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Topic: How can I assign the album artist to an mp3 file? (Read 3996 times) previous topic - next topic
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How can I assign the album artist to an mp3 file?

Unfortunately, I do not know how to assign the album artist to an mp3 file so that my two mp3 players read them as “Artist”.

Currently, foobar shows the album artist of my mp3 files in a properties field called “<BAND>” if File/Preferences/Advanced/Map TPE2 to Album Artist (more compatible) is not marked; if marked, it shows the album artist in a properties field called “Album Artist”.

Therefore, I conclude, that the album artist information is included in the mp3 file somewhere but probably assigned to another field (“BAND”?) which my two mp3 players do not read as “Artist”, they always show “Unknown Artist”.

How can I assign the information of the album artist to the proper field or give it the right tag so my mp3 players show me the album artist and not “Unknown Artist”?

(I have already spent quite some time reading posts in the forum but could not find the answer, also, the information given there is quite overwhelming).

Thank you for your help
HJStern

How can I assign the album artist to an mp3 file?

Reply #1 –
use the artist tag. very few, if any, players support album artist.

perhaps mentioning your player would help. you might be lucky enough to have a device that supports rockbox. that supports album artist tags.

How can I assign the album artist to an mp3 file?

Reply #2 –
Quote from: HJStern on
they always show “Unknown Artist”

Are you using the Album Artist field with nothing entered in the Artist field?

How can I assign the album artist to an mp3 file?

Reply #3 –
Thank you for your replies,

I am using a Medion mp3-player and a Samsung mobile, both of which do not seem to be supported by RockBox.

I have found one title, that seems to hold the information of the Album Artist in a readable form for the mp3-player (Medion, though not yet tried out on the Samsung) since it shows his name. I have fiddled a bit with another file without any success yet. Confusingly, the properties dialog boxes of both titles hold information in the same fields in fb2k but for the one title the MP3-player shows the name of the Album Artist, for the other it does not. For both titles, I used only the field “Album Artist”. Even entering the name of the Album Artist also into the field “Artist Name” does not solve the problem for the file which does not show the name of the Album Artist on the mp3-player.

I do not know how to explain the different behaviors with both files seeming to hold information in the same fields in fb2k.

I opened both mp3 files with a text-Editor. Both hold the information of the Album Title, the Track Title and the Date at the end of the file. Confusingly, they hold different information at the beginning of the file. The one that shows the Album Artist on the mp3-player shows:
“TXXX  =  ÿþA L B U M  A R T I S T  ÿþS c o f i e l d ,  J o h n  “
the other one, which does not show the Album Artist on the mp3-player shows:
“TPE2      ÿþB l e y ,  C a r l a  “

Probably these differences are part of the solution. But how can I influence these entries in fb2k?

Thank you for your support
HJStern

How can I assign the album artist to an mp3 file?

Reply #4 –
Firstly, it is not necessary, and may even be counterproductive, to use Album Artist to store the name of the artist if it does not vary between individual tracks within said album, which is the purpose of Album Artist. It and Artist are not equivalent; that’s why they’re two separate fields, and that may well be why you ‘do not know how to assign the album artist to an mp3 file so that my two mp3 players read them as “Artist”.’ One should not expect a player to read x as y.

Secondly, although a text editor is not an ideal way to assess the contents of binary files, your results show clearly that your player will only read Album Artist when it is stored in a TXXX (custom) frame, not when it is stored in TPE2. Thus, uncheck the option “Map TPE2 to Album Artist” within foobar2000’s Advanced Preferences, hold shift and right-click, choose “Tagging”>“Rewrite file tags”, and try the resulting file on your player again.

Another thing that is worth investigating is whether the type of ID3v2 tag, v2.3 or v2.4, has any effect upon your player’s ability to read the tags as you want it to.

How can I assign the album artist to an mp3 file?

Reply #5 –
Out of interest, if you don't use album artist to store the artist of the CD, how do you differentiate between albums and compilations? An album with have just one artist (in general), whereas a compilation will have a different artist per track. If you then try and browse your CDs via artist, the compilations will be fragmented and appear under each artist on the CD>

I have artist listed under album artist, and for compilations, album artist reads "various artists".

How can I assign the album artist to an mp3 file?

Reply #6 –
Personally, and I’m not necessarily stating this as a recommendation, I only populate Album Artist if it is different from Artist (at least on a whole-album basis). This works for my limited needs but admittedly might not apply to everyone; in such cases, although I don’t duplicate Artist into Album Artist, others might prefer or even need to.

Anyway, my point was that the OP seemed to be expecting to be able to fill Album Artist but have a portable player read it as Artist. Given that they are two distinct fields with their own purposes, such a thing is unlikely to work. Artist is the field for track-specific information such as that displayed when the track is playing. That should be populated in all cases. People can then decide what to do with Album Artist based on their situation and preferences as I discussed above.

How can I assign the album artist to an mp3 file?

Reply #7 –
Hello db1989 and hello extracampine,

Thank you for your help.

The discussion where to store the artist’s name, wether in the field Album Artist or in the field Artist (Name) and also do you differenciate between “CD” artists and compilations is very interesting, but does not really solve my problem how to store them in a form, that my portable mp3-players will read.

As already stated on March 24, it is of no avail entering the information into the field Artist Name since my portable player does not read it as well.

I found out in the meantime, that the player seems to be able to read entries for Album Artist only if the entry is like "TXXX = ÿþA L B U M A R T I S T ÿþ . . . ".

Other entries such as “ÿþA L B U M A R T I S T ÿþ . . .” or “TXXX 7 ÿþA L B U M A R T I S T ÿþ …” do not work.

How can I write the tag information in the format my mobile players can read? Or is there a bug in fg2k which makes fb2k write information to the file in a confusing form? (Reading the file in a text editor, I found that a lot of information is given twice at the beginning of the file:

ID3  €  ~TIT2 
  Baseball TALB      4x4 TCON      Jazz TDRC      2000 TPE1      Bley, Carla TXXX      ALBUM ARTIST Bley, Carla ID3      )TIT2      ÿþB a s e b a l l  TALB 
  ÿþ4 x 4  TCON      ÿþJ a z z  TYER      2000 TRCK      4 TXXX  7  ÿþA L B U M A R T I S T  ÿþB l e y ,  C a r l a  ÿ

(some characters did not survive the copy and paste ordeal and were converted into line breaks)

After some other characters I can find, with other characters in between, the string “LAME3.99” 3 times at the beginning of the file and more than 50 times at the end of the file.

Does this maybe obstruct readability for my portable player?

Thank you for your help
HJStern

How can I assign the album artist to an mp3 file?

Reply #8 –
you've had the answer telling you how to get foobar to write TXXX frames for album artist.

Quote from: db1989 on
Secondly, although a text editor is not an ideal way to assess the contents of binary files, your results show clearly that your player will only read Album Artist when it is stored in a TXXX (custom) frame, not when it is stored in TPE2. Thus, uncheck the option “Map TPE2 to Album Artist” within foobar2000’s Advanced Preferences, hold shift and right-click, choose “Tagging”>“Rewrite file tags”, and try the resulting file on your player again.


also, you might like axone (requires java) for investigating mp3 frames.

http://flying.guy.chez-alice.fr/Axone.jar

How can I assign the album artist to an mp3 file?

Reply #9 –
Quote from: HJStern on
As already stated on March 24, it is of no avail entering the information into the field Artist Name since my portable player does not read it as well.
Your player never reads information in Artist? Something is seriously amiss in that case.

Quote
How can I write the tag information in the format my mobile players can read?
Did you try any of the recommendations I already posted? Not responding to answers and repeating your questions just means that we have to repeat ourselves again.

Quote
Or is there a bug in fg2k which makes fb2k write information to the file in a confusing form?
No, there are no known bugs with fb2k’s writing of ID3 tags.

Quote
After some other characters I can find, with other characters in between, the string “LAME3.99” 3 times at the beginning of the file and more than 50 times at the end of the file.

Does this maybe obstruct readability for my portable player?
Only if your player is bad at reading tags. If it cannot read Artist, that might be a possibility. What you described containing instances of LAME and the version number are just encoding metadata at the start and padding at the end; neither should be an obstacle to any player.

Perhaps you should try writing different versions of ID3v2, namely v2.3 and v2.4, as found in the same page of the Preferences to which I pointed you earlier. However, I haven’t heard of players only being able to read certain fields from either type of tag and not the other, so I don’t know how likely this is to solve anything.