Fall back to ARTIST for tracks with missing ALBUMARTIST

[JANEPRENTISS666]

I would like to use the album artist tag to browse all artists in my library (from non-VA releases).

It appears that the album artist view only lists all artists that explicitly occur in the ALBUMARTIST tag.

I think it would be much more convenient if the view also listed all artists that are shared by an entire album with no ALBUMARTIST set. A lot of desktop players do this, unfortunately the functionality seems a lot less common on mobile.

Having to use the artist view is annoying because it's clogged by a million one-track artists from VA releases - although at least Poweramp lets you see the number of tracks per artist at a glance.

[andrewilley]

Yes, that's how it currently works, on the assumption that if you are specifically looking at Album Artist tags, that is presumably what you want to see rather than Track Artists. Any missing ones get put into an 'Unknown' sub-area, in the same way that happens with all other categories - Albums, Genres, Years, etc.

However I do agree it would be a nice option to be able to fall back to Artist where the Album Artist tag is missing in any places when Album Artist is displayed. A lot of album files where the Track Artist tags are identical still don't necessarily bother populating the Album Artist tag. It's fixable with a batch tag editor, but a bit of a faff having to check it again with every new album you add.

Andre

[musicalis]

This is something that I also would be thankful for. I tag my library according to the rules specified in Foobar2000:Encouraged_Tag_Standards, which explicitly say:

Quote

[Album Artist] tag should only exist if an album contains various artists. It should NOT be created when an album does not contain various artists.

I know there is no universal standard for tagging but having ARTIST as a fallback for ALBUMARTIST would be really helpful for me.

[andrewilley]

Personally I completely disagree the advice from foobar's community to specifically avoid using an Album Artist tag when all of the contained tracks have the same Artist tag. I do agree that using a duplicated tag ought to be redundant for grouping purposes if all of the Artist tags already match, but there is no reason to specifically NOT include it. I populate the Album Artist tag for all of my tracks regardless of the content of each individual Artist tag, as it's just safer and more robust that way in case I miss something in a track or there are future edits - and it does no harm.

In fact, I actually populate Album Artist for some individual (non-album) song, where I use the term "(Singles)". That allows me to more easily find them in Album Artists lists rather than only being able to see them in the "Unknown" list .

I would point out that Poweramp's current behaviour is actually exactly as it should be: If you have chosen to view a list of Album Artists, then that's exactly what you will see - the list correctly omits any tracks where there is no Album Artist present, placing those instead into a catch-all "Unknown Album Artist" group. It's the same as when viewing a list sorted by Artist, the list won't include Album Artist names such as "Various Artists".  To quote the advert, the Categories do exactly what it says on the tin.

I do however agree that it would be nice to have an option in PA to use Artist as a fallback in lists where there is no Album Artist defined though, just as a user convenience if tagging is not as complete as it could be.

Andre

[musicalis]

I totally agree that the PA behaviour is correct as it is and that falling back to ARTIST when there is no ALBUMARTIST, if implemented, should only be an option. I am sorry that my previous comment wasn't clear about this.
 

[MotleyG]

27 minutes ago, andrewilley said:

Personally I completely disagree the advice from foobar's community to specifically avoid using an Album Artist tag when all of the contained tracks have the same Artist tag. I do agree that using a duplicated tag ought to be redundant for grouping purposes if all of the Artist tags already match, but there is no reason to specifically NOT include it. I populate the Album Artist tag for all of my tracks regardless of the content of each individual Artist tag, as it's just safer and more robust that way in case I miss something in a track or there are future edits - and it does no harm.

I agree with @andrewilley that all tracks should have this value, even if it duplicates the current Artist field. The data size is minuscule yet it ensures a consistent format and flow for virtually all library managers and players. The example of the common “Various Artists” is just a simple solution. But there are many albums where most tracks have matching values, except perhaps a single duet - where an additional artist needs to be added.

Bottom line, there is no harm in having more metadata for a complete and consistent library.