I should like to be able to manually enter multiple values in the Artist field, in the same way that Genre currently accepts multiple values.
MinimServer on my iMac allows me to browse by multiple artists e.g. either ‘John Coltrane’ or ‘Duke Ellington’ for a track featuring both artists. However I can see no way to take advantage of this feature in Jaikoz, and I have to resort to using mp3tag on my extremely sluggish W7 Netbook. Please make Artist a multi-value field!
Jaikoz has the artists field for this. A song credited to multiple artists will contain two values in this field and an amalgamation of them both in the artist field.
Is it possible to configure MinimServer to make use of this field ?
For mp3s you can actually store multiple fields in almost any field in Jaikoz but its a bit hacky. Mutiple fields in Genre/Artists are internally stored by seperating with the null character, this can be used in the artist field to create multi values but the null char wont be displayed in Jaikoz.
i.e Enter Jack\u0000Jill into the artist field will store that value exact value in the file, although once you tab out of that field in Jaikoz you’ll just see JackJill. A program that understands null seperated multiple values will then see as two seperate values.
There are a couple of problems to making the artist field multi value:
Compatability
Most players don’t support this, so although you may enter the two artists separately programs like iTunes will ignore any but the first one. So if I was to make it multi-valued Id have to make it optional that Autocorrect would write mutiple artists to it as a separate field.
Missing Information
Take Jackson by June Carter and Johnny Cash. Currently we store as June Carter & Johnny Cash in the artist field , if we were to store as two seperate artists we would lose the &. This might not seem a big deal but you do lose the ‘&’ , but with complex collabarations its more of a problem
Paul
I can’t find a field called ‘artists’ in Jaikoz or a reference to it in the online manual. Can you point me in the right direction?
Once I know what I am dealing with I can test it out and/or contact the MinimServer developer to see if it can be modified to read it.
FYI I mainly use Flac files (plus a few Apple Lossless and mp3 files)in my set up
Wammer.
Hi, it might be missing friom the manual but it is just another field that can be accessed from the main edit window, it needs to be selected in the drop down in the right hand side corner or you can use Preferences:Table:Columns to make it visible.
Found it. Thanks. I’ll experiment with it and get back to you.
I tried this with one track, and found two problems, viz (i) the Artist field did not automatically amalgamate the two entries I made in Artists, it simply left it blank; and (ii) after saving the changes, exiting, and then reopening the folder only one of the entries in Artists had been retained.
I am keen to get this to work. Am I doing something wrong?
i. Im not sure what you are saying here, but maybe related to ii.
ii. Ah, is this a Flac file, there is a bug with saving multiple values for flac files that I’ll ensure will be fixed for the next version of Jaikoz.
Can you test out with an mp3 ?
[quote=paultaylor]i. Im not sure what you are saying here, but maybe related to ii.
ii. Ah, is this a Flac file, there is a bug with saving multiple values for flac files that I’ll ensure will be fixed for the next version of Jaikoz.
Can you test out with an mp3 ?[/quote]
I have tried it out with an mp3 album and I have a couple of questions:
(1) This time Jaikoz accepted (and retained) multiple artist values in the Artists field. You stated earlier in the post that these values are amalgamated in the Artist field, but this isn’t happening automatically. Does this have to be done manually?
(2) MinimServer isn’t showing the values in the Artists field, so I will refer it to the developer to see if it is achievable, once I have heard back from you on (1) above.
Thanks again for all your help.
I think Jaikoz should be able to let me tag FLAC files in the standard way. If I’m not wrong the FLAC specifications say that tags is “an implementation of the Vorbis comment specification” (http://flac.sourceforge.net/format.html). And the Vorbis comment specification is:
“Field names are not required to be unique (occur once) within a comment header. As an example, assume a track was recorded by three well know artists; the following is permissible, and encouraged:
ARTIST=Dizzy Gillespie
ARTIST=Sonny Rollins
ARTIST=Sonny Stitt”
(http://xiph.org/vorbis/doc/v-comment.html)
The new music server software MinimServer is able to treat these tags right. So I wish I could set multiple artist tag (and other tags too) in Jaikoz. This would be very useful and in fact I think this is essential, especially for jazz or classical collections. Could you please enable Jaikoz to let me set multiple tags for the artist (and other tag fields) like you did with genre and album art as soon as possible? (In fact I don’t understand why such a basic function is not implemented yet.)
[quote=wammer]
I have tried it out with an mp3 album and I have a couple of questions:
(1) This time Jaikoz accepted (and retained) multiple artist values in the Artists field. You stated earlier in the post that these values are amalgamated in the Artist field, but this isn’t happening automatically. Does this have to be done manually?[/quote]
If you match to a track in Musicbrainz/Discogs credited to multiple artists then multiple artists will be stored in the artists field and an amalgamated artist stored in the artist field.
But if you just manully edit the artists field it will not automatically adjust the artist field. For one things the artists field does not contain the connecting text between the artists (&, and, ecetera)
[quote=Dieter Stockert]I think Jaikoz should be able to let me tag FLAC files in the standard way. If I’m not wrong the FLAC specifications say that tags is “an implementation of the Vorbis comment specification” (http://flac.sourceforge.net/format.html). And the Vorbis comment specification is:
“Field names are not required to be unique (occur once) within a comment header. As an example, assume a track was recorded by three well know artists; the following is permissible, and encouraged:
ARTIST=Dizzy Gillespie
ARTIST=Sonny Rollins
ARTIST=Sonny Stitt”
(http://xiph.org/vorbis/doc/v-comment.html)
The new music server software MinimServer is able to treat these tags right. So I wish I could set multiple artist tag (and other tags too) in Jaikoz. This would be very useful and in fact I think this is essential, especially for jazz or classical collections. Could you please enable Jaikoz to let me set multiple tags for the artist (and other tag fields) like you did with genre and album art as soon as possible? (In fact I don’t understand why such a basic function is not implemented yet.)[/quote]
The reason this isn’t doesn’t yet for the artist field in flac are as described above:
Compatability
Most players don’t support this, so although you may enter the two artists separately programs like iTunes will ignore any but the first one. So if I was to make it multi-valued Id have to make it optional that Autocorrect would write mutiple artists to it as a separate field.
Missing Information
Take Jackson by June Carter and Johnny Cash. Currently we store as June Carter & Johnny Cash in the artist field , if we were to store as two separate artists we would lose the &. This might not seem a big deal but you do lose the ‘&’ , but with complex collabarations its more of a problem
Additionally I suppose the most popular formats have been mp3 and mp4 so I have spent more times dealing with issues for these formats. The bug to do with multiple artists in the artists field for Flac was only discovered fairly recently.
Technically it would be easy enough to allow multiple values in any text field but if I was to add a little number box like I do for genre in every field I think it will look messy. Also Im worried it will confuse people into thinking that if they use multiple values then their player will understand it , which in most cases it will not.
One alternative would be to improve the \u0000 hack so that it works for all formats , AND display a number box for that particular field but only if it then actually contains multiple values.
Or instead of using the \u0000 hack could add right click option to field called ‘Add Value’
Im certainly happy to add this feature but not sure of best way to achieve what you want, but open to suggestions
Compatibility with iTunes is good. But being fully compatible with the standards (that means multiple tagging is not only “permissible”, it is “encouraged”) should come first.
Missing information is never a good thing. But I don’t know if your example with June Carter and Johnny Cash can convince me. You could look at “June Carter & Johnny Cash” as being the name of a band like “Ruben and the Jets” or “Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention”. In this case there is no need for multi artist because the only entry in the artist field would be “June Carter & Johnny Cash”. And that’s the same with more complex collaborations.
But if you’re looking at it like these are only the names of the two main artists involved, then you should have two separate entries, one for “Carter, June” and one for “Cash, Johnny”. In this case, however, it’s no loss of information if you don’t have the “&”.
I don’t know if there’s a common agreement for June and John or if every user can decide by himself how to handle it. But there are a lot of albums where it’s obvious that you need more than one entry for the artist (Keith Jarrett, Gary Peacock and Jack DeJohnette in jazz or Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears in classical music and numerous others). I’m looking forward to retagging my albums when Jaikoz lets me do this.
Popular formats with loss of information like MP3 are garbage, that’s what Neill Young said recently in an interview in the german newspaper “S�ddeutsche Zeitung”. Probably we would not have MP3 at all if disc space would have been cheaper in the early nineties. So hey, spend more time with better formats.
The user interface for multiple tags in Jaikoz should change. I like the clearly spreadsheet like table where I can see all the entries I want. But I think the number box for the multiple value fields is contradictory because I can not see the second, third and so on entry unless I double click. My suggestion is that instead of the number box there is an extra line for every new entry (and only one line if there’s only one entry, of course). Maybe the user could disable the visibility of the added lines in the preferences. And I love the right click option to field called ‘Add Value’.
Alot more people use iTunes than use Flac so really that is more important for more potential customers than Flac is. Also I think most people do not understand or care about standards but I certainly and would like a solution for this.
I dont decide whether a song is credited to two separate artists or not, that is a function of the Musicbrainz database. Before 2011 it wasn’t possible but is has been since the Musicbrainz NGS release. As you can see from this link http://musicbrainz.org/recording/b3aeeeee-a3c7-4000-90db-8bf04a7e5a62 the Jackson release is credited to both separately as they are individual recording artists in their own right, and this is just a collaboration rather then forming a new band. By splitting as two names it means you can search for just tracks by Jognny Cash, or just by June Carter which is very useful, I think this is different to your example of Ruben and the Jets because didnt they always peform together.
I suppose the ‘&’ information seems superflous because its obvious the artists are sperated by and ‘&’ but this isnt always the case
i.e http://musicbrainz.org/recording/ebd19cb3-1791-4440-8cff-aa79fa89e984
is by ‘Hood versus Duo Fourteen’
it would be wrong to store Hood and Duo Forteen as two artists, and ust lose the versus. This is why I introduced the artists field so the artist and artists field in combination could capture al the information.
Flac is the ‘norm’ for classical music fans (read the Linn Forums or look at any classical download site) and anyone serious about listening to high-quality audio. As storage becomes cheaper per Gb and the iTunes generation matures, more and more people will turn to lossless formats, so ignoring that market seems foolhardy. If Jaikoz is aimed at the iTunes/mp3 market then clearly I wasted my money.
Furthermore, for classical music MusicBrainz and other databases have limited usefulness and tracks almost always need further editing, so relying on MusicBrainz to create multiple artists is not realistic. I need the option to manually enter multiple artists and it needs to be compatible with tagging standards so that files are compatible with any tag editor or music server that correctly observes these. The alternative, with each developer doing their own thing, is chaos further down the line.
Hi wammer, I agree to every single sentence.
Flac is the ‘norm’ for classical music fans (read the Linn Forums or look at any classical download site) and anyone serious about listening to high-quality audio. As storage becomes cheaper per Gb and the iTunes generation matures, more and more people will turn to lossless formats, so ignoring that market seems foolhardy. If Jaikoz is aimed at the iTunes/mp3 market then clearly I wasted my money.
[/quote]
I’m certainly not ignoring that market, If I was I wouldn’t support Flac in the first place. But I think its wrong to think that customers would not use ITunes if they wanted lossless support, a number of people have requested AIFF support which is another lossless format that I would like to support and this is compatible with iTunes without needing any 3rd party plugins.
I was just explaining the history of Jaikoz and the priorities. Use of Flac is currently way behind mp3 and mp4, and Classical listeners way less then Pop/Rock.
Well its a good starting point, but of course you can manually change edit things as you wish.
It seems the best option is to allow you to enter multiple artists in the artist field for all formats, and allow Musicbrainz to write multiple artists to the artist field rather than the artist field.
But I am still concerned about the ‘versus’ problem though seems this isnt a concern of you two.
[quote=wammer]
The alternative, with each developer doing their own thing, is chaos further down the line.[/quote]
Im not doing my own thing, but Jaikoz provides a generic interface for all formats, and if I was to write multiple artists to the artist field for Mp3s that would be little use to most current players, and certainly break defacto standards. I hope you can understand it makes more sense for at the least default to match the more popular mp3 format then the less popular flac format.
Im currently looking at making artist support multiple value like genre, but having matching to Musicbrainz continuing to put separate fields in the artists field and an almalgamated single value in the artist field.
If i do it this way I can squeeze it into the release I need to do for OSX 10.8, it doesn’t change how Jaikoz works but allows editors like yourselves who need to manually edit artists for classical works to do what you want.
Can add further improvements in the future.
Made Artist, Conductor and Composer multiple value fields in Jaikoz 4.6 out today http://www.jthink.net/jaikozforum/posts/list/6710.page
This is an improvement for sure, but now what is the differents between artist and artists fields?
It seems the artists feild is now deprecated?
Really wish Apple would improve the id3 reading of itunes.
No, this is a change to allow users to put multiple artists into the artist field if they wish.
But still when you match a song to a Musicbrainz and that song is credited to multiple artists Jaikoz will still put multiple entries in the artists field but just a single entry which is an amalgamation of all the artists with connectors in the artist field.
More thought is required going forward, as the expected behaviour for mp3s field is different to Flac/Vorbis files. Probably have to add some options.