Hi
I have made greatest hits albums from my artists/albums.
As an example, I want to tag the Shaky & Bonnie track 'A Rockin' Good Way' as being on both the Shakin Stevens and Bonnie Tyler albums.
Can the Album Title field be made to accept multiple values?
Thanks.
Any tag can be multi-value, I believe. In right-click > Properties just add an extra value with semi-colon as separator. Then right-click the field > Split Values...
In your library viewer you'd have to change the album pattern to %<album>% to show individual values.
Problems though: If you have %album% in a playlist column or grouping, how would it show the correct album title for the correct artist? What are you planning to do about the track number? It would be the same for both albums. And then I'm sure there'd be other problems...
Where (on what device?) are you going to play these compilations? If staying on foobar (32-bit) for PC ...
A better solution might be to create an m-TAG (https://www.foobar2000.org/components/view/foo_tags) for the track. It creates a duplicate in the library that you can tag with separate values, but pointing to the same file. And rather than just one track, you might as well create the entire compilations that way.
Quick steps:
1 - Add tracks to playlist in desired order > select all > right-click > Tagging > Create m-TAGS file > type album/ filename and save to a foobar monitored folder > remove tracks from playlist.
2 - In Explorer browse to save folder > drag+drop m-TAGS file into playlist > (all tracks are selected) > right-click > Properties > tag Album, Artist, with a single value for all tracks > Tools > Auto Track Number, etc.
Now you have a virtual album.
Just to offer two rather boring, but reliable and low-tech options:
a) Treat your own compilation like you would any publicly released compilation. That would probably lead to creating duplicate files, but having the liberty of freely editing album name, tracknumbers and release dates as you see fit.
b) Treat your own compilations like playlists, and just save them that way (i.e. as M3U files). That way you cannot benefit from tagging. Also, your media files should not be moved often, otherwise you risk loosing such a compilation to the playlist entries pointing to outdated paths.
Thanks for your replies. I look forward to trying out your suggestions!
ojdo with a good reminder about paths. By default m-TAGS are saved with a
relative path to the source media file - so if you move the created .TAGS file / media somewhere else, the media will not be found. Best to save it to a folder and not move things.
However there is also an option to use
absolute paths -
File > Preferences > Advanced > Tagging > m-TAGS > m-TAGS creator > 'Only use absolute paths in references'. That saves with the full path, i.e -
M:/Music/Artist/Album/Disc/Track.flac
... so with that you could move .TAGS around without issue.
(Since .TAGS are only tiny text files, you can also edit them in a decent text editor)
Another possibility is to use CUE Sheets. This way, unlike with playlists, you can tag them as if they were actual files.
PERFORMER "AlbumArtist"
TITLE "Album"
REM DATE 2024
REM DISCNUMBER 01
FILE "AlbumArtist\Album\CD01\01.01.flac" WAVE
TRACK 01 AUDIO
PERFORMER "Track Artist 1"
INDEX 01 00:00:00
...
From a quick test it looks like the track titles will get pulled from the underlying files but not the track artist that gets inherited from PERFORMER.