What to use: Album Artist or Ensemble?

2008-06-03 06:25:23

I know, FLAC uses vorbis comments and those are totally flexible, customisable and so on. The thing is:

The 'ALBUM ARTIST' field seems very popular, but I've been reading around the Internet that there are controversies among portables and network music systems regarding the ALBUM ARTIST/ENSEMBLE statements within a FLAC file, which makes browsing and organizing abit dificult. So, what you guys suggest? My doubt is only about these two fields, ensemble or album artist. Which one is more compliant with devices that support xiph.org content, specially FLAC?

Thanks for your clarifications. If is there any page where I can rely on regarding this particular subject, please let me know.

Best regards,

Edu.

What to use: Album Artist or Ensemble?

Reply #1 – 2008-06-03 07:10:44

It's actually between ALBUM ARTIST, ALBUMARTIST & ENSEMBLE.  These 3 are the most commonly used loose tags for use as Album Artist in OGG/FLAC.  If you want ultimate compatibility, set all three. 

Someone else will need to comment about "devices" with FLAC support and their behavior... but I'm fairly sure most devices don't bother implementing the concept of Album Artist in any format.  Rockbox, thankfully, does support the concept of Album Artist and will read any of the three for OGG/FLAC.

What to use: Album Artist or Ensemble?

Reply #2 – 2008-06-03 12:48:22

Media players differs in how they label a certain tag but often you have something like Album Artist/Band and Contributing Artist. They also differ in how they handle them e.g. WMP thinks something is an album is album title and album artist and release year and genre are the same. If you have a sampler and you put the performer in the Album Artist, you get as much albums as there are performers.
I think it is a save practice to do your tagging on the Contributing Artist.
You can use a tool like MP3Tag to copy the values to any other tag when needed.
See: http://www.thewelltemperedcomputer.com/TG/Tagging.html

What to use: Album Artist or Ensemble?

Reply #3 – 2008-06-03 18:43:19

Thanks guys.

Foobar2000 and MP3Tag are my friends in the tagging department. For most of my tagging purposes I use foobar, and then, if needed, I use MP3Tag for some additional task and for adding artwork to the songs.

After I started using MP3Tag I learned about the inconsistencies among some players regarding displaying information. Then I learned that WMA, MP3 and the MP4/apple family use 'BAND' as their approach to the main artist of the album. One day I ripped a CD to FLAC using Winamp just for curiosity (I don't use Winamp anymore). Then I discovered that Winamp adds the album artist field, just like would foobar, but even when instead of album artist I used ensemble, the player recognised the ensemble as the album artist as well.

When I bought Eagles' album 'Long Road Out of Eden', the first thing I noticed was the tagging scheme used by musictoday. Eagles were present as the artist and the ensemble.

Again, thanks for your inputs. I'm willing to read more from you.

Best regards,

Edu.