How come a blank "Album Artist" is being displayed with "Artist" in my playlist?

2019-06-16 03:25:11

I ripped this CD The Girl From Ipanema: The Antonio Carlos Jobim Songbook. When I right click any individual track or the Album Title, I see the Album Artist is blank.  Each track is by a different artist. I am not sure how, but my playlist shows the artist name against each track in the filed "Album Artist"

In Preferences ->ColumnsUI-> PlaylistView -> Columns Tab - the Display script for Album artist is %Album artist%

So why is it showing the "artist name" in the "Album artist"?

Additionally I have a custom  Filter panel called "Composer/Band"where it was supposed to show Composer for Genre Classical or else show Album Artist. Here too all unique names of artists for this Cd get displayed. The code for this Filter panel shown below should look for only Album artist and not Artist column:

 $if($stricmp(%Genre%,Classical),$right(%Composer%,$sub($len(%Composer%),$strrchr(%Composer%,' ')))', '$left(%Composer%,$sub($strrchr(%Composer%,' '),1)),%Album artist%)

I also double checked that the Album Artist is actually blank using another software PerfectTUNES Id Tags. That field is blank.

Where else other than the above fileds should I look for the attributes that are causing this confusing display?

Re: How come a blank "Album Artist" is being displayed with "Artist" in my playlist?

Reply #1 – 2019-06-16 09:53:43

Foobar uses tag remappings by default, meaning if you use %artist%, but the ARTIST field is empty, it'll automatically look up other fields in order (such as ALBUM ARTIST, COMPOSER, PERFORMER). and show whichever has values present first.

You can adjust this behavior somewhere in File/Preferences/Advanced or you can use $meta(artist) instead of %artist% to only attempt  to show values from that exact tag.

More info:
https://wiki.hydrogenaud.io/index.php?title=Foobar2000:Title_Formatting_Reference#Remapped_metadata_fields

Re: How come a blank "Album Artist" is being displayed with "Artist" in my playlist?

Reply #2 – 2019-06-16 09:56:51

You can also use $meta(album artist) to avoid this remapping.

Re: How come a blank "Album Artist" is being displayed with "Artist" in my playlist?

Reply #3 – 2019-06-16 15:00:44

Thanks. The following wors:
$if($stricmp(%Genre%,Classical),$right(%Composer%,$sub($len(%Composer%),$strrchr(%Composer%,' ')))', '$left(%Composer%,$sub($strrchr(%Composer%,' '),1)),<$meta(album artist)>)

But the problem is that every name is put between  these "<...>" brackets.

The following somehow does not work: Do not know why:
$if($stricmp(%Genre%,Classical),$right(%Composer%,$sub($len(%Composer%),$strrchr(%Composer%,' ')))', '$left(%Composer%,$sub($strrchr(%Composer%,' '),1))','($if($meta(album artist),$meta(album artist),'No Artist'))

How can I get rid of the brackets around the names?

Thanks

Arun

Re: How come a blank "Album Artist" is being displayed with "Artist" in my playlist?

Reply #4 – 2019-06-17 00:07:34

Sorry. Problem was typos. It works.My apologies.
$if($stricmp(%Genre%,Classical),$right(%Composer%,$sub($len(%Composer%),$strrchr(%Composer%,' ')))', '$left(%Composer%,$sub($strrchr(%Composer%,' '),1)),$if($meta(album artist),$meta(album artist),'No Artist'))