Various Artists Problem Fixed!

[eltop]

I fixed the problem a lot of people were having with the various artists.

Basically:

Album Artist--->Various Artists
Artist--->Rolling Stones/Various Artists

That way it will be only one Album but it will still have the different Artists of the compilation in the Artist field.

In mp3tag the action would be: Format Value---> "artist" to %ARTIST%/Various Artists

Now the function on the Zune--->Settings--->Music--->show album artist or artist becomes pretty useful


hope that helps

[chw42]

I actually had a problem where the song artist showed up as Various Artists (didn't want that, because the actual artists were on the tag). So I deleted the songs on the Zune, then went on the Zune software and deleted those. Re-sync'd everything and it worked.

[Dizzy]

Not really sure what you accomplished, but GJ.

Why not just set the artist to Rolling Stones?

[eltop]

The "/Various Artists" in the artist tag field is important. If you leave that out the song artist won't be displayed, just "various artists" and if you leave out the album artist tag field the compilation is a seperate album for every track.

[gkal1964]

Thanks eltop, i tried your fix but i'm still getting seperate album for every track in compilation albums when i view by album in zune software. what could I be doing wrong?

[penguinlover]

Many thanks from me too eltop. This solved all my compilation album problems.

[eltop]

Try this if it doesn't work:

Rolling Stones; Various Artists

If that doesn't work try tagging with mp3tag and "Rolling Stones/Various Artists"

[gkal1964]

Thanks eltop, i tried that it removes my multiple albums but artist in not listed again. So i am right back where I started. What puzzles me is why it works for some but not others. This is the wackiest software I have ever been involved with. I give up. I'm just going to have to live with multiple albums for each track of a compilation album. I cant understand how Microsoft can screw up something so easy, just make artist= artist and album=album. I have several other mp3 players over multiple years and have not had a single issue with tagging until the zune.

[eltop]

the problem with artist=artist and album=album is that if you had multiple "Greatest Hits" albums, the would all be the same album.

[Gow616]

You might find it easier to leave Artist as the name of the Artist and add a new field "Band" with the value of "Various" or "Various Artists". It puts them under Various or Various Artists in the software and Zune. It displays them when played with only the artist name.

Zune doesn't use the Album Artist field it uses the Band field instead.

[gkal1964]

Thats how i originally had it set up, however all the tracks with band name= "various artists" did not display under Artist. So you could not scroll through artist on the zune and pick by artist because a good number of them did not show. I then changed all the tracks with various artist in band name to the actual Artist name, this worked however i have multiple entries for each track under the album view for the changed tracks. I have no idea why. This should not be this hard. As I said before I have not had these problems using the same music collection on other mp3 players, some very inexpensive.

[Gow616]

If you put the artist with the Band name of Various Artist you would than find them under the Artist list name "Various Artist" under the album. This is useful in dealing with soundtracks and compilations that have multiple artists on them.

Set them back to Various Artist and look on the artist list for the Artist named Various Artist and that is where they will be located.

[gkal1964]

Thanks for the info, gow. i will set some of them back and see what you mean. will post after.

I'm right back where I started. I always could locate the songs under "various Artist" but the actual artist name is not listed under artist. so if you want to scroll through and look at artist view you don't get all your artists, also if an artist is ripped from a regular cd and the same artist is ripped from a compilation cd the song from the compilation cd doesn't show up under the artist name. This software makes no sense to me. I don't encounter these problems using the same library on different players. Thanks for this info anyhow.