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I was just playing around with this idea myself, and I definitely prefer a 'blob' style symbol for null-separated ID3 Artist tags (and for multiple ARTIST Vorbis tags) rather than a semicolon, as it more clearly shows these are individual entities in the file rather than possibly being based on a simple split string:

image.png  image.png

I tried a few character ideas, and a medium black diamond (Unicode U+2B25) padded with a space either side seemed to look the nicest - I just added that to my Split Symbols list and it worked perfectly.

Andre

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12 hours ago, andrewilley said:

I was just playing around with this idea myself, and I definitely prefer a 'blob' style symbol for null-separated ID3 Artist tags (and for multiple ARTIST Vorbis tags) rather than a semicolon, as it more clearly shows these are individual entities in the file rather than possibly being based on a simple split string:

image.png  image.png

I tried a few character ideas, and a medium black diamond (Unicode U+2B25) padded with a space either side seemed to look the nicest - I just added that to my Split Symbols list and it worked perfectly.

Andre

Funny, I've been using the orange diamond. I like the way it separate the artists.

Screenshot_20210903-213913.thumb.png.f67eb037544bdd109a80f09c1ce8998f.png

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 9/3/2021 at 8:35 AM, andrewilley said:

I was just playing around with this idea myself, and I definitely prefer a 'blob' style symbol for null-separated ID3 Artist tags (and for multiple ARTIST Vorbis tags) rather than a semicolon, as it more clearly shows these are individual entities in the file rather than possibly being based on a simple split string:

image.png  image.png

I tried a few character ideas, and a medium black diamond (Unicode U+2B25) padded with a space either side seemed to look the nicest - I just added that to my Split Symbols list and it worked perfectly.

Andre

I'm sorry, is there a way to replicate this? Or is these just playing with the tags.

Also, I always artist - album on the second line, is there a way to just have the artists show like that?

Edit: I think I understood now, I also would prefer to have a similar symbol than the semicolon.

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32 minutes ago, hernangb said:

I'm sorry, is there a way to replicate this? Or is these just playing with the tags.

Also, I always artist - album on the second line, is there a way to just have the artists show like that?

I was just playing with tags, as an example of how I think individual separate ARTIST tags - or null-character separated items in ID3 tags - could be handled for display. If the embedded tag data actually contains a real semicolon character (or "//", or whatever) in the stored string, then that string should be displayed verbatim in the Artist field. But when Poweramp is "inventing" a symbol of its own in order to show two entirely separate pieces of text side-by-side, a unique character ought to be used rather than simulating as if a semicolon was present.

After a bit of trial and error in a tag editor, I thought the medium black diamond (Unicode U+2B25), padded with a space either side, seemed to look the nicest so I manually added that into one song's Artist tag as a test. I then pasted that same character into PA's 'Symbols to Split Multiple Artists' setting, and it worked really well. My suggestion was that PA use that type of symbol as its 'invented' separator when no actual character exists in the tag(s).
 

To your second point, at present you cannot alter the format of that second line on the player screen or in list displays, it is always shown as "%artist% - %album%". There have been a number of requests for an ability to customise both the upper and lower lines via each List Options menu though, but that's not something that has been implemented as yet. See this thread:

Andre

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7 minutes ago, andrewilley said:

I was just playing with tags, as an example of how I think individual separate ARTIST tags - or null-character separated items in ID3 tags - could be handled for display. If the embedded tag data actually contains a real semicolon character (or "//", or whatever) in the stored string, then that string should be displayed verbatim in the Artist field. But when Poweramp is "inventing" a symbol of its own in order to show two entirely separate pieces of text side-by-side, a unique character ought to be used rather than simulating as if a semicolon was present.

After a bit of trial and error in a tag editor, I thought the medium black diamond (Unicode U+2B25), padded with a space either side, seemed to look the nicest so I manually added that into one song's Artist tag as a test. I then pasted that same character into PA's 'Symbols to Split Multiple Artists' setting, and it worked really well. My suggestion was that PA use that type of symbol as its 'invented' separator when no actual character exists in the tag(s).
 

To your second point, at present you cannot alter the format of that second line on the player screen or in list displays, it is always shown as "%artist% - %album%". There have been a number of requests for an ability to customise both the upper and lower lines via each List Options menu though, but that's not something that has been implemented as yet. See this thread:

Andre

I see, thanks for the reply, and Idid tag multiple artists with "\\" using mp3tag, but Poweramp seems to read that as ";" hence the confusion.

 

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41 minutes ago, hernangb said:

I see, thanks for the reply, and Idid tag multiple artists with "\\" using mp3tag, but Poweramp seems to read that as ";" hence the confusion.

Ironically, you are experiencing exactly the slightly-confusing situation that I was describing.

When using MP3Tag, typing "\\" to separate two or more Artist, Composer, or Genre names is treated as a special code within that program only. MP3Tag does not save the actual "\\" characters, but instead it creates two completely separate ARTIST tags for FLAC/Vorbis files, or it inserts null-byte separators in MP3/ID3 tags which does the same thing.

For example, in MP3Tag's editor screen, this song has the Artist field set as "Paul Simon\\Art Garfunkel", Genre as "Pop\\Folk", and Composer as "P Simon\\A Garfunkel", and that results in the following embedded content in the file:

  |     - Tag 'ARTIST' (17 bytes):
  |         01f9: 41 52 54 49 53 54 3d 50 61 75 6c 20 53 69 6d 6f [ARTIST=Paul Simo]
  |         0209: 6e                                              [n]
  |     - Tag 'ARTIST' (20 bytes):
  |         020e: 41 52 54 49 53 54 3d 41 72 74 20 47 61 72 66 75 [ARTIST=Art Garfu]
  |         021e: 6e 6b 65 6c                                     [nkel]
  |     - Tag 'GENRE' (9 bytes):
  |         024e: 47 45 4e 52 45 3d 50 6f 70                      [GENRE=Pop]
  |     - Tag 'GENRE' (10 bytes):
  |         025b: 47 45 4e 52 45 3d 46 6f 6c 6b                   [GENRE=Folk]
  |     - Tag 'COMPOSER' (16 bytes):
  |         028a: 43 4f 4d 50 4f 53 45 52 3d 50 20 53 69 6d 6f 6e [COMPOSER=P Simon]
  |     - Tag 'COMPOSER' (20 bytes):
  |         029e: 43 4f 4d 50 4f 53 45 52 3d 41 20 47 61 72 66 75 [COMPOSER=A Garfu]
  |         02ae: 6e 6b 65 6c                                     [nkel]
  |     - Tag 'ALBUMARTIST' (29 bytes):
  |         0269: 41 4c 42 55 4d 41 52 54 49 53 54 3d 53 69 6d 6f [ALBUMARTIST=Simo]
  |         0279: 6e 20 26 20 47 61 72 66 75 6e 6b 65 6c          [n & Garfunkel]

Poweramp sees these instances of multiple tags and simply saves them in its database as one string with a semicolon between each name. Which, as you say, does look rather like you had actually created the name as "Paul Simon; Art Garfunkel" in the first place. My suggestion was to use something more unique - such as that diamond symbol - to show that the names are really separate items in the embedded data, rather than being one longer string.

Andre

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10 hours ago, andrewilley said:

Ironically, you are experiencing exactly the slightly-confusing situation that I was describing.

When using MP3Tag, typing "\\" to separate two or more Artist, Composer, or Genre names is treated as a special code within that program only. MP3Tag does not save the actual "\\" characters, but instead it creates two completely separate ARTIST tags for FLAC/Vorbis files, or it inserts null-byte separators in MP3/ID3 tags which does the same thing.

For example, in MP3Tag's editor screen, this song has the Artist field set as "Paul Simon\\Art Garfunkel", Genre as "Pop\\Folk", and Composer as "P Simon\\A Garfunkel", and that results in the following embedded content in the file:

  |     - Tag 'ARTIST' (17 bytes):
  |         01f9: 41 52 54 49 53 54 3d 50 61 75 6c 20 53 69 6d 6f [ARTIST=Paul Simo]
  |         0209: 6e                                              [n]
  |     - Tag 'ARTIST' (20 bytes):
  |         020e: 41 52 54 49 53 54 3d 41 72 74 20 47 61 72 66 75 [ARTIST=Art Garfu]
  |         021e: 6e 6b 65 6c                                     [nkel]
  |     - Tag 'GENRE' (9 bytes):
  |         024e: 47 45 4e 52 45 3d 50 6f 70                      [GENRE=Pop]
  |     - Tag 'GENRE' (10 bytes):
  |         025b: 47 45 4e 52 45 3d 46 6f 6c 6b                   [GENRE=Folk]
  |     - Tag 'COMPOSER' (16 bytes):
  |         028a: 43 4f 4d 50 4f 53 45 52 3d 50 20 53 69 6d 6f 6e [COMPOSER=P Simon]
  |     - Tag 'COMPOSER' (20 bytes):
  |         029e: 43 4f 4d 50 4f 53 45 52 3d 41 20 47 61 72 66 75 [COMPOSER=A Garfu]
  |         02ae: 6e 6b 65 6c                                     [nkel]
  |     - Tag 'ALBUMARTIST' (29 bytes):
  |         0269: 41 4c 42 55 4d 41 52 54 49 53 54 3d 53 69 6d 6f [ALBUMARTIST=Simo]
  |         0279: 6e 20 26 20 47 61 72 66 75 6e 6b 65 6c          [n & Garfunkel]

Poweramp sees these instances of multiple tags and simply saves them in its database as one string with a semicolon between each name. Which, as you say, does look rather like you had actually created the name as "Paul Simon; Art Garfunkel" in the first place. My suggestion was to use something more unique - such as that diamond symbol - to show that the names are really separate items in the embedded data, rather than being one longer string.

Andre

Thanks a lot for the comprehensive answer, after some trial myself I settled for  as separator, keeping backup FLAC with mp3tag's \\ and batch replace to my separator of choice for phone use.

This in turn caused conflict when scrobbling to last.fm as it considered the entire list of Artists with the separator as one, but Pano Scrobbler offers Regex Pattern Edits so in the end I managed to get it to read until the first and then ignore the rest, so it ends up being the same as Album Artist. I think this is the best I can do for now, used to do the (feat.) in title but was never a fan of it so I found this feature infinitely better.

 

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1 hour ago, hernangb said:

This in turn caused conflict when scrobbling to last.fm as it considered the entire list of Artists with the separator as one

I've not actually checked with any scrobblers (I don't use them) but I assume it sends the whole expanded Artist tag, rather than individual split artist names. In that case, if you do manually put odd characters into the Artist string, they would get sent too, which as you say might muddle it.

I assume you have your chosen separator block character copied into the 'Symbols to Split Multiple Artists' settings line?

Andre

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  • 2 years later...

It's worth noting that if you organize your music using Musicbrainz Picard, it will automatically add the `ARTISTS` tag(s) to your music files, which looks like this in a FLAC file. Picard will add this on top of the normal `Artist` tag. In ID3v2.3 tags, the tag is also called `ARTISTS`, but instead it uses the normal **/** separator convention

 

Screenshot_20231221_092729.png

Screenshot_20231221_092744.png

Edited by fnmain
clarify function of the tag
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