As suggested, here is my “Status report”; Kind regards Klaus
Improve Status Report
Thankyou, I received your report, could you do me favour and rerun but select all fields in the Show these fields in the Status Report option, that will make analysis a little easier.
done as requested 
; kind regards, Klaus
Another perhaps important addition: I never use composer, conductor, or orchestra as album artist or track artist.
Thanks I found a few things to consider, I also found some improvements to make to the report to make it easier.
I already written this report before i saw your comment about album artit, so I’ll come back to your album artist point in a second post.
Your basic metadata is good, 100% of songs have Album field, 99% have Title field, and 99% have Track No field.
However only 82% have an Album Artist field and 83% have an Artist field
Of the songs that dont have an Album Artist field many have been matched to MusicBrainz and therefore an Album Artist should be available. We can see this by selecting Browse then Browse by Artist/Album, select UNKNOWN ARTIST and select the MusicBrainz Filter and select With Full Album Match
For Example
/music/Klassik_Songkong/Dunedin Consort, John Butt/Bach Orchestral Suites BWV 1066-1069
/music/Klassik_Songkong/01HQ_CD/Martin Haselböck/Bach; Brandenburg Concertos Nos. 1-6, Disc 1
/music/Klassik_Songkong/Bach_ Violin Concertos
We advise you should run Fix Songs again on these folders, if that does not resolve the issue that points to an issue/bug linked to your preferences that warrants extra investigation, please let us know.
67% have been matched to MusicBrainz songs, and 73% have been matched to a MusicBrainz Release, 37% have been matched to a Discogs Release. The collection is 100% Classical, for Classical collections 70% match rate is about normal, but repeated second run of Fix Songs is likely to yield a few more matches.
5% have been matched to Bandcamp album, but these links may have come from MusicBrainz so it would be worth using Bandcamp match to see if any more albums can be identified
There are some MusicBrainz albums that have been matched incompletely, there are seven albums where only 1 or 2 songs have been matched from an album these are usually worth investigating. Select Matched, then Matched to MusicBrainz and set the Matched to Album filter to Without Full Album Match to see them.
Further investigation shows that the /music/Klassik_Songkong/Berliner Philharmoniker & Wilh/Audite Edition Wilhelm Furtwängler Box Set has some tracks matched to a different release, Match to One Album should be used to resolve this
Hi, I quite agree with not adding composer as album artist, and I note you have Remove Composer from Album Artist enabled
I assume it is the removing of conductor and orchestra from album artist that has left some of your albums without an album artist despite them being identified. I would suggest that having albums without an album artist is going to cause you issues, the album artist should store the artist that is credited with performing the release and this could be various individuals or groups. So if we look at the album matched by the files in the /music/Klassik_Songkong/Dunedin Consort, John Butt/Bach Orchestral Suites BWV 1066-1069 folder
We can see from the cover that it is clearly credited to Dunedin Consort and John Butt. So im interested to know why you would not want that set as the album artist?
For track artist you have the Classical:Track Artist option set to Performers and Ensemble/Choir/Orchestra so that removes Conductor but there is no option to remove orchestra or we end up with an empty Track Artist, the Track Artist field is not only for individuals, what is the logic behind not having orchestras in this field?
Hi Paul,
First of all, thank you very much for your analysis and tips, and for the time you spent on this. I’ll take a closer look at the information and suggestions in the next few days and make any necessary corrections. If any specific questions arise, I’ll get back to you.
Regarding the “Album Artist” or “Artist” for classical albums: as I briefly posted, I only use these fields for artists in the sense of actual solo artists (e.g., for piano concertos, violin concertos, singers, and the like, and of course for works that only feature solo artists anyway) or very small formats like quartets, quintets, etc.; orchestras, composers, and conductors are stored in the designated fields anyway. This is certainly one of the main reasons why the “Album Artist” or “Artist” fields for albums matched with Musicbrainz still have no content.
This simply works best for me. Minimserver also provides me with the right options for this – for example, I use the property in the form: Artist.displayFormat={$Orchestra$Conductor$Choir$Artist^^^ / }. I think there are individual approaches here, and everyone should configure it according to their needs. I can’t give a more objective explanation – this simply seemed like a good solution for my needs.
Of course, I understand your approach, too; objectively speaking, this might be the better approach – I’ll think about it again.
Thanks and best regards,
Klaus
Hi Klaus, if it works for you then maybe no problem, but I do think there are some issues with it
- If Album Artist is empty then you cannot differentiate between albums that you do not know the album artist for, and albums that you have just removed the album artist.
- For navigation (i.e MinimServer hierachy) you cannot navigate to these albums by Album Artist like you can for other artists
- Cannot distinguish between two different albums with same name, if both have Album Artist empty
Now it got me thinking that basically you are using the Artist and Album Artist field as a Soloist field, so maybe what you really want is a Soloist field, so then you can leave Album Artist and Artist alone and use the Soloist field when you previously used Artist field
Now I did think about adding a Soloist field when I added the Classical specific support to SongKong, the issue was I wasn’t clear exactly what defined a soloist, perhaps yo can help me with this. For example if you have an album credited to various people and you remove the conductor and composer from the list do you always end up with the soloist, or could you have people credited that are not conductor or composer but still not a soloist ?
In the meantime an alternative solution would be to allow Album Artist to be populated with usual value solving the various album problems I list, but continue to use Artist only for soloists?
Hi Paul,
thanks for thanks for your advice;
I will try to answer (hoping it is in an understandable form, English is not my native language):
“If Album Artist is empty then you cannot differentiate between albums that you do not know the album artist for, and albums that you have just removed the album artist”
Correct, my solution has a real flaw; in reality I have not had this problem so far
" For navigation (i.e MinimServer hierachy) you cannot navigate to these albums by Album Artist like you can for other artists"
True; however, I only remove composer, orchestra, or conductor; I always navigate to these via the corresponding fields; I would never search for a specific orchestra in the “Album Artist” field.
Cannot distinguish between two different albums with same name, if both have Album Artist empty
This argument really gives me food for thought. I’ve never encountered a similar situation before, but it’s certainly a note worth noting.
Regarding “Soloist”: I probably didn’t explain that well - so maybe with examples:
If it’s a concert with orchestra and one (e.g., Beethoven’s piano concertos) or several soloists (e.g., Beethoven’s Triple Concerto), then I save these performers as “Artists” or “Album Artists.”
If, for example, it’s a piano sonata, then, as already mentioned, I naturally save the respective performer as “Artist” and “Album Artist”; if there are several (e.g., a trio), then I naturally save them all as Artist or “Album Artist” (but a maximum of three).
The theme of smaller forms such as a “quartet” isn’t entirely consistent yet; here, I use the name of the quartet as “Album Artist” and usually also as “Artists.” However, I’ve been a bit sloppy here in the past, so not all works are properly maintained.
I realize that I’ve created my own “world” around this, but so far I haven’t had the opportunity to hear other approaches to the topic.
Best regards,
Klaus
SongKong should add individuals to the Performer field, so it is sort of a soloists field
Are you aware of the Ensemble field, we use this for quartets, trios and duos, with the individual performers added to the performer field (I dont think I should have the quartet in the performer field here)
e.g
/music/Klassik_Songkong/Mendelssohn_String_Quartet
