<Title>

When you get this correct, you will see both the "Various" and Specific Artist tracks under the one Artist. For example:

\ Armin van Buuren \ Universal Religion\... with say "Armin van Buuren; DJ Shah; Chris Jones" in the artist field
\ Various \ A State of Trance\... with say "Armin van Buuren; Perpetuous Dreamer" in the artist field

If you want to be pedantic, organise the Artists alphabetically in the artist field i.e. NOT Perpetuous Dreamer; Armin van Buuren. It can help on some screen when sorting / grouping / selecting.

[Peke]

I have hundreds of compilations and DJ mixes. Sometimes I add the DJ to the Album Artist, but a lot of times I leave the field blank. Is MM filling it automatically?

I just deleted the Album Artist field for hundreds of tracks but they starting refilling. How do I stop this?

Thanks for any help?

You can't stop that as once Album Info is filled then if there is Album value then album must have Album Artist. Like you I have few thousands of Compilation CDs, EDMs, Promos, .... and like Ian pointed I use Various, Various Artist, Mixed, ... and other tags so that I can easily use it in Auto Playlists.

[chrisdukes]

Thanks for the detailed explanations. This will definitely help people looking for an explanation and solution.

For me though, it's a big pain. I only use the Album Artist field for my favorite artists; sometimes they're DJs with a lot of mixes, other times they're a single artist with multiple names (example: Norman Cook is the Album Artist for Fatboy Slim, Freak Power, and the Housemartins) or the Album Artist will be a group with members that have their own records (Example: 4Hero for Marc Claire or Dennis McFarlane records). For me, an empty Album Artist field means it's NOT a favorite artist, so it gets saved to a separate folder.

I can accomplish the same goal using Various Artists instead of a blank field, but I'll have to rewrite all of my masks and edit a bunch of my Magic Nodes. I've used this program for almost a decade, I can't believe I'm just noticing this now.

• There's no way to turn off the setting in MM4?

• Is there a way to set MM4 to automatically fill the Album Artist with "Various Artists" instead of just copying the track's artist?

[Peke]

Hi,
Unfortunately, on both accounts no. It is automatically filled with Available information eg. Artist and Various Artist is used to tell MM it is Compilation or Different Album from different Artist eg. Artist <> Album Artist

Please note that MM Have multiple Other fields that can be used for flagging some Artist Tracks Favorite, Including 10 Custom Fields (5 in MM4) and if you want to go extreme you can also Use Extended Tags (MM5 Only) that will be unique for you and can be paired with special Addon you will only have.

[chrisdukes]

Thanks again for the detailed reply. I have been wanting to take advantage of MM5's expanded fields but I mostly rely on MM4 for organizing because I use Magic Nodes so much. The 5 custom fields in MM4 are taken up by Discogs Tagger, but I've been thinking about changing the settings.

The thing I don't get about MM4 automatically adding the Album Artist is that it doesn't seem to always do it. I have tons of records stored on my external hard drive that still have empty Album Artist fields. What actually triggers it?

[Peke]

What actually triggers it?

Edit of any file on Album.

[chrisdukes]

Edit of any file on Album.

Editing the Metadata or the File / Folder Name? Or is it both?

[Peke]

Hi,
Metadata, as Album artist is filled when any track metadata on Album is edited. Folder shoul dnot trigger Tag Updates.

[chrisdukes]

Gotcha. Thanks!