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Topic: how to get WMP's music library to not show compilation songs as th (Read 15709 times) previous topic - next topic
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how to get WMP's music library to not show compilation songs as th

I recently installed Windows Media Player 11, and like the way the UI uses album art. What I don't like is that over half of the "albums" it displays (under whatever view - artist or album views) are single songs from compliation albums. So a tribute album with 17 songs by 17 different artists would display as 17 separate albums by different artists, instead of as a single album under "various artists".

I've gone through my music library and tagged each compilation album as "various artists" in the "album artist" field (album artist is left blank on the rest of my files) and I thought this would take care of things, but WMP apparently doesn't recognize that scheme, although I'd read that it did.

So: how do I get WMP to recognize and display compilation albums or albums with songs from lots of different artists under "compilation" or "various artists" or some such category?

Any help is appreciated, thanks. And sorry to be bugging an audiophile forum with questions that might be better answered at a WMP forum - but HA is the place I know and populated by people with a better general knowledge of what's actually going on under the hood in stuff like this.

edit: spelling
God kills a kitten every time you encode with CBR 320

how to get WMP's music library to not show compilation songs as th

Reply #1 –
WMP 11 does use Album Artist.  It depends on it.  For MP3, it's stored in the TPE2 tag (mp3tag calls it "BAND").  Add the "Album Artist" column to WMP 11's view and see if you really have it set.

Pop in a bought CD with various artists on it and rip it in WMP 11... and you'll see it in action.

how to get WMP's music library to not show compilation songs as th

Reply #2 –
I use WMP 11.  When I rip any CD, it normally sets the "artist" and "album artist" to the same.  If it is a compilation CD, soundtrack, etc. I then have to manually change the "album artist" on each track to "Various Artists".  I also digitally place the actual album folder inside a "Various Artists" folder, though this step probably isn't necessary.  That's just how I like to organize compilation CDs.  If you've used the Advanced Tag Editor built into WMP to set the album artist of each track to "Various Artists", you should be fine.  You may just have to delete and re-add your library to get the changes to show up.

how to get WMP's music library to not show compilation songs as th

Reply #3 –
Sorting by album artist wins 
wish there was a way to make iPod's sort by album artist as opposed to artist

how to get WMP's music library to not show compilation songs as th

Reply #4 –
Quote from: grommet on
WMP 11 does use Album Artist.  It depends on it.  For MP3, it's stored in the TPE2 tag (mp3tag calls it "BAND").  Add the "Album Artist" column to WMP 11's view and see if you really have it set.
Pop in a bought CD with various artists on it and rip it in WMP 11... and you'll see it in action.

So it turns out that foobar2000 has a tag field called "album artist" that's written to id3v2, but that's different than the tag that WMP11 recognizes as "album artist." WMP11's "album artist" tag field is recognized by foobar2000 as "BAND" just the same as you reported with mp3tag.

So I went through and put "various artists" in the BAND field, along with the album artist field, of my compilation albums.

However, WMP11 won't recognize the tags unless it writes them. I use foobar2000 for tagging, and don't want to use WMP because it doesn't do the full name length, cutting some fields short despite apparently writing id3v2 tags. If I ripped usingWMP11 this wouldn't be a problem.

So now my problem is: I can write the BAND tag, bu WMP11 won't read it or recognize it when they see the file. Any thoughts?
God kills a kitten every time you encode with CBR 320

how to get WMP's music library to not show compilation songs as th

Reply #5 –
Quote from: DEVluke on
Sorting by album artist wins 
wish there was a way to make iPod's sort by album artist as opposed to artist


My wish too.. The Cover Flow looks very messed up because this isn't implented.
Same thing with iTunes Browser. There are many Artists in the TreeView with partial albums.

how to get WMP's music library to not show compilation songs as th

Reply #6 –
Quote from: ~*McoreD*~ on
Quote from: DEVluke on

Sorting by album artist wins 
wish there was a way to make iPod's sort by album artist as opposed to artist


My wish too.. The Cover Flow looks very messed up because this isn't implented.
Same thing with iTunes Browser. There are many Artists in the TreeView with partial albums.


I got sick of it enough to change all artist variations accross an album to the album artist
if that made sense... e.g. my Artist mirrors my Album Artist

At least if im desperate to know who is featured in some 2pac recent release song I can refer to the album online and find out... on the go I don't need to know.

and the reason I mention 2pac is, well... have you SEEN the artists on any of the newer releases... about 5 per track >.<

If only rockbox was still going
 

how to get WMP's music library to not show compilation songs as th

Reply #7 –
The iPod media library discussion is interesting - I wonder what players support reading Album Artist tag. The basic algorithm needed to do this is to be able to read the Album Artist tag and to have Album Artist overrirde the Artist tag if the two differ. Does Zune support this?

I still want to figure out how to write the Album Artist tag that's recognized by WMP, using Foobar2000. I don't want to use WMP to tag because, despite supporting id3v2, it crops the names of songs and albums to a certain number of characters, and of course strips replaygain info and some other tags that it doesn't recognize.
When I have tested WMP to write Album Artist on a few tracks, and foobar2000 displays the new tag field as BAND, not album artist. This is fine. But when I use foobar2000 to write BAND tags, WMP doesn't recognize it.
What gives?
God kills a kitten every time you encode with CBR 320

how to get WMP's music library to not show compilation songs as th

Reply #8 –
Perhaps I should have mentioned that I rip all my music to WMA Lossless and WMA 192 Kbps CBR.  I don't know if the tagging fields for WMA files differ from MP3.  Setting the "Album Artist" to Various Artists always works great for me.  Also, I've never noticed any limitation on field lengths.  And I have some very long song titles that are never cut off.

The only thing you might look at is right clicking on the actual MP3 file, clicking properties, clicking summary tab and then clicking advanced.  Windows allows you to change some of the fields there, though I doubt "Band" will show up.

how to get WMP's music library to not show compilation songs as th

Reply #9 –
Quote from: timcupery on
don't want to use WMP because it doesn't do the full name length, cutting some fields short despite apparently writing id3v2 tags
Huh? I've written tags as long as:
Code: [Select]
15 Minute Mega Mix: Dance All Night/Fun with Bad Boys/Boop Bop/Real Thing/Rock Me/Real Thing [Remix]
using WMP11 and they show up just fine in MP3tag...
EAC>1)fb2k>LAME3.99 -V 0 --vbr-new>WMP12 2)MAC-Extra High

how to get WMP's music library to not show compilation songs as th

Reply #10 –
Quote from: timcupery on
So it turns out that foobar2000 has a tag field called "album artist" that's written to id3v2, but that's different than the tag that WMP11 recognizes as "album artist." WMP11's "album artist" tag field is recognized by foobar2000 as "BAND" just the same as you reported with mp3tag.

So I went through and put "various artists" in the BAND field, along with the album artist field, of my compilation albums.

However, WMP11 won't recognize the tags unless it writes them. I use foobar2000 for tagging, and don't want to use WMP because it doesn't do the full name length, cutting some fields short despite apparently writing id3v2 tags. If I ripped usingWMP11 this wouldn't be a problem.

So now my problem is: I can write the BAND tag, bu WMP11 won't read it or recognize it when they see the file. Any thoughts?
WMP 11 supports "long names" just fine, and uses ID3v2.3 in MP3 to store them.

Are you using ID3v2.3 or ID3v2.4?  Make sure you stick to the de facto ID3v2.3 standard in foobar2000 or you'll run into compatibility problems between applications.  Even in mp3tag, ID3v2.3 is the default.  However, in foobar2000, it's not... you need to enable it in advanced settings:

"ID3v2 Write Compatibility Mode (non-specification-compliant, slow, activates workarounds for common bugs in other software)"

Notice the agenda?    Anyway, you can delete songs from WMP 11's library list and drag/add them back in and it'll force re-reading the metadata.  (For MP3, it has to be ID3v2.3 and ID3v1.1.)

Quote from: timcupery on
The iPod media library discussion is interesting - I wonder what players support reading Album Artist tag. The basic algorithm needed to do this is to be able to read the Album Artist tag and to have Album Artist overrirde the Artist tag if the two differ. Does Zune support this?
Later verisons of iTunes manage Album Artist metadata now (it even uses TPE2 in MP3) but it's not well implemented into the UI; it's somewhat necessary for Cover Flow to sort correctly, though.  I assume the touch iPods also care about Album Artist.

On the Zune device, you can set it to browse Album Artist instead of both Aritst & Album Artist... which trims down the listed Artists especially if you have a lot of compilations or multiple artists per track.  (If Album Artist is not set, it uses Artist of course.)  So, you can browse/find by Album Artist, but when the song plays... you'll see the actual track artist, too.

how to get WMP's music library to not show compilation songs as th

Reply #11 –
grommet, thanks for your post, you nailed my issue. It turns out that my problem is the ID3v2.4 tags. You could lay the blame at the feet of foobar2000 for making this the default or at the feet of WMP for simply not being able to read 2.4 tags.

I use foobar2000 (currently 0.9.5) for tagging, set to do ID3V1 + ID3V2 for mp3's, and the box for "ID3v2 compatibility mode" was NOT checked - Mp3tag showed that my files had ID3v1 and ID3v2.4 tags, which is presumably why WMP didn't recognize longer song and album names, because it could only read the ID3V1 info.

So I set foobar to the "compatibility" tagging mode for ID3v2.3, and tested some things:
- WMP now recognizes when I write "Various Artists" in the BAND field using foobar2000
- WMP also recognizes the longer tag fields
- now when I update tags in WMP, I don't lose Replaygain information on the files. So the problem with losing Replaygain info when I let WMP update tags on my files, as I described in another thread, was not due to WMP not recognizing the specific field in the tag, but rather to WMP not recognizing any tag info written in ID3v2.4 standard.

Again, it's worth noting that the incompatibility goes two ways. foobar2000 has its tagging default set to use ID3v2.4, and its description of 2.3 as "compatibility mode" definitely has some agenda - though it may be valid, if 2.4 is indeed an improved standard. But WMP could easily enough have been programmed to at least be able to read ID3v2.4.


Edit: One other not-so-important question question: why does the tag field that WMP calls Album Artist show up in foobar2000 and Mp3tag as BAND? Is iTunes with WMP or foobar2000 on how these tag fields are named?
Edit2: after some more reading, they are different implementations of the same thing, as discussed in this thread and that thread. Apparently "album artist" is a tag field that's largely specific to foobar2000 while WMP (and iTunes 7) uses "BAND" for similar function.
God kills a kitten every time you encode with CBR 320

how to get WMP's music library to not show compilation songs as th

Reply #12 –
Turns out the ID3v2.X-in-foobar2000 issue has been discussed A TON in the HA-hosted foobar2000 forum, just go there and search ID3v2 or ID3v2.3 or ID3v2.4
I generally buy the position of using ID3v2.3 for compatibility's sake, because mp3 as a format is already something mainly used for compatibility reasons - there are (somewhat) better audio codecs out there, but without nearly the support in software and hardware. But there are reasons, both for various character displays for for specific things that foobar2000 does, why ID3v2.4 is an improved format. And it's kind of a shame that Microsoft hasn't made any effort to support it. The current version of iTunes apparently does, although there are plenty of players out there (including my Sansa Clip) that don't.

It's also worth noting that foobar's "compatibility mode" is basically ID3v2.3 but not necessarily always to spec, and some apps still have trouble reading foobar2000's compatibility tags. To ensure full compatibility the best way, apparently, is to use Mp3tag, which will save to ID3v2.3 spec, to which it's set as default, though settings may be changed.
God kills a kitten every time you encode with CBR 320

how to get WMP's music library to not show compilation songs as th

Reply #13 –
>Apparently "album artist" is a tag field that's largely specific to foobar2000 while WMP (and iTunes 7) uses "BAND" for similar function.

Generally speaking the standard is the one most used, we went for compatibility with WMP and iTunes.