Problem with Album Artist (iTunes 7)

[Daniel Lidström]

Hi!

I have an album where the artist is Fred, and some songs have featured
artists. For example, Fred ft. Cornelis. What I did then, was to set
'Artist' to Fred and 'Album Artist' to either Fred or Fred ft. Cornelis.
This cleans-up the music directory by moving all songs into the Fred
directory. But iTunes 7 displays the songs as two albums! What is the
purpose of 'Album Artist'? I don't want the songs spread out in my
directory in different folders, and I don't want to choose compilation.
The perfect solution would be if Artist determined the folder, and it
was possible to change the Album Artist if desired. Anyone know more?

Thanks!

--
Daniel

[nospam]

I haven't come across 'album artist' yet, but it sounds like this is to
accommodate things like DJ mixes, where one DJ mixed the whole album and
it is made up of tracks by various artists. Often the DJ becomes better
known than the artists he plays. Sometimes it's the artists' own fault
for having very odd names.

As for the feat. thing, I found it best to put that in the song title in
(). The way my iTunes has always worked is that anyhting by Fred ft.
Cornelis would end up in a directory called Fred ft. Cornelis, not just
fred. I'm a bit baffled that you could do this!

Andy

[allan....@bowne.com]

Hey Daniel,

You need to do the exact opposite of what you did: Enter Fred as the
"Album Artist" and enter Fred feat. Cornelius, etc. as the "Artist".
Once you do that, all the tracks should consolidate into one album by
Fred. It is a tad confusing, but "Album Artist" means that it is "Fred
the artist's album" and other "artists" are featured on it.

Hope this helps you out...it did for me with Peeping Tom.

Allan

[allan....@bowne.com]

Oops...I take that back (partially). What I suggested does consolidate
the tracks as one album in iTunes, however there are still multiple
artist folders in the directory. Maybe you can cut and paste the
"featuring" files into one big Fred folder, I'm not sure.

I think what would solve this problem is if iTunes gave you the option
of creating an album directory as opposed to the default artist
directory.

[allan....@bowne.com]

Wow I keep speaking before I experiment....I just tried to cut the
separate "featuring" files from the Lauryn Hill album and paste them
into one folder. I worked, that is until I played the tracks
again...the folders were automatically separated again. Hmm...maybe
Andy has the best answer....put the "featuring" artist in the song
title, that way you'll have one Fred album in iTunes and one Fred
directory.

[MacDork]

I typically enter the Artist as "Fred", and put "Featuring Cornelis" in
the comments section. This cleans up the files on the hard disk, in the
iTunes library display and on my iPod's artist display. You lose a bit
of the visibility of who's featured, but ...... I don't care. I'd much
rather have the neat organization.

Optionally, you can disable the auto-hard disk management in the
Preferences, but manually managing the files is tiresome.

[Jolly Roger]

Or put it somewhere else, like in the Notes. ; )

--
-JR

[nospam]

It does, sort of... any albums you check as 'part of a compilation' has
the tracks put in its own directory as a subdirectory of 'Compilations'
in 'iTunes Music'. Another place you could put the 'feat.' bit is in the
comments. It would still come up under a search. That might be better if
you have track names like "The Piper at the Gates of Dawn (Banzai
Republic Vs Trentemoller Vocal Mix) feat. Maria Papadopoulou & Ani
Choying Drolma"

Maybe that's what the 24" screens are for?

Andy

[zit]

A standard way to handle songs with more than one artist is needed.
Even a standard delimiter would help.
Ones sees:
< and > <&> < & > <,> <, > </> < / > < + >
< ft. > < ft > < feat. > <feat: > < feat > < Y > <-> < - >
< with > <w/> <( w/ ...)> < (...)> < (with ...)> < (duet with ...)>

With n artists, some permutation of n-1 of these are used.
I prefer <a, b, c> to <a, b, & c>
Then, <&> can be used for a team, like <Wayne & Shuster, Jack Benny>
Group names can have a comma, so that's not a good choice either.

Dr. Google returns equal hits for "Peter, Paul & Mary" and "Peter, Paul
and Mary"

For fewer directories, leading & trailing blanks should be stripped by
default.
Leading definite articles should neither be stripped nor put at the
end.
ITMS has both "Boston Pops Orchestra" and "The Boston Pops Orchestra"
They list "UHF" and "Uhf" as different artists. Thankfully iTunes
doesn't do that.
They often put the "feat." in both the name and artist fields:
Isn't This a Lovely Day (Layo & Bushwacka Remix) [Featuring Ella
Fitzgerald & Louis Armstrong]
Ella Fitzgerald, Layo & Bushwacka! & Louis Armstrong

Hmmm. I'm rambling & way off topic. Bye :-)