# ALBUM ARTIST as a "standard" tag
**URL:** https://community.mp3tag.de/t/album-artist-as-a-standard-tag/4053
**Category:** General Discussion
**Created:** [November 13, 2006, 4:19pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/album-artist-as-a-standard-tag/4053 "2006-11-13T16:19:06Z")
**Posts on this page:** 14
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@bobkoure](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/bobkoure)
#### Post date: [November 13, 2006, 4:19pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/album-artist-as-a-standard-tag/4053/1 "2006-11-13T16:19:06Z")
I noticed some while back that Foobar2000 encourages use of the tag "ALBUM ARTIST" to deal with the problem of "various artists" albums.
[Foobar2000:Encouraged Tags](http://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?title=Foobar2000:Encouraged_Tag_Standards)
I've added the tag to my Mp3Tag via options/preferences/tags - but I wonder if it makes sense to add this tag as one of the "standard" tags as a way to encourage its adoption as a standard (seems like tag ""standards" are all pretty much de-facto as they're defined by the applications that create/use the tags).
No hurry on this one - I'm not even sure it's the "right" thing to do...
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### Author:  [@noroom](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/noroom)
#### Post date: [November 13, 2006, 6:32pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/album-artist-as-a-standard-tag/4053/2 "2006-11-13T18:32:12Z")
Hm, WMP uses BAND instead of ALBUM ARTIST.
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### Author:  [@bobkoure](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/bobkoure)
#### Post date: [November 14, 2006, 12:33am UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/album-artist-as-a-standard-tag/4053/3 "2006-11-14T00:33:28Z")
Hmm... indeed. Anyone know of other tags used for this? Wonder why the fb2k chose something different. Of course, knowing ms, they looked at what everyone else was doing and did something _almost_ compatible but different (ran into this _all_ the time, working with novell and ms, or unix/linux and ms.)
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### Author:  [@SquallLeonhart38](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/SquallLeonhart38)
#### Post date: [November 14, 2006, 3:25pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/album-artist-as-a-standard-tag/4053/4 "2006-11-14T15:25:16Z")
I think it's better to keep the fields that are in the real standard in the main-dialogues. Because not everybody uses foobar2000 or the WMP and so it's useless for some people to use tags the programs can't read.
When you want to fill those fields, use an action.
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### Author:  [@Ydope](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/Ydope)
#### Post date: [November 14, 2006, 3:56pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/album-artist-as-a-standard-tag/4053/5 "2006-11-14T15:56:03Z")
I use %band% for this purpose. %artist% always containes the artist of the song and %band% containes "Various" if it's a regular Various Artists release or something like "A & B" if it's a release like this one: [http://www.discogs.com/release/321300](http://www.discogs.com/release/321300) .
For a single artist release %band% is empty.
While the term 'album artist' makes more sense than 'band' the latter is a regular tag.
It can be accessed in foobar easily. For example in the album list i can use $if(%band%,%band%,%artist%) to retrieve the album artist.
Every program does it their own way anyways...
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### Author:  [@noroom](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/noroom)
#### Post date: [November 14, 2006, 7:43pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/album-artist-as-a-standard-tag/4053/6 "2006-11-14T19:43:22Z")
Yeah, I use the BAND tag too. I saw WMP was using it (I use Winamp though) and I thought better to conform to the WMP standards than trying to impose my own.
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### Author:  [@sonicbox](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/sonicbox)
#### Post date: [November 22, 2006, 12:02am UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/album-artist-as-a-standard-tag/4053/7 "2006-11-22T00:02:13Z")
Trivia: Mp3tag also maps native official Album Artist tags inside M4A (AAC) and WMA to "BAND" in the Mp3TAG user interface. So, Album Artist = BAND in the world of Mp3tag, at least for the mainstream formats.
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### Author:  [@JJ\_Johnson](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/JJ_Johnson)
#### Post date: [December 7, 2006, 12:49am UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/album-artist-as-a-standard-tag/4053/8 "2006-12-07T00:49:36Z")
This thread demonstrates another reason why flexible tag mapping is needed in Mp3tag.
There ARE no tagging standards. And there ARE no standards bodies to set tagging standards. All there are is a bunch of disparate applications that choose whichever tags they like and a bunch of geeks on various web sites who have appointed themselves and their word as authoritative on the subject.
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### Author:  [@FXMan](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/FXMan)
#### Post date: [February 6, 2007, 7:12pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/album-artist-as-a-standard-tag/4053/9 "2007-02-06T19:12:09Z")
I would very much like to see Album Artist or Band or what ever become a standard tag.
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### Author:  [@73ChargerFan](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/73ChargerFan)
#### Post date: [April 21, 2007, 7:41pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/album-artist-as-a-standard-tag/4053/10 "2007-04-21T19:41:14Z")
> [@sonicbox](#):
>
> Trivia: Mp3tag also maps native official Album Artist tags inside M4A (AAC) and WMA to "BAND" in the Mp3TAG user interface. So, Album Artist = BAND in the world of Mp3tag, at least for the mainstream formats.
Thank you, I needed to know this. I've now added this tag to the 2.37a interface.
I'm using MCE 2005, which like WMP sorts primarily by the 'album artist' tag. This tag is not just used for various artists albums. It is used instead of the artist tag (why, I don't know). But MCE is the best interface for my wife and even my 4 year old son can operate it.
This software is the best I've used for modifying tags. Thanks!
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### Author:  [@73ChargerFan](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/73ChargerFan)
#### Post date: [April 21, 2007, 8:22pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/album-artist-as-a-standard-tag/4053/11 "2007-04-21T20:22:02Z")
My fix works for WMA files that already have the tag.
Now how can I get it to add the tag if it doesn't already exist?
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### Author:  [@Florian](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/Florian)
#### Post date: [April 22, 2007, 9:49am UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/album-artist-as-a-standard-tag/4053/12 "2007-04-22T09:49:51Z")
> [@73ChargerFan](#):
>
> Now how can I get it to add the tag if it doesn't already exist?
You can use the extended tag dialog via [Alt+T] or add the BAND field to the tag panel via Options \> Tag Panel.
Kind regards,
Florian
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### Author:  [@yingjai](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/yingjai)
#### Post date: [June 5, 2007, 2:28am UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/album-artist-as-a-standard-tag/4053/13 "2007-06-05T02:28:57Z")
Is there a list of fields/tags used by Windows Media Player? I tried adding them, but my syntax was wrong resulting in Mp3tag not able to find the tag in the mp3 file.
For example, tags like URL, Encoded by, Album Artist, Mood, etc... adding % before and after didn't work.
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### Author:  [@Florian](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/Florian)
#### Post date: [June 9, 2007, 6:01pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/album-artist-as-a-standard-tag/4053/14 "2007-06-09T18:01:27Z")
Please see [this help topic](https://docs.mp3tag.de/mapping) for a list of field mappings.