What is an "Artist"? and other imponderables.
Barry Milliken
supervision.
Herewith is an analysis of the undocumented complexities and inconsistencies
pertaining to just one question:
What should I input to the "artist" tag so I can organize and find my music?
You might assume this a simple matter but you would be wrong.
Understanding how tags are used in the WMP9 media library is crucial to
working with:
A. the internet, . B. the XP file system. and C. Windows Media Center (if
you have that also).
The WMP9 media library actually has 4 tags that you might associate with the
concept of artist:
1. "artist": this is the "artist" for the individual track. You can list a
number of artists here, but only if you separate them with semicolons will
they appear individually in the "artist" grouping in the "contents" (ie
left) pane of the media library. Clicking on any artist in the contents pane
shows all albums containing one or more tracks tagged with that artist.
Clicking on an album shown under an artist will show ALL tracks for that
album in the right pane INCLUDING ALL TRACKS NOT TAGGED FOR THIS ARTIST.
2. "album artist". If there isn't one overall for an album put "Various".
This tag is used in 2 ways: It appears automatically in parens to the right
of each album name in the "album" grouping of the contents pane. It also is
used to create a top level folder in the XP file sustem (under "My Music").
Then each album by that "album artist" will be a XP subfolder). Be careful
with the "advanced tag editor" which labels this field as "Orchestra or
Band".(?) (And I'm not even going to start with all the other
inconsistencies in nomenclature.)
3. "composer". This isn't used for anything. It just sits there. If you are
a classical music fan and think you might want to organize your music by
composer, you are out of luck. WMP lacks any kind of view customization
like Outlook that would make this possible. You could list the composer in
"artist" separated by semicolons but they just end up alphabetical with all
the other "artist"s. Like any tag, you can sort by "composer" in the detail
pane.
4. "Conductor". Same as "composer".
It should go without saying that consistency of spelling and punctuation is
crucial in getting a well organized file system and media library.
But the biggest problem with inconsistency is the next topic:
A. Using the internet to "find album info". The data provide by AMG is
often spotty at best, and the "user feedback" is worse. The "search"
function is very weak and misleading: You can only search on the BEGINNING
characters of "Album name" and "Artist" (actually this will be inserted into
"album artist" NOT "artist" in the media library). (It says "containing" but
it's really only "beginning with.") The data is all a mess however since an
album of Bach concertos may be begin as "JS Bach.....", "Bach.....", "Johan
Sebastian Bach..." "Concerto.....". You can't tell by the physical album
cover what the database will have. If you search by "album name" the search
results list doesn't show "artist" (and if you search by "artist" you don't
see "album") until you select one then realize you need to go back.
Do not accept "user feedback data" too readily for classical data. Usually
that was typed by some user who wasn't very creative with their searching.
You can override with your own input however on any data not found. Be
careful: This screen labels "artist" as "performer" (?) and "album artist"
as "artist name". (got that?). Later you'll have to use tag editing to get
your tags more consistent.
B. The XP file system: You'll get a folder tree with MyMusic/(album
artist)/(album name). Some tags are redundantly stored with the file: such
as "artist"; Others like "year" appear only in the file system but not in
the media library. There is an option in WMP: "Rename and rearrange files
using media infomation". Be careful with this. It spawns a asynchronous
background process which works only after some delay so it's difficult to
check. Files willl only be renamed if you edit the tag(s) that you
preselected for file naming (only 6 tags including "artist" are available
for file naming.). Files will be moved to different folders if you change
either "album artist" or "album name". Any empty folders that result are
not cleaned up, however.
C: If you also have Windows Media Center (WMC): it relies on the WMP library
for finding and displaying music info. But there are strange
inconsistencies:
In WMP "The Beatles" is sorted with "B" but in WMC it's under "T".
In WMP "[Chorus]" is sorted under "C" but in WMC It's before "A".
If you like to use the "details" button on your remote to get info on TV
shows; sorry it won't work for music.
Mousing over an album name in the album list will display "album artist" on
the top of the screen. But not if you mouse over an album name listed under
an "artist".
Under the "artist" grouping, WMC ignores all artists after the first
semicolon in the artist tag.
Also certain edits in the WMP library never appear in WMC: I retagged my
6CD set of Beethoven Symphonies to create 9 virtual CD's in WMP, but WMC
still shows up as 6 "Albums"???
Other reassigments and spelling corrections also do not seem to be
communicated to WMC. It must have it's own hidden but not fully resynched
copy of the library!!.
I have a headache. I think I'll listen to total silence for a while.
Barry Milliken
Leo B.
Well said Barry.
I have been so confused and at times disturbed trying to understand WM9 ID3
tagging... I have really wanted to post about it, but I didn't think I
could describe all the problems. You, however, did a very nice job.
Sometimes the "update album info" tags 'stick,' other times they revert back
to what I originally had. Also, I think WM9 should not populate the
"artist" field with more than one artist... it screws up other MP3 players
categorizing systems (at least for me it does). I have Apple's iTunes
(software MP3 player) and Turtle Beach's Audiotron (hardware MP3 player)
looking at the same MP3's... and it make it harder for those to function
with a bunch of artists listed in the 'artist' ID3 tag.
Someone fix it ;-)
-Leo
Barry Milliken
From: Barry Milliken [mailto:barry.m...@verizon.net]
Sent: Friday, January 24, 2003 10:47 AM
To: Dan Plastina
Cc: jmw...@online.microsoft.com
Subject: RE: What is an Artist? and other imponderables.
Thanks for replying Dan;
Your reply is entirely understandable. I agree this is a complex subject and
as a longtime developer of CAD and Database systems, I know that perfection
is only approached asymptotically. My main point is that your help should
document these things. Ordinary users need to understand issues that relate
to a strategy for organizing their library. It's not enough for help to just
list "how to do X and Y". You must define concepts and you must be
scrupulous with terminology. If you can't because of history or outside
databases etc, then you must bend over backwards to explain in the help what
you have said in your response to me.
My posting was a "report of what exists"; here are a few suggestions about
what I'd like:
1. User Interface: Lack of multiwindowing is a major lack: At minimum I need
to see library and playlist at the same time. See Musicmatch. 2. Objects
(like playlists) should be named only at Save, not at Create. (To work
around you had to add "queue it up", adding complexity.) This violates
standards in every windows app. 3. Internet search function must be
"contain" not "begin with", which is almost useless.
4. Search results list should show both album name and artist name plus
number of tracks. This would make selecting the right album much easier when
copying from a CD. 5. The only way to please everybody re grouping and
viewing is to give tools like Outlook has to create custom views. 6.
jmw...@online.microsoft.com has admitted in a separate response that WMC is
caching the library because of Performance problems. They are working on it.
I'm asking for a applet to refresh the cache. The developers must have a
stand alone exe to refresh? If you can't solve the performance problem then
you must give user some place in "settings" to refresh.
Let me know when you have the next beta.
Barry Milliken
-----Original Message-----
From: Dan Plastina [mailto:da...@microsoft.com]
Sent: Friday, January 24, 2003 12:25 PM
Cc: J.M. Wiley
Subject: RE: What is an Artist? and other imponderables.
Barry,
This came across my desk. I'm the metadata guy for digital media. I worked
on the WMP9 library. This said, WMP has 3 verison history so yes, I'll agree
to a few inconsistencies remaining. I thought that given the amount of time
you put into this writeup, I'd take a bit of time to offer some explanation
as to the rationale.
"Barry Milliken" <Barry.m...@verizon.net> wrote in message
news:<u$AtYXwwCHA.2592@TK2MSFTNGP10>...
> (Cross posted from microsoft.public.windowsmedia.player)
>
> Let's agree that the UI of WMP9 was put together without any adult
> supervision.
Well, I'm not 19, new to MSFT, a former WinAMP user, and only listing to
Eminem <grin>. I'm 37 years of age, love music, and have 11 years of
experience at Microsoft.
> Herewith is an analysis of the undocumented complexities and
inconsistencies
> pertaining to just one question:
> What should I input to the "artist" tag so I can organize and find my
music?
>
> You might assume this a simple matter but you would be wrong.
> Understanding how tags are used in the WMP9 media library is crucial
> to working with: A. the internet, . B. the XP file system. and C.
> Windows Media Center (if you have that also).
>
> The WMP9 media library actually has 4 tags that you might associate
> with
the
> concept of artist:
> 1. "artist": this is the "artist" for the individual track. You can
> list a number of artists here, but only if you separate them with
> semicolons will they appear individually in the "artist" grouping in
> the "contents" (ie
> left) pane of the media library. Clicking on any artist in the
> contents
pane
> shows all albums containing one or more tracks tagged with that
> artist. Clicking on an album shown under an artist will show ALL
> tracks for that album in the right pane INCLUDING ALL TRACKS NOT
> TAGGED FOR THIS ARTIST.
This is correct. The reason for using only ';' as the seperator is
one of being able to parse our raw metadata sources (AMG, Muse, etc) and
Those in files. MP3 does not have a solid notion of multiple artists in
the tags. Yes, there is "/" but what would you know, 0.54% of all media
Metadat has a slash. AC/DC being the most common example.
> 2. "album artist". If there isn't one overall for an album put
> "Various". This tag is used in 2 ways: It appears automatically in
> parens to the right of each album name in the "album" grouping of the
> contents pane. It also
is
> used to create a top level folder in the XP file sustem (under "My
> Music"). Then each album by that "album artist" will be a XP
> subfolder). Be careful with the "advanced tag editor" which labels
> this field as "Orchestra or
> Band".(?) (And I'm not even going to start with all the other
> inconsistencies in nomenclature.)
On your last point -- yes, this is terrible. Product history limited the
clean up that others wanted to do. It gets 10x worse if you try to use our
object model.
E.g.: Artist there is called "Author" and is aliased to "WM\Artist",
WM\Actor".
The reason for Album Artist existing is that there are many compilations and
duet Style CDs (about 20%). Users have given strong feedback that they want
those Albums grouped together by "band" in some views, and in the file
system, but they still want to find the works of a given artist (say Bono of
U2, or Frank
Sinatra who are both on many compilation CDs). For example, the Album Artist
Of the Frank Sinatra DUETS CD is "Frank Sinatra, but each track has 2
artists. This explains why Album Artist exists.
In in the Artist tree, we've gotten feedback that folks want to see who's is
on what. So, we do the per artist thing in past releases where we didn't do
this. That said, a percentange of those who were happy in the past, now are
saying "My tree view is
too big to be useful". Next round I'll have an option to flip modes. There
are many Other difficulties here that I can better explain should you want
more reasonning (e.g. Can't use album artist because it does not exist until
we match; if you use the artist field, you'll blow up the DUETs CDs (recall
they are 20%) into 12 entries;
Etc.)
Now, when you select an artist in WMP9 the right hand "result" pane is the
list
of songs that artist in on. The Nodes below the artist in the tree are the
CDs that the user in on. A CD Node, is the FULL CD, not just the works that
a user
is on. It was WMP8 that was inconsistent here. The goal was that anywhere
you see an album, you see the album.
> 3. "composer". This isn't used for anything. It just sits there. If
> you
are
> a classical music fan and think you might want to organize your music
> by composer, you are out of luck. WMP lacks any kind of view
> customization like Outlook that would make this possible. You could
> list the composer in "artist" separated by semicolons but they just
> end up alphabetical with all the other "artist"s. Like any tag, you
> can sort by "composer" in the
detail
> pane.
Yes, Classical was underdeveloped WMP9 (again). We always have it on the
list, but we rarely get around to fully doing it right. It turns out what we
have a Classical lover on our team who really fights for it, but it's just
that our metadata has been weaker for this genre.
WMP9 -- IMHO -- is much better than prior vesions in terms of at least
letting you see columns, edit tags, etc.... But we have a ways to go.
> 4. "Conductor". Same as "composer".
>
> It should go without saying that consistency of spelling and
> punctuation is crucial in getting a well organized file system and
> media library. But the biggest problem with inconsistency is the next
> topic:
Per above -- I concede to the point.
> will be inserted
into
> "containing"
but
> since
an
> "album name" the
search
Yes, again a big part of this is where we get our data from. We have mergers
of many databases and there is noone looking at 20,000,000 records
saying "Hmmm, I think JS Bach is Bach".
It's not your problem, but I'm just pointing out that its' a big problem.
I'll pass this feedback on to the team owning this area.
> B. The XP file system: You'll get a folder tree with MyMusic/(album
> artist)/(album name). Some tags are redundantly stored with the file:
> such as "artist"; Others like "year" appear only in the file system
> but not in the media library. There is an option in WMP: "Rename and
> rearrange files using media infomation". Be careful with this. It
> spawns a asynchronous background process which works only after some
> delay so it's difficult to check. Files willl only be renamed if you
> edit the tag(s) that you preselected for file naming (only 6 tags
> including "artist" are available for file naming.). Files will be
> moved to different folders if you change either "album artist" or
> "album name". Any empty folders that result are not cleaned up,
> however.
On the last point, yes we found a bug at the last minute here. It'll be
fixed in SP1
We do pull in Year. It's put into "Release Date" column. If this does not
work, I'd like to know in what case you have found issue.
> C: If you also have Windows Media Center (WMC): it relies on the WMP
library
> for finding and displaying music info. But there are strange
> inconsistencies:
> In WMP "The Beatles" is sorted with "B" but in WMC it's under "T". In
> WMP "[Chorus]" is sorted under "C" but in WMC It's before "A". If you
> like to use the "details" button on your remote to get info on TV
> shows; sorry it won't work for music. Mousing over an album name in
> the album list will display "album artist" on the top of the screen.
> But not if you mouse over an album name listed under an "artist".
> Under the "artist" grouping, WMC ignores all artists after the first
> semicolon in the artist tag. Also certain edits in the WMP library
> never appear in WMC: I retagged my 6CD set of Beethoven Symphonies to
> create 9 virtual CD's in WMP, but WMC still shows up as 6 "Albums"???
> Other reassigments and spelling corrections also do not seem to be
> communicated to WMC. It must have it's own hidden but not fully resynched
> copy of the library!!.
JM and I have worked out many of these issues. It's not his fault (eHome),
but Rather the fault lies in WMP8 (which eHome WMC uses in v1) not exporting
the SortOrder fields. Even if you install WMP9, WMC does not know to use the
sort Order. A future update of WMC will get this right.
> I have a headache. I think I'll listen to total silence for a while.
>
> Barry Milliken
Feel free to send me direct feedback. I'm the guy writing the specs, and
deciding what we do / not do.
Finally, thanks for caring enough to take the time to write this down. It's
people like you that help us make better product!
Respectfully yours,
Dan Plastina
Sr Program Manager
Metadata and Library Services
Leo B.
I know this is a late reply... however, I highly appreciate that you posted
your communication about these issues. Any more info would be great.
- Leo
"Barry Milliken" <Barry.m...@verizon.net> wrote in message
news:uLP3w$#wCHA.2904@TK2MSFTNGP09...