Various Artists GSoC project

[kevin larson]

2009/3/31 Matt 'Murph' Finnicum <mattfinn at gmail.com>

> 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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>
I completely agree with Murph.  There needs to be a better option for
handling various artists.  If custom tags is the only feasible way to solve
this, shouldn't someone be working on it?   Handling of custom tags would go
a long way towards helping with my collection, and I would be excited to
work on something like this as part of my GSoC project.

As Michael said: (I can't get the >'s to work right o.O)
"Except if you make the app custom tag aware, but it's quite a bit of
work and not many players took that route."

This is exactly what I'm looking for!  I would love to help Amarok handle
various artists better and I'm pretty sure one of the reasons GSoC was
created was to solve problems being put aside because they require "quite a
bit of work".

Sure, although some users may be satisfied with the current handling, and
others might not want to be bothered with custom tagging, if this is
something a good number of users want (and I'm getting that impression from
this discussion), the option to support it should not be ignored.

-Kevin
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