Hi! I want to get rid of 'various artists' in my playlists so I've made the custom column to display the artist track if it is VA:
$if([%artist%]="Various Artists",%track artist%,%artist%)
But the thing always displays the track artist. Please tell me why.
Thanks.
The artist tag shouldn't be Various Artists. It should only be used in the album artist tag.
%track artist% returns the value of the artist tag when the artist tag differs from the album artist tag. Both tags have to be present for it to work. In other words, %track artist% and %artist% return the same value with the only difference being that the former is conditional upon the presence of a differing album artist tag.
As to your string, the format would be (with correctly formatted tags): $if($stricmp(%album artist%,Various Artists),%track artist%,%artist%), but it's pointless. It essentially says "if the album artist tag value is Various Artists, display the artist tag, otherwise display the artist tag." All you need in this instance is simply %artist%.
If your goal is to only display the artist tag on Various Artists albums, then you could use $if($stricmp(%album artist%,Various Artists),%artist%). You could also use $if($stricmp(%album artist%,Various Artists),%track artist%) but this needlessly causes foobar to compare the album artist and artist tags.
I suggest learning title formatting (http://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?title=Foobar2000:Title_Formatting_Reference).