Divide different artists

[Peter Cuevas]

This is not a bug, maybe a problem 

I have problems with add more that one work on the settings to divide artist 

I need add "a dúo con", because some songs have this on the artists field 

 

I use this "items", but I need more:

Edited March 7, 2022 by Peter Cuevas

[andrewilley]

The separator system is designed to work with either single-character symbols or entire words. Spaces have always been treated as string separators - so if you tried to add "a dúo con" then you would get three separators: "a", "dúo" and "con". For similar reasons, you can't use leading or trailing spaces within separators - so you can't differentiate between "/" and " / " to  keep "FirstName/SecondName" together while still splitting "FirstName / SecondName". I'll move this to Feature Requests.

Andre

[Peter Cuevas]

@andrewilley thanks 

Yes, I understand. As I already said, I have added some separators, but I make the request, because in that specific case, it is necessary to add more than one word. Maybe you can make the modification so that I only eliminate the spaces of the beginning and the end and not the spaces in between, I do not know if I make myself understand "more than one word" and " more than one word ", like you say. I use ";" and no " ; "

[Peter Cuevas]

I have a lot of artist with "x" in his his name, but some multiple artists have separated to " x " 

[andrewilley]

@Peter Cuevas A single letter of the alphabet is really not an ideal choice for a field delimiter character. If I had any saved like that they would have been long gone by now in one of my batch tag editing sessions.

I did do a bit of Googling though and found some examples using 'x' (mostly rap, hence why I'd never seen it). For example a dance track called "OUT OUT" is listed as being by "Joel Corry x Jax Jones (feat. Charli XCX & Saweetie)". Try to decode that reliably! 

Andre

[Fitzian]

Better to just replace it with some other unicode character from this list here : https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/X_mark

[andrewilley]

@Fitzian  Of course! Why do I always forget to suggest Unicode solutions; they look visually identical, but are processed as different symbols.

Andre

[Peter Cuevas]

@andrewilley

I'm talking about add spaces before and after the "x" I know that some songs use "×", that is no the "x" 

But maybe it's possible add the exclusions with spaces. How you said a lot of artists have X in his name 

[MotleyG]

21 minutes ago, Peter Cuevas said:

@andrewilley

I'm talking about add spaces before and after the "x" I know that some songs use "×", that is no the "x" 

But maybe it's possible add the exclusions with spaces. How you said a lot of artists have X in his name 

There may be technical reasons why the spaces are trimmed in these cases. But either way, I would not expect using a single standard keyboard alpha character like "x" or "X" are appropriate to use as separators for any reason. The suggestion to use uncommon unicode characters is the general rule across all platforms for use in metadata fields except for the standards which are either the forward slash "/" (causes issues with AC/DC, +/-, Love/Hate, M/A/R/R/S, etc.) or semicolon ";" characters. For this case you can try the "Multiplication Sign" U+00D7 (displays as "×") to see if it looks like you want it displayed, and as a separator that won't affect standard characters. i.e. "Joel Corry × Jax Jones (feat. Charli XCX & Saweetie)"

 

FYI - In my personal library, I have replaced all regular forward slash "/" characters with a unicode combination that looks identical, but has no issues with libraries that use this slash as a separator. You can copy/paste these artists from below if you want to use them. The characters are a "Fraction Slash" U+2044, with leading and trailing "Hair Space" U+200A to avoid overlap. For other artists you have you can easily work from these examples.

AC ⁄ DC

+ ⁄ -

Love ⁄ Hate

M ⁄ A ⁄ R ⁄ R ⁄ S

[andrewilley]

1 hour ago, Peter Cuevas said:

How you said a lot of artists have X in his name 

Actually, none of my music has an "x" to separate artist names, not a single one - but I did manage to find an example by Googling. Currently what you ask isn't possible as spaces are used as convenient delimiters when you are entering multiple separate symbols in one go. The same applied for someone else who was asking if multi-word phrases could be used, which is also not currently possible.

What @Fitzian was saying was to edit the occasional problem tags so they contain a unique Unicode character that looks like an "x" to the eye, but isn't the same internal numeric code. That way visually it still looks just like it did before, but internally you can use that new Unicode character as the splitting symbol. This words containing just an ordinary "x" won't be broken. There are dozens of symbols to choose from (see his previous link) but a good starting point would be: 

🞩

U+1F7A9

LIGHT SALTIR

Cut'n'paste the above "🞩" character into your favourite batch tag editor for those Artist tags, and then put that same character into Poweramp's Split Symbols screen.

Thinking about it, the person who wanted to use a fixed combination of three words could just use non-breaking spaces instead of the space bar within those terms. Unicode U+2002  (en-space, or Windows Alt+8194) should do, but again there are lots to choose from if en-space looks a bit wide).

 

[Edit] When I went to link in the other thread, it was this thread anyway! Just use something like "a dúo con" in your Artist tags, and then add the same exact string into PA's splitter screen. The two spaces were typed on my PC as Alt+8194, which Poweramp should be table to treat as a single entity, thus:

Andre

[MotleyG]

A note about using unicode - not all characters are supported in all players. Some more than others. Car players have the worst in my experience. So you may have to experiment with a few to meet your specific needs. Unfortunately none of these are universal options.

[Ash Roarshock]

I use a red Unicode ❌ to separate my artists. This is turning into a standard over the last couple of years with new music. It's a mainstream thing. It works well though, been using it since Poweramp introduced multiple artists splitting.

 

 

Edited March 12, 2022 by Ash Roarshock

[Peter Cuevas]

I've been pretty lost. Although I think what I'm going to do is check my music library on pc. Although what I do is download the tags directly from MusicBrainz, then that's where the tags come from. And yes, some artists are separated with "x", but my problem is that having artists like "Alex", "xxxtentation", or any artists with an "x" in their name, you are also going to separate and put together a horrible mess. 

Thanks for all. Maybe @maxmp can add the option to add one form to put " x ", " a dúo con ", "; ". Basically space before or after

[andrewilley]

@Peter Cuevas As mentioned above, currently that can't work because when you are typing in new splitter symbols, spaces are used to separate multiple entries. So for example instead of typing ten separate 'Add' actions, I quickly typed " feat.  ft.  w/  ;  //  /  \\ ( ) ⬥ " into the 'Add' box and PA created 10 individual splitter symbols for me:

That last one is a Unicode 'Black Medium Diamond' character (U+2B25) by the way, which in an older Artist Splitting thread I thought looked quite nice as a separator that could not be easily misinterpreted:

 

But in your case you could use any character that looks visually like an "x", such as:

Then you would use a batch tag editor on a computer to search and replace any instances of " x " (i.e. just a normal "x" with spaces either side) with an " 𝗑 " symbol instead. It looks exactly the same as a normal " x " to the eye, but the "x" is now technically a multiply symbol (U+1D5D1 in the above list) so it is treated as a unique character by Poweramp.

However this is a one-shot solution, and you would need to repeat the tag edit for any new files that happen to again use "x" as an Artist separator. Do they turn up regularly by the way, I've only come across this usage very recently? (e.g. this thread documents the same issue)

All of this is just a temporarily, and somewhat geeky, fix for you in the meantime though. I agree that a longer-term solution would be for @maxmp to add a method of entering literal fixed spaces into Splitter symbols. Perhaps using %32, or even allowing for quotes to be used when you are entering a string - so you would type " x " including the quote marks.

Andre

[maxmp]

@andrewilley I will think about allowing spaces there. It would be impossible to enter multiple splits separated by space though. Also, ignoring space is generally a good thing, and handling spaces as a part of split string is very narrow and advanced usage.

[andrewilley]

@maxmp  I agree ignoring space(s) is generally a good idea in search pattern matching, and certainly any returned string results need any remaining leading and trailing spaces trimmed.

However I can see the case logic for supporting this new terminology of using a letter "x" to separate artist names, which does appear to be a thing in the wild for some reason. Also other multi-word strings such as "duet with" or the Spanish "a dúo con" are real-world examples that need catering for.

Like you, I like the ability to use spaces as delimiters when entering multiple split symbols though; it's much easier to type " feat.  ft.  w/  ;  //  /  \\ ( ) ⬥ " rather than doing ten separate 'Add' commands.

What about allowing double-quoted portions within the entered string to indicate that the enclosed contents should be treated as a literal string? For example:

feat.  ft.  w/  "a dúo con"  " x "  ;  //  /  \\

And entering two adjacent double-quotes ( "" ) would act as an escape to allow use of a real double-quote mark, just in case anyone ever wanted to do that.

Andre

[maxmp]

@andrewilley I think I'll add "Don't ignore space character" checkbox to the split chars dialog.

[andrewilley]

So if you needed to include spaces in some specific string, you would 'Add' it as a stand-alone string and tick the box in the dialog. But otherwise, spaces would act as delimiters as at present. That would work too.

Andre

[Peter Cuevas]

@maxmp I think this it's the best option. If the user is advanced, they could better organize their library. For example, I just need to add some details like the "x", but prevent artists from starting with "x" in their names, some patterns that have more than 2 words could also be added with quotation marks, as well as java/python ("")

I would be very happy with this functionality. Although it is something "silly" it helps a lot when it comes to finding all the songs of an artist, even if he is not the lead singer

Thanks @andrewilley @maxmp

[Peter Cuevas]

8 hours ago, maxmp said:

@andrewilley I think I'll add "Don't ignore space character" checkbox to the split chars dialog.

It could also be an option or add it in a separate category, as well as separate artists and composers. Maybe something like "advanced artist separation" (multiple accepted words and spaces) 

[andrewilley]

2 hours ago, Peter Cuevas said:

It could also be an option or add it in a separate category

Not really possible, there is only one Library database and the splitting of multiple artists occurs at the storage scanning stage, you would need to do a Full Rescan between any such changes.

Either of the proposed solutions would achieve what you want though. The downside of the quoted literal string would be that the user would need to understand the syntax - although that could easily be explained as a note in the 'Add' dialog - whereas the tickbox version would perhaps be more obvious to a new user.

Andre

[Peter Cuevas]

@andrewilley I think you didn't understand me. I'm not talking about making a separate category in the bookstore. I mean that just as there is an option for artists, another for excluded artists and another for composers, what I say is to add one that is to make "advanced" separations, with several words, maybe special syntax, space or some symbol, I do not know... 

[andrewilley]

@Peter Cuevas As I said, the splitting of Artists (or Composers, Genres, etc) is done at the scanning stage. To use a different splitting system, or a new symbol or words, would require a FULL Rescan to rebuild the whole database, not just a new category view like Artists, Album Artists, Composers, etc.

Andre