Support for Lyrion (LMS) tagging profile

[kr]

I would like to request a new profile to select tagging style for the Lyrion music server LMS (formerly known as squeezebox server).

There are just a few items that can’t be done or selected at the moment, but seem to be straightforward and I don’t see how this would be a big deal to implement.

Essential features I think are needed

1. Write ARTIST and ALBUM_ARTIST tags using a semicolon, not a comma to separate distinct artists.
   Lyrion does not seem to read multiple ARTIST tags, but splits these tag value strings uses a semicolon. (Actually the split character is configurable but the one which is uniquely of no use is a comma.) Extending this to other multi-valued tags, such as COMPOSER would be useful too.

2. GROUPING tag. LMS uses this tag to subdivide either a disc or classical work, so for example “Act 2”, or “Part I” would be useful. If not required for a multi-level work it should be null or not present. It should not duplicate other parts of WORK or TITLE; ie the heading string is usually presented as “${COMPOSER }-${WORK}-${GROUPING}”. Genre should NOT be copied to GROUPING.

3. LMS seems to additionally real MUSICBRAINZ_WORK and MUSICBRAINZ_WORKID )although these are not mentioned in the documentation) and work detection requires consistency -ie if WORK is taken from level 1 or translated to another language then so should MUSICBRAINZ_WORK and WORKID. (Although it might be better to just omit those tags entirely in such cases).

Not quite so critical, but useful other matters of style (perhaps not just for LMS) are

4. (Optional) ability to strip composer and conductor from ALBUM_ARTIST and ARTIST lists - if the COMPOSER and CONDUCTOR tags are set. LMS reads these and adds the names in separately.

5. Add “Classical” to GENRE if IS_CLASSICAL is set.

6. Option to add “classical” to GENRE (with comma this time!) for a more detailed breakdown into “Classical, Baroque, Romantic, Modern” in order to, for example, translate GENRE=Chamber to
   GENRE=“Classical,Chamber”.

[paultaylor]

@kr

I would like to request a new profile to select tagging style for the Lyrion music server LMS (formerly known as squeezebox server).

A new profile for Lyrion seems like a good idea if therre are preferences that should usually be configured for Lyrion.

1. SongKong does not explicity separate the ARTIST or ALBUM_ARTIST field with commas or semicolons, it use the value of the MusicBrainz Album Artist Credit or Artist Credit which is usually taken from the record sleeve, so it is often a comma but can also be &, ft ectera.

e.g Johnny Cash & June Carter

But the ARTISTS and ALBUM_ARTISTS field store the values as a list,

e.g
Johnny Cash
June Carter

so this is probably what you want Lyrion to use. We are not using semi-colons or commas here, we are saving as multiple values which is aufdio format dependent. Within Manual Edit we indicate multiple values with three semi-colons (;;;) but this is just to indicate that it is actually multiple value.

Now if Lyrion cannot make use of ARTISTS and ALBUM_ARTISTS fields we can configure SongKong to write ARTIST and ALBUM_ARTIST as multiple values by adding to Save:Save multiple values as separate fields

2. Genre is only written to Grouping if configured, just set Genres:Grouping to Never Replace to prevent this.

3. Not really clear what LMS is doing and what you want SongKong to do for this one?

4. There is already an option to remove composer from album artist called Classical:Remove Composer from Album Artist, Composer should not usually be added to Artist field by SongKong. Not clear why you would want the conductor removed from the Album Artist field if they were credited on front cover, the Track Artist for Classical can be configured with the Classical:Track Artist option.

5. This can already be done using Scripter afterwards, we have already added a Set Classical Genre script to do this

6. You could write another script to do this such as

   if(genre=‘Baroque’) { genre=‘classical,Baroque’};
   if(genre=‘Romantic’) { genre=‘classical,Romantic’};

[kr]

Dear Paul,

Thank you for your considered and prompt response. You have given me food for thought, and I have some further thoughts on this.

1. The “Save multiple values as separate fields” is ideal, when ARTIST, ALBUM Artist and their SORT partners are configured to do this. I have tested this and it works beautifully. This definitely should be part of a “LMS” profile.

2. Yes, but there is one further thing. I would also like to clear any existing setting of GENRE, and not just leave it alone. Can this be done? I have some horrible tags in many of my files left by early experimentation with settings in both Jaikoz and Songkong.

3. This was copied unedited from my notes to myself, and does lack context. This is likely a separate issue, but I will need to make further tests from a “clean” starting point to definitively identify any issue.

4. On further consideration, the name duplication I see is an LMS issue not a Songkong issue. LMS should be smart enough to remove the name of a conductor from the “performers” list itself.

5, 6. Nice solution and simple to implement.

There are also a couple of other settings I have found for best use which should go into a LMS profile. Though I can no longer remember what the “out of the box” settings are…
Classical Advanced:
a. “Add composer” options all OFF.
b. “Shorten Song Title to the Movement”: Yes
c. Copy Work to Grouping: OFF. (But also need option to actively unset GROUPING if not needed).
Classical:
d. Remove Composer from Album Artist.
e. Track Artist: Performents and Ensemble/Choir/Orchestra and Conductor
Genres
f. Use Discogs Genre

Thank you again for your assistance with this. I think this will be a boon for many Lyrion users. I am attaching a couple of screenshots showing what LMS can show for an album with correct tagging:

[paultaylor]

Regarding 2, I asume you mean clear the Grouping tag. And tag can be cleared with script

e.g

grouping=''

I have raised an issue to add Fix Songs Lyrion Music Server profile but since I don’t use Lyrion and you do I think the best way to get this done is for you to send me your support files when you are happy with your profile and then I can use that as a basis for the new profile, @Optimal-Procedure885 may also have some thoughts on this.

[kr]

Is there a quick way to list exactly what settings I have changed from the default?

[paultaylor]

Hi, no sorry I can’t think of one.

[kr]

Hi. Just sent you the support files for my configuration. Unfortunately this is going to be a mix of what is needed for LMS support and my own site- and collection- tailoring preferences.

In addition to preferred “Settings” there is a need for one additional menu option. The “Classical->Opera Work Format” selection needs a third option for LMS. This should be almost identical to “Roon”, the only difference being the output tags to be written are “GROUPING” and “WORK” instead of “SECTION” and “WORK”. (Currently, I batch-copy and paste “SECTION” into “GROUP” using Jaikoz and use Find/Replace to strip out the common substring.)

I will be very happy to test prior to release if that would help.

[paultaylor]

So to clarify on Lyrion for an Opera the Work field should store the Work, and Grouping field should store the Act?

[kr]

Exactly. In the screenshot I posted, I tagged with WORK=“Tosca” and GROUPING=“Atto ll” etc,

[kr]

I have worked through the menus, and here are the settings I think are relevant for Lyrion Music Server support, (particularly but not exclusively for classical music) and tried to distinguish from my other preferences. Some of these may be default anyway. I hope this co-ordinates with the “support files” settings I sent.

(Re-edited for clarity as oiginal space/tab formatted version did not render well)

Genre:

• Genre From: Discogs Style and Genre
• Grouping: Never Replace

Classical:

• Add composers to start of album title: No
• Remove composers from album artist: Yes
• Opera Work Format: (New option needed for LMS)
• Track Artist: Performers or Ensemble/Choir/Orchestra

Classical Advanced:

• Add Composer to start of Overall Work No
• Shorten Song Title to the Movement: Yes
• Copy Work to Grouping field No

Save:

• Save multiple values as separate fields: Album ArtistArtistSort Album ArtistSort Artist
• Always save Genres as text: Yes

[paultaylor]

Thankyou, also raise a new issue for adding new Opera Work format option https://jthink.atlassian.net/browse/SONGKONG-2897

[kr]

Hopefully not too late - an additional default setting for the LMS profile, and a change (or to and) from above

Classical:

• Track Artist: Performers and Ensemble/Choir/Orchestra

plus one new checkbox under classical:

• Remove Ensemble/Choir/Orchestra from Album Artist if IS_COMPILATION

It’s actually fine - and necessary - for ALBUM_ARTIST to be empty or absent for a compilation album if the included works don’t share any performers, orchestras, conductors

[paultaylor]

@kr

Hopefully not too late - an additional default setting for the LMS profile, and a change ( or to and ) from above

You are okay nothing done on this yet

@kr

It’s actually fine - and necessary - for ALBUM_ARTIST to be empty or absent for a compilation album if the included works don’t share any performers, orchestras, conductors

Basically SongKong sets the Album Artist from the Release Artist listed for the release on MusicBrainz (with adjustments for options such as Remove Composer from Album Artist) it is not created from the Track Artists. When there is no common person MusicBrainz will usually set as Various Artists so this new option is not required.

[kr]

When there is no common person MusicBrainz will usually set as Various Artists so this new option is not required.

If only it was as simple as that. The trouble is that is NOT the MB criterion for ALBUM_ARTIST. Their criteria are essentially “any artist names which appear on the front cover”. One album I have been debugging the tagging on which gives trouble in this respect is Tchaikovsky Concertos . You will see three names on the front cover are “Tchaikovsky”, “Martha Argerich” and “Nathan Milstein”, and indeed those are the ones listed as MB album artists. It is MB which is supplying the ALBUM ARTIST list, not SK creating it.

So there has to be a translation between the MB specification (on the front cover) and LMS specification (only if appearing on all/nearly all tracks) when determining ALBUM_ARTISTS. Currently SongKong doesn’t do this and I end up with both soloists in ALBUM_ARTISTS, requiring a considerable amount of manual fixing up after “Fix Songs” has run.

My first thought on a heuristic to handle this case was to test that candidates for ALBUM_ARTIST also appear as ARTIST on all or nearly all tracks. However I soon came up with counter-examples. In many cases a big name diva soprano will, of course get billing on the front cover, despite singing on only a few tracks. (Soloists in some choral works, oratorios, operas and the like.) However those cases would not usually be compilations (except for the “Maria Callas’ greatest hits” type where she would be a track artist on everything).

So perhaps a combined heuristic of exclusion if “artist does not appears on (nearly) every track AND album is marked as a compilation” would do the right thing in almost all cases, and not mess up, eg The Messiah or Beethoven’s Ninth symphony.

Does that make sense?

[paultaylor]

Why does it matter if the album artist includes someone who didn’t perform on all tracks, this is essentially a split release between two artists Martha Argerich and Nathan Milstein?

The key thing is simply that the albumartist field is the same for all tracks on the album so that albums do not get split when browsing by albumartist. And it would seem to be that if I was searching for this album it would be more useful if the albumartist was Tchaikovsky/Martha Argerich/Nathan Milstein rather than just Tchaikovosky or Various Artists or blank as you suggest.

[kr]

Here are a couple of screenshots showing what LMS does with the tags if both performers are ALBUM_ARTISTS.

Notice that the Album at the to is credited to “Martha Argerich” alone - a flaw in LMS clearly, but without an ALBUM_ARTIST tag, this is nicely rendered as “Various Artists” by LMS. The performers on each work are incorrect too. This example is not so bad, as there are only two separate performances in the collection, bit I have other, more mixed collections where the track list incorrectly includes three separate orchestras and conductors. This kind of collection with multiple different performances, perhaps of works by the same composer, tend to be not uncommon in the classical discography - a few percent of the total and enough that treating them as individual cases to be fixed does not scale.

[paultaylor]

@kr

Notice that the Album at the to is credited to “Martha Argerich” alone

It looks like you are saying if AlbumArtist field contains multiple albums artists that Lyrion only displays the first one at the top of that page?

[kr]

This may be because I have selected
Save multiple values as separate fields: Album ArtistArtistSort Album ArtistSort Artist
but it does look like a LMS bug.

[paultaylor]

So if that is the case, maybe it would make sense to only add Artists and Artist Sort to Save:Save Multiple Values as Separate fields. So Album Artist would then have Martha Argerich, Nathan Milstein and would then display ok. Whereas Track Artists would still be separate values so they can be processed as separate values for each track.

[kr]

Unfortunately in that case the behaviour is worse. It would create a single artist named “Martha Argerich, Nathan Milstein” which would appear in both the album information and be propagated into the track artist information.

Unless of course the option of using a semicolon instead of a comma to separate them was available…