How do I standardize composer names?

[cfogarty]

I was hoping the classical preferences that have classical names and conductor mappings would be the place. But these look only for musicbrainz mapping of some form. Not sure how those work.

But I keep running across multiple variants of names like Pytor, Peter, Sergei, Sergey, Rachmaninov, Rachmaninof, frydric, Fredrick, etc. I am trying to figure out how to do this. It is a classical phenomenon, I think.

[paultaylor]

So I think you are looking at these lists in Preferences

But these are just for modifying the Classical Algorithm for Classical album identification, You may have an classical album by a new composer that SongKong is not marking it as Classical, by adding the new composer to the Classical Conductor List that would make it much more likely that any releases they appear on would now be marked as Classical

So for your albums that have been matched to MusicBrainz the artist entity of the people involved in the album is known not just the artist name and we can force SongKong to use the standard name rather than the name displayed on the cover which may vary. There are two settings that affect this:

Romanize non-Latin script artist names wherever possible

If the artist names is in a non-Latin script such as Chinese, Japanese or Cyrillic its Latin equivalent will be used if available. This is very useful for Western speakers who typically only can only pronounce Latin script but may have music from other cultures because then it allows them to pronounce the names of any of the artists in their collection. The Latin name is often stored as an additional alias within the original MusicBrainz database, it maybe a transliteration of the original name or an alternative Latin based name that the artists is known by in the Western world. The SongKong database additionally links Discogs artists to the corresponding MusicBrainz artist if it exists so that now you can often get Latin names even when your songs only match a Discogs album and not a MusicBrainz album.

This option will not just romanize performers it will also romanize all individuals associated with the release such as composers, conductors and engineers.

Use standard Artist name instead of name displayed on cover

Sometimes an artist may use a different name on some of their releases, this can make it harder to manage your collection so if you enable this option then their standard name is always used. This would affect Composer if you have the Composer listed as an Album artist for example (which we don’t recommend) but fields such as the Composer field use the standard name anyway, they dont use the name as credited on cover so should be no variation.

Conclusion

But having said all this I may have missed something for composer/conductor. If you have these options enabled but not getting consistent results could you please run Create Support Files and show me an example so I can consider further.

[paultaylor]

Here is an example of what I mean

So I have this album which has music composed by Sergei Rachmaninoff, played by Vladimir Ashkenazy, and the album credited to Rachmaninov; Vladimir Ashkenazy, Concertgebouw Orchestra, Bernard Haitink

https://musicbrainz.org/release/219e0252-c483-47bd-9215-5db22356a93d

And if we have a look at the Sergei Rachmaninoff alias page we see (obviously) that his primary name is Сергей Васильевич Рахманинов but notice the third line in the table Sergei Rachmaninoff is labelled as English (primary)

Default Config

Now with the SongKong defaults:

Format:Romanize non-Latin script artist names wherever possible:Yes
Format:Use Standard Artist Name instead of Name displayed on Cover: Yes
Classical:Remove Composers from Album Artist:No

We get the following

Album Artist:Sergei Rachmaninoff; Vladimir Ashkenazy, Koninklijk Concertgebouworkest, Bernard Haitink
Composer:Sergei Rachmaninoff

Because we use the standard name, using English (primary) version of non Latin script name if available

Config Two

If we set to Format:Romanize non-Latin script artist names whereever possible to No so we have

Format:Romanize non-Latin script artist names wherever possible:No
Format:Use Standard Artist Name instead of Name displayed on Cover: Yes
Classical:Remove Composers from Album Artist:No

we get

Album Artist:Сергей Рахманинов; Vladimir Ashkenazy, Koninklijk Concertgebouworkest, Bernard Haitink
Composer:Сергей Рахманинов

because now we stil ignore the album credited name and go to the artist entity but for non Latin we dont use the artists entities English name anymore

Config Three

If we also set to Use Standard Artist Name instead of Name displayed on Cover to No so we have

Format:Romanize non-Latin script artist names wherever possible:No
Format:Use Standard Artist Name instead of Name displayed on Cover: No
Classical:Remove Composers from Album Artist:No

we have

Album Artist:Rachmaninov; Vladimir Ashkenazy, Concertgebouw Orchestra, Bernard Haitink
Composer:Сергей Рахманинов

Because now for the album artist we just use however they are credited and they are credited as Rachmaninov as the album artist, but in this case the composer comes from the linked work and here is just credited as Сергей Васильевич Рахманинов, so that is why there is a difference.

Config Four

If we change to:
Format:Romanize non-Latin script artist names wherever possible:Yes
Format:Use Standard Artist Name instead of Name displayed on Cover: No
Classical:Remove Composers from Album Artist:No

we get

Album Artist:Rachmaninov; Vladimir Ashkenazy, Concertgebouw Orchestra, Bernard Haitink
Composer:Sergei Rachmaninoff

Because we are romanizing the composer credit because it in Cyrillic, but not we are not romanizing the album artist credit Rachmaninov because not in Cyrillic and we havent asked to use standard name.

Config Five

Also if we enable Classical:Remove Composers from Album Artist to Yes then we see that he is removed from the album artist field completely

Album Artist:Vladimir Ashkenazy, Concertgebouw Orchestra, Bernard Haitink

So you can see it is quite complex but for most customers the defaults give the best results.

[cfogarty]

This is perfect and helps to make sense of these settings thanks!