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Topic: Your approach for dealing with artist name (variation, aliases, stage  (Read 4628 times) previous topic - next topic
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Your approach for dealing with artist name (variation, aliases, stage

Hey guys, I'm just wondering which approach did you use when dealing with artist variation, alias, stage name, etc. This is a different subject than the thread found here which mainly discusses on a way to idenfity artist aliases. The topic here is to figure out a way to retain all the aliases while being able to find the real same artist name that the alias is related to.

Below is the structure of my library:
- The ARTIST tag contains a mixture of stage name, real name, etc. (e.g. AiM, Ai Maeda) just like the album cover stated. The fallback is the most common name for the artist.

Drawbacks:
It is hard to find out ALL the tracks by the selected artist (when an artist have multiple alias, variations).

Well, before you say that why not just retag all the artist name into their real name? Although this approach works, for some of us, some names (e.g stage name) is much more well known than their real name, e.g. stage name (BoA) vs real name (Kwon Boa) or any DJ names. Another reason is that it is not feasible to retag a huge music collection with over 50k of tracks.

What I wanted to do:
- When an artist name is selected on the Filter list (or Facet), say AiM, other similar names for the same artist, such as Ai Maeda is selected as well.

Let's gather up some thoughts here.

Your approach for dealing with artist name (variation, aliases, stage

Reply #1
Why not just also use ALBUM ARTIST field in your tags.  For example, I have:

ARTIST
Doug Sahm
Doug Sahm & Band
The Maked Men
Sir Douglas Quintet
Texas Tornados
etc.

For all these different ARTIST names, I also have an ALBUM ARTIST tag that is simply:

Doug Sahm

And in facets you can easily have it show you ARTIST and ALBUM ARTIST side by side.

Your approach for dealing with artist name (variation, aliases, stage

Reply #2
In my usage, the ALBUM ARTIST is used to describe the overall album artist. I find it improper to use in the following case:
In the DJMAX PORTABLE Original Sound Tracks, there are dozens of artists aliases. The ALBUM ARTIST is thus filled with Various Artists. And as encouraged, the ALBUM ARTIST should be the same for an album, with varying TRACK ARTIST.

Your approach for dealing with artist name (variation, aliases, stage

Reply #3
I use ARTIST SORTNAME to deal with this issue. ALBUM ARTIST should imho really only be used if there are tracks with differing artists on an album.
It's only audiophile if it's inconvenient.

 

Your approach for dealing with artist name (variation, aliases, stage

Reply #4
And as encouraged, the ALBUM ARTIST should be the same for an album, with varying TRACK ARTIST.


Agree, and I use it in this case too. And maybe not standard but I find it very helpful to have all my variants of an artist's tracks show up in one place.  Think Miles Davis and all the various groups he recorded under. I can preserve the actual name of the group on the track, yet have all my Miles Davis recordings grouped together easily independent of the actual name of the track artist.

edit: I even use the Album Artist for tribute albums. For example, for the multiple artist tribute album, "Keep Your Soul: A Tribute to Doug Sahm" I have the Album Artist on all tracks listed as Doug Sahm.  This way searching or browsing artists trying to play things related to Doug Sahm will also show me the Tribute album.  All this fits my personal use for my 200,000+ track library and works well for me in my two primary players: SqueezeBox players at home and foobar2000 w/facets on the computer. Might not make any sense for others....

Your approach for dealing with artist name (variation, aliases, stage

Reply #5
My Album Artist tags contain the name that the album was released under. The Artist tag often contains the same information that the Album Artist tag does, the exceptions being any additional track artists (I don't like guest artists being in my title tags. They are irrelevant to a song's title, plus you can't filter for them if they aren't in the Artist tag.). This also allows me to use the %track artist% feature of foobar.

I use a custom tag for cross-referencing artists across my music library. Thus a track by The Beatles, for example, will have custom tags containing: The Beatles, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, Ringo Starr. A John Lennon track's custom tags will have John Lennon, The Beatles, Plastic Ono Band, and so forth. Basically any and all aliases are in this tag.

Your approach for dealing with artist name (variation, aliases, stage

Reply #6
I ran into this recently. I started out by defining my own tag "Artist Filter" which worked great, but as it's stored as a TXXX field it's multiple values weren't handled correctly by other tagging software. I then essentially over-rode the conductor field (which I was never using in my library) and had it display as "Artist Filter" in Foobar's property page because the TCON frame handles multiple values in any decent software that follows the ID3v2 spec.

My Artist Filter isn't really an alias in my use case, but it's every "Artist" that I'd like the song to appear under which fundamentally isn't that different I suppose.

As an example let's look at track 14 from a Century Media compilation album which has artists covering other artists from their roster:

Artist Name : Manntis
Track Title: Heaven's a Lie
Artist Filter : Manntis; In This Moment; Various Artists
Original Artist : Lacuna Coil
Album Artist : Various Artists

In This Moment is featured on the track, but isn't the primary artist (which would be Manntis). Naturally the track appears under Manntis, In This Moment and Various Artists (which displays the full album as a group).

In CUI the track is displayed as "Heaven's a Lie (Lacuna Coil cover) - Manntis feat. In This Moment". If you were using something to handle only Aliases you'd have to figure out how you want it to display if at all.

Your approach for dealing with artist name (variation, aliases, stage

Reply #7
D.Sync did you ever find a solution for this?  I am having similar issues.  I use Discogs Tagger and have not been consistent about replacing Artist names with Artist Name Variations or not.

Your approach for dealing with artist name (variation, aliases, stage

Reply #8
My method of dealing with it all is to use the ARTIST tag as an unlimited flat database of values.

Example ARTIST Tag 1 (split values using semicolon)
Quote
Ai Maeda; Maeda, Ai; AiM; Name(Real) — Ai Maeda; Name(Real) — Maeda, Ai; Name(Stage) — AiM; Genders — F

Example ARTIST Tag 2 (split values using semicolon)
Quote
Kwon Boa; Boa, Kwon; BoA; Name(Real) — Kwon BoA; Name(Real) — BoA, Kwon; Name(Stage) — BoA; Genders — F

Example ARTIST Tag 3 (split values using semicolon)
Quote
Aphex Twin; AFX; Bradley Strider; Caustic Window; GAK; Power-Pill; Richard D. James; James, Richard D.; Name(Stage) — Aphex Twin; Name(Stage) — AFX; Name(Stage) — Bradley Strider; Name(Stage) — Caustic Window; Name(Stage) — GAK; Name(Stage) — Power-Pill; Name(Real) — Richard D. James; Name(Real) — James, Richard D.; Genders — M

Example ARTIST Tag 4 (split values using semicolon)
Quote
The Beatles; Beatles, The; John Lennon; Lennon, John; Paul McCartney; McCartney, Paul; George Harrison; Harrison, George; Richard Starkey; Starkey, Richard; Ringo Starr; Name(Stage) — The Beatles; Name(Stage) — Beatles, The; Name(Real) — John Lennon; Name(Real) — Lennon, John; Name(Real) — Paul McCartney; Name(Real) — McCartney, Paul; Name(Real) — George Harrison; Name(Real) — Harrison, George; Name(Real) — Richard Starkey; Name(Real) — Starkey, Richard; Name(Stage) — Ringo Starr; Genders — 4M


I compile the names in my text editor (Notepad2), one name per line, lines end with a semicolon.
I then join the lines with keyboard command: CTRL+J

While in foobar2000,
I browse my media library Filter named "Artist" and I see a massive flat list of names just like the initial step in the text editor (but without the semicolon at the end).

This method is not recommended for the "lazy" type of computer user, or those who love pre-programmed solutions, or those who walk down the footpath with a smartphone in front of their face.
I don't care about time; how long it may take to optimize my entire media library means nothing to me.
If in the future I feel like defining things differently, then I am not afraid to start from scratch and go over my entire library again.
If I die of old age before I am finished, then so be it ...I really don't care about such details