Compilations: how to tag?

NinaNina Member
edited August 2020 in General

Sorry for bothering you again. With one sync per 3 days it's easier to ask then to try and find out.

I have a few big compilation series in my music collection. How do I need to tag them in order to find them easily? Say:

Album 1

  • Song by Artist 1
  • Song by Artist 1
  • Song by Artist 1
  • Song by Artist 2
  • Song by Artist 3

Album 2

  • Song by Artist 2
  • Song by Artist 4
  • etc

The albums will show up under the Album category. No problem. What would I get under the Artist category: single songs by Artist 1, or albums Artist 1 is on, and in the list or grid view?

What would be ideal for me is to find the whole series of 30 cds under it's name in the Artist category similar to all CDs by Nick Cave showing up in the Grid view under the Nick Cave header, but I still want to be able to actually find and play that one song by Artist 2 of which I've forgotten the title. How would I have to tag this? My guess is that the series name would need to be in the Album Artist tag, and the artist name under the Artist tag? How do other people tag compilation series?

Comments

  • I use the Album Artist field as Various Artists then put the song artist in the Artist field for veach one within the compilation.

    Astiga does not support the Album Artist field as yet, but the way above is common to other applications and services.

  • NinaNina Member

    Thanks a lot. I guess I will then use the Album Artist field for the name of the series of CDs where I want to keep those together. I can sync again tomorrow thus might have a look if this really works the way I hope it does. For compilations that are not part of a series I will probably also just use Various Artists.

  • Where they are part of a series, it may be best to do this within a subfolder such as:

    create a sub-folder for the series such as Various Artists/Music-Series-Dance/Dance-Music-Volume 1 (then folder 2 and so on).

    Then you can still put Various Artists in the Album Artists field, but can easily navigate to the series.

    Another way to do it is to make the series a Playlist of its own.

    If you can keep Various Artists as the Album Artist - it will then enable you to easily find and see all compilations.

  • NinaNina Member

    Quite honestly, the Various Artists section is the one I usually ignore when I feel like listening to music. So in a way the Various Music tag certainly has a use as it means 'ignore' 😂. The exception are those two series that I dearly love and listen to a lot. I think I'll try a few different things tomorrow. I'm still busy tidying up tags, editing file titles and looking for cover art, thus I don't need to decide right away.

  • NinaNina Member

    Ok, this works as I hoped it would. For a moment I thought it didn't but I guess the website had to index everything first after syncing. Perfect. Now I can finally finish tagging and tidying up my collection and then upload everything. And forget about the GPM debacle.

  • Welcome Nina. I made the same transition from GPM and not looked back now. Once you have everything uploaded and synced, it gets easier and quicker with Astiga. If you edit any files you will need to set the refresh tag when you sync. I'm a couple of months in now and received help as I arrived, so if any input is helpful from everyone here, just post up.

  • NinaNina Member

    Thanks a lot Coyley :) I'd hoped there was a very simple solution: just upload everything again. But on the other hand this gives me the opportunity to tidy up the utter mess that is my music collection (I thought it was in a better state *sigh*). All seems to be working as I need it, thus now the leg work.

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