Various Artists GSoC project

[Matt 'Murph' Finnicum]

On Tue, Mar 31, 2009 at 5:15 PM, Michael Pujos <pujos.michael at laposte.net>wrote:

> Jeff Mitchell a écrit :
> > Michael Pujos wrote:
> >
> >> Jeff Mitchell a écrit :
> >>
> >>> Album: Crazy Techno vol 2
> >>> Album Artist: Ministry of Sound
> >>> Artist: TechnoDude
> >>> Track Title: Blowing Your Mind
> >>> Featuring: John Blaze
> >>>
> >>> This isn't a far-fetched example by any means -- in fact, it's quite
> >>> common -- but clearly "John Blaze" belongs in TPE2, not "Ministry of
> >>> Sound".  So where do you put "John Blaze" if you've filled TPE2 with
> >>> "Ministry of Sound"?  Will anyone show it if you put it in TCOM or
> TOPE?
> >>>
> >>> There is only one purely cross-player solution to the Album Artist
> >>> problem in ID3, which is, don't do it.
> >>>
> >> In you example above, i'd put John Blaze in a custom tag (TXXX frame)
> >> since there's no standard frame for the "Featuring" credit.
> >>
> >
> > Which proves my point.  Now you're putting information in custom tags,
> > which are totally fine for one player, but are not cross-player
> > compatible (unless they hack in support for each others' frames).
> >
> >
>
> Except if you make the app custom tag aware, but it's quite a bit of
> work and not many players took that route.
>
> >
> >> No problem putting as much info as you want in the filename, but it's
> >> useful to also have that info in tags for sorting / displaying purposes.
> >> The simplest solution IMHO is to follow the WMP/itunes de-facto standard
> >> (TPE2), or the foobar2000 one
> >> (
> http://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?title=Foobar2000:Encouraged_Tag_Standards
> ).
> >> foobar2000 maps Album Artist to the first  defined tag in this list:
> >> "album artist" (custom frame), "artist", "composer", "performer". For
> >> Album Artist, it ignores TPE2 which can serve other purposes (like it's
> >> real signification).
> >>
> >
> > You should actually read my previous email.
> >
> > --Jeff
> >
> >
>
> I thought it did :)
> The point was just that users will be grateful if you follow some
> (potentially half-baked) standard that works rather than thinking you
> got it better than everyone else and implementing
> your own speific solution (NIHS syndrome).


I don't think it's a good idea to just decide to do nothing. Album Artist /
Various Artists support is very important to people trying to manage a large
collection.

Using a custom tag would not negativly affect other players, would it? Maybe
Amarok should just use a custom tag untill the standard is written (at which
point it could easily translate the custom tag into the standardized
version).

I also think the foobar2000 standard is a very good way to deal with it in
the mean time. Again, it's misusing the tags a bit, but I'm sure that most
users will appreciate it and I'm sure it could be updated when the real
standard comes out.

You could even have an option or two to decide how to deal with this if you
wanted to force the decision onto the user. But just not having the support
shouldn't be acceptable for Amarok.

--Murph
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