How to combine split albums by different album artist

[Rainytears]

I put compilation album whose tracks has different album artist tags (but any other tags are all same)

then album got split into pieces by album artist tag.

I try them put in one album but I guess there is no option available for now.

Is there no way to combine them except using same album artist tag? If not could you make it? (like ON/OFF Ignore different album artist tag and then combine)

[andrewilley]

The Album Artist tag should stay the same for all tracks in a compilation album (e.g. "Various Artists"), it's the Track Artist tag that changes by song.

Andre

[Bargunan]

On 12/17/2018 at 4:10 AM, andrewilley said:

The Album Artist tag should stay the same for all tracks in a compilation album (e.g. "Various Artists"), it's the Track Artist tag that changes by song.

Andre

Lol for movie song based albums each track has a different artist. Have you ever seen that? so this album artist feature splitting is a total pain in the ass. So there has to be a feature like to count album artists for splitting albums or to not split and keep them combined

[w3wilkes]

16 minutes ago, Bargunan said:

Lol for movie song based albums each track has a different artist. Have you ever seen that? so this album artist feature splitting is a total pain in the ass. So there has to be a feature like to count album artists for splitting albums or to not split and keep them combined

What you need to do is have Album Artist all the same like Andre says, something like Various or Soundtrack. Then the Artist should be equal to the artist performing the song like Third Eye Blind, Elton John, etc. This will put the soundtrack songs together in a single album. It works this way in all music players that I'm aware of that support the Album Artist tag.

[Bargunan]

1 hour ago, w3wilkes said:

What you need to do is have Album Artist all the same like Andre says, something like Various or Soundtrack. Then the Artist should be equal to the artist performing the song like Third Eye Blind, Elton John, etc. This will put the soundtrack songs together in a single album. It works this way in all music players that I'm aware of that support the Album Artist tag.

Yeah but this can't be an excuse when you already feel like you want the exact info of the song to remain the same for future reference but the app itself is having an unnecessary feature of splitting same albums having different album artists which already leads to spamming in the album list when scrolling.

[andrewilley]

@Bargunan PA does not split albums unnecessarily - as long as the Album Artist tags in the files are set correctly of course, so each song in the album matches. That's the entire point of those tags.

The Track Artist tag can still vary by song by song of course - for example for compilation albums or (as you mentioned) soundtrack albums. I have 80+ soundtrack albums on my phone in fact, and a load more compilation albums, all with varying contributing artists for each individual song - but all still properly sorted in PA's lists using the Album Title and Album Artist details.

But then that is what I already said in the old 2018 post to which you replied:

On 12/16/2018 at 10:40 PM, andrewilley said:

The Album Artist tag should stay the same for all tracks in a compilation album (e.g. "Various Artists"), it's the Track Artist tag that changes by song.

 

If this still isn't clear, please let us know what aspect you are having trouble understanding so we can help you further - or perhaps you might like to read the FAQ on the subject?

Andre

[w3wilkes]

1 hour ago, Bargunan said:

Yeah but this can't be an excuse when you already feel like you want the exact info of the song to remain the same for future reference but the app itself is having an unnecessary feature of splitting same albums having different album artists which already leads to spamming in the album list when scrolling.

Just stating how it works, not trying to make excuses. This is how it works in Logitech Media Server, my Sony NW-A45, Windows Media Player. These are the one I'm familiar with, but I'd guess if a player supports the Album Artist and Artist tags it will work this way. 

[MotleyG]

7 hours ago, Bargunan said:

Yeah but this can't be an excuse when you already feel like you want the exact info of the song to remain the same for future reference but the app itself is having an unnecessary feature of splitting same albums having different album artists which already leads to spamming in the album list when scrolling.

This is exactly what the “Album Artist” tag is intended to do. The regular “Artist” tag allows you to define each song separately like you are suggesting. The “Album Artist” tag was introduced many years after the original tag spec to make sure albums were combined. This is what you were asking for in the OP. A quick update to your files will make sure they arrange properly in Poweramp, as well as virtually all other music player apps on most platforms.

[Bargunan]

7 hours ago, andrewilley said:

@Bargunan PA does not split albums unnecessarily - as long as the Album Artist tags in the files are set correctly of course, so each song in the album matches. That's the entire point of those tags.

The Track Artist tag can still vary by song by song of course - for example for compilation albums or (as you mentioned) soundtrack albums. I have 80+ soundtrack albums on my phone in fact, and a load more compilation albums, all with varying contributing artists for each individual song - but all still properly sorted in PA's lists using the Album Title and Album Artist details.

But then that is what I already said in the old 2018 post to which you replied:

 

If this still isn't clear, please let us know what aspect you are having trouble understanding so we can help you further - or perhaps you might like to read the FAQ on the subject?

Andre

But what if the users don't want the tracks of a same album to not get split in the album's section through album artist tag. There could be a sort by option for not including "album artist tag"to combine the tracks of a same album. Seeing the album's section is line spam now but I really don't want to edit or remove the names of the album artist info for other references. Imagine seeing the same multiplication of songs having different album artist when scrolling.

[andrewilley]

7 hours ago, Bargunan said:

But what if the users don't want the tracks of a same album to not get split in the album's section through album artist tag. There could be a sort by option for not including "album artist tag"to combine the tracks of a same album. Seeing the album's section is line spam now but I really don't want to edit or remove the names of the album artist info for other references. Imagine seeing the same multiplication of songs having different album artist when scrolling.

I'm having trouble working out your double-negatives, perhaps you are using a translation facility? By "Don't want the tracks to not get split", what are you trying to say? What you have shown in your screenshot appears to be exactly what you have asked for there, i.e. the tracks are split as you asked.

Could you post the Info/Tags results for two of the songs that are not being grouped together in one album? I'm betting that they will show different content (or nothing at all) in their Album Artist tags.  This is the sort of content I would expect for two songs from the same album:

  

 

1. As you have mentioned, you can't use the Track Artist information to arrange albums at all, because the wording often varies song-by-song - especially in compilations or soundtracks (as above), but also with any collaboration songs in a regular album. This can used as a fall-back when Album Artist tags are missing, but it's always very hit-or-miss for the reasons just described.
2. You also can't rely on just the Album Title, as that can be ambiguous too. There are a lot of albums called simply "Greatest Hits" for example, and you don't want all the songs in Queen's "Greatest Hits" album to be lumped together with the songs from "Greatest Hits" albums by The Cure, The Foo Fighters, ABBA and Aerosmith. There are lots of other ambiguous album titles, for example "Up" which could be an R.E.M. album, a Shania Twain album, a Pop Evil album, or the Pixar film soundtrack. How would a music player decide how to separate these into the individual albums if it only looked at the Album Title tag?
3. So having ruled out the above two solo possibilities, using a combination of Album Title and the Album Artist tag is the ONLY reliable way to group an number of individual tracks into one Album entity. That is its purpose in fact.

Are you saying that your tracks don't have accurate Album Artist information embedded - which is what it looks like it from your screenshot? In which case you should fix your broken tracks, because other possible workarounds (such as 1 and 2 above) clearly will break other things. A batch tag editor could fix your issue very quickly, such as TagScanner or MP3Tag on a PC, or AutoTagger on Android. Doing it on a computer is far easier than messing around on a small touch screen though.

Or are you trying to deliberately repurpose the Album Artist tag for storing some other information? If so, there are several other artist-related tags you could use for that if you need to, or use the Comment area. Trying to use the Album Artist tag for another purpose is like rewiring your car's speedometer to show the battery level instead - yes it might work for that specific purpose, but you can't then complain that you don't know fast you are going. 

Andre

[Ash Roarshock]

15 hours ago, Bargunan said:

But what if the users don't want the tracks of a same album to not get split in the album's section through album artist tag. There could be a sort by option for not including "album artist tag"to combine the tracks of a same album. Seeing the album's section is line spam now but I really don't want to edit or remove the names of the album artist info for other references. Imagine seeing the same multiplication of songs having different album artist when scrolling.

I think your tags are incorrect

Try this:

Song 1:  Artist = Shreya Goshai, Album Title = Aashiqui 2, Album Artist = Kompilasi
Song 2: Artist = Arijit Singh, Album Title = Aashiqui 2, Album Artist = Kompilasi
Song 3: Artist = Palak Muchhai, Arijit Singh, Album Title = Aashiqui 2, Album Artist = Kompilasi

[AmpooTwibbit]

I think everyone in this discussion is neither entirely right nor entirely wrong. First off, other media players do not necessarily "work this way":

1. Some media players and apps only use [track] artist ... and will therefore split albums incorrectly based on the metatag utilization recommendation above. This is why I use, e.g., [track] artist = Various Artists and album artist = Someone Specific ... I get broader compatibility.
2. One of the examples given, the Sony NW-A40 series player allows you to choose which artist tag to aggregate albums around, it certainly does not force album artist the way it is being suggest here ... and yes, the player aggregates albums successful when [track] artist = Various Artists or whatever.

I think there is in fact an issue with the way the [Android] Poweramp app aggregates when [track] artist is selected from the Library screen. When I select this this option, I expect albums to be aggregated around album + [track] artist. They are not ... the album splits by album artist, although these splits are clusted together irrespective of the alphabetical order of the album order. You could argue that this makes sense to some extent, but it is nevertheless not the way one would expect it function.

The reality is, I don't think there is an ISO standard here. But I do expect a player I use to aggregate in a way that is intuitive and contributes to my enjoyment of the music, not in a way that results in frustration.

[andrewilley]

19 minutes ago, AmpooTwibbit said:

I think everyone in this discussion is neither entirely right nor entirely wrong. First off, other media players do not necessarily "work this way":

Well I'm entirely right anyway.   

If a player does not support the Album Artist tag (by which we mean TPE2, or ALBUM ARTIST) then yes it would have to fall back to using Track Artist (TPE1, ARTIST) to determine which songs should be considered as part of a single album - if it even bother at all, the old Poweramp v2 only used the Album Title tag and ignored any Artists completely.

However using Track Artist will completely break when you have tracks by different artists - for example duets or collaborations, or even where each track in a collection is by someone different. That is why the Album Artist tag is used to define whole albums (there's a clue in the name really).

So: Album Artist defines an artist/band/general, in order to group a whole album, whereas Track Artist says who that specific track is by. As I said before, the clue is in the name really.

Andre

[MotleyG]

On 8/9/2022 at 1:04 PM, AmpooTwibbit said:

The reality is, I don't think there is an ISO standard here. But I do expect a player I use to aggregate in a way that is intuitive and contributes to my enjoyment of the music, not in a way that results in frustration.

On the contrary, there is a standard. The most common one that most players support is ID3v2.3 for mp3. Other file formats may have there own terminology (APE, MP4, OGG), but they all follow the same flow principle. https://id3.org/id3v2.3.0

Effectively, every CD (or CD set) is considered to be an Album which consists of 1 or more discs, that can each have up to 99 tracks. Each track can have any Artist(s) perform that song. The Album itself can be performed or compiled by a single AlbumArtist - or if it is a "compilation" of many artists songs, the Album Artist is commonly labelled "Various Artists" for most. You can extend the information further by adding more details like Year, Composer, Conductor, Work, Movement, etc. And there are many, many additional fields that can further define your library.

Many people use these tag fields in different ways to suit their needs, and how they expect their library to work. Some use sort fields to be able to find "John Lennon" like you would in a music store or library as “Lennon, John". Others use the more current method of just looking under "John". It is very personal.

But there is definitely a standard. If you choose not to use that, expect the unexpected when you move from player to player.

Edited August 12, 2022 by MotleyG

[AmpooTwibbit]

@andrewilley and @MotleyG, thank you both for the great info and the clarification. I appreciate it and I am taking steps (thank goodness for mp3tag automation). Cheers!

[andrewilley]

There are several resources online that go into how the different tagging formats map against one another, such as:

https://wiki.hydrogenaud.io/index.php?title=Tag_Mapping#cite_ref-dbpoweramp_17-10
https://docs.mp3tag.de/mapping/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ID3

The original ID3 and Vorbis specs did not actually includes an 'Album Artist' tag per se, but by general consensus and later addition the Vorbis comment ALBUMARIST maps to ID3's slightly-repurposed TPE2 tag. Those items are used by all tag editing systems these days, so it has become the defacto standard.

ID3 for example includes a whole raft of descriptors for artists and people involved in the music, most of which are rarely populated (probably more used in classical music) such as:

Lead performer(s)/Soloist(s)	TPE1
Band/orchestra/accompaniment	TPE2
Conductor/performer refinement	TPE3
Interpreted, remixed, or otherwise modified by	TPE4
Composer	TCOM
Lyricist/Text writer	TEXT
Involved people list	IPLS / TIPL
Musician credits list	TMC
Performer sort order	TSOP
Original lyricist(s)/text writer(s)	TOLY
Original artist(s)/performer(s)	TOPE

Mostly, files will only use TPE1 for Track Artist (the people or band who actually perform on that individual song, which could include multiple names for duets/collaborations/etc), TPE2 for Album Artist (which is an overall name applicable to all songs in one album, which could be the main band or artist name, or something like "Various Artists" for collections), and sometimes TCOM for the composer. Classical music often populates TPE3 too, but the rest are rarely used.

As @MotleyG mentioned, you can of course use tags in any way you personally want, but it's usually best to follow the same basic conventions as the rest of the community if you want description and grouping features to work, otherwise the results could be a bit odd. And as you said, if all of your music reverses the Artist and Album Artist tags, the automation features in the better batch tag editors will make short work or swapping them all over. I'd suggest keeping backup file copies before doing such a major operation, just in case...

When you copy all the modified files back to your phone, do a FULL Rescan in PA Settings=>Library to ensure your collection is fully updated with all the changes.

Andre