# Album Artist vs ALBUM ARTIST
**URL:** https://community.mp3tag.de/t/album-artist-vs-album-artist/54715
**Category:** Support
**Created:** [October 11, 2021, 12:37pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/album-artist-vs-album-artist/54715 "2021-10-11T12:37:36Z")
**Posts on this page:** 18
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@donwiss](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/donwiss)
#### Post date: [October 11, 2021, 12:37pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/album-artist-vs-album-artist/54715/1 "2021-10-11T12:37:36Z")
I like to use Various and not Various Artists for the Album Artist tag.
Using Alt-T:
Main screen:
VLC:
As you can see, on the main screen (and also in the column at the right) it is just Various. How do I get rid of the Artists?
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### Author:  [@LyricsLover](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/LyricsLover)
#### Post date: [October 11, 2021, 1:02pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/album-artist-vs-album-artist/54715/2 "2021-10-11T13:02:26Z")
> [@donwiss](#):
>
> How do I get rid of the Artists?
ALBUM ARTIST and ALBUMARTIST are two completely different tag fields, like ARTIST or TITLE.
If you want to see "Various" in the tag field `ALBUM ARTIST` I would suggest:
1.) Delete all your ALBUMARTIST tag fields containing "Various"
2.) Replace all your "Various Artists" in the ALBUM ARTIST tag fields with "Various"
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### Author:  [@donwiss](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/donwiss)
#### Post date: [October 11, 2021, 1:36pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/album-artist-vs-album-artist/54715/3 "2021-10-11T13:36:46Z")
Of course, they are different fields. I don't care if both appear. The ALBUMARTIST is now okay. I have already replaced "Various Artists" in the ALBUM ARTIST tag fields with "Various." Which mp3tag shows. It just doesn't appear in VLC.
Or is mp3tag mapping the Album Artist to ALBUMARTIST.
Looking at the raw header I find ALBUM ARTIST=Various Artists. But mp3tag isn't changing it.
Would adding a tag field ALBUM ARTIST give me something that is different from what mp3tag calls Album Artist in mixed case?
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### Author:  [@LyricsLover](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/LyricsLover)
#### Post date: [October 11, 2021, 2:25pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/album-artist-vs-album-artist/54715/4 "2021-10-11T14:25:42Z")
> [@donwiss](#):
>
> It just doesn't appear in VLC.
According to [ID3 - VideoLAN Wiki](https://wiki.videolan.org/ID3/) VLC only reads very few tags.
Album Artist (in any form) isn't available.
Where did you get the VLC informations in your screenshot in the initial post with ALBUMARTIST, ALBUM ARTIST or DISCNUMBER? If I press CTRL + J in VLC, I see only the tags mentioned in the Wiki.
Do you have installed some Plugin for VLC to read this informations?
Or do we not talk about MP3?
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### Author:  [@donwiss](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/donwiss)
#### Post date: [October 13, 2021, 8:52pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/album-artist-vs-album-artist/54715/5 "2021-10-13T20:52:56Z")
After clicking Ctrl-J, then click the Metadata tab. It shows all the others. This is the easiest way to see them all, though some appear duplicated.
I only have FLAC files.
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### Author:  [@LyricsLover](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/LyricsLover)
#### Post date: [October 13, 2021, 9:57pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/album-artist-vs-album-artist/54715/6 "2021-10-13T21:57:56Z")
> [@donwiss](#):
>
> I only have FLAC files.
I don't use FLAC files. Could you provide your song with both ALBUM ARTIST/ALBUMARTIST visible in VLC, maybe with a download link by PM?
According to [Tag Field Mappings – Mp3tag Documentation](https://docs.mp3tag.de/mapping) "_VorbisComments (used with FLAC, OGG, SPX) ... are not mapped internally by Mp3tag"_.
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### Author:  [@ohrenkino](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/ohrenkino)
#### Post date: [October 14, 2021, 7:10am UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/album-artist-vs-album-artist/54715/7 "2021-10-14T07:10:52Z")
The help then continues "unless they have a user-defned mapping". So check File\>Options\>Tags\>Mapping whether you have mapped ALBUMARTIST and ALBUM ARTIST.
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### Author:  [@donwiss](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/donwiss)
#### Post date: [October 14, 2021, 9:17am UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/album-artist-vs-album-artist/54715/8 "2021-10-14T09:17:51Z")
I was not familiar with that feature. I do not have that mapping. There are three mappings there, which I have to assume are there as defaults.
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### Author:  [@Florian](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/Florian)
#### Post date: [October 14, 2021, 12:15pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/album-artist-vs-album-artist/54715/9 "2021-10-14T12:15:22Z")
Can't you just remove the field you don't want to have or am I missing something?
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### Author:  [@donwiss](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/donwiss)
#### Post date: [October 16, 2021, 5:06pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/album-artist-vs-album-artist/54715/10 "2021-10-16T17:06:18Z")
That doesn't work. I'm moved on. But I now have a similar one. When there is only one disc, I don't want DISCNUMBER or TOTALDISCS. But when I blank them in Mp3Tag, they don't blank. They remain. This is the header, minus any non-ASCII characters:
ID3cTIT2Night nurseTPE1Dennis BrownTALBDennis Brown Sings Gregory IsaacsTPOS11TYER2003TRCK0711MCDIfb
DTFTLEN219013TCONReggaeTENCExact Audio Copy Secure modeTSSEFLACEXE 8 V T ARTIST=Dennis Brown
T TITLE=Night nurse T ALBUM=Dennis Brown Sings Gregory Isaacs T DATE=2003 T TRACKNUMBER=07 T
GENRE=Reggae T COMMENT= T BAND= T ALBUMARTIST= T COMPOSER= T DISCNUMBER=1 T TOTALDISCS=1 T TOT
ALTRACKS=11 o
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### Author:  [@ohrenkino](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/ohrenkino)
#### Post date: [October 16, 2021, 5:12pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/album-artist-vs-album-artist/54715/11 "2021-10-16T17:12:28Z")
Could it be that you have FLAC and ID3 tags (stacked on top of each other) in your flac files?
Then get rid of the ID3 tags. Only flac tags are supposed to be in flac files.
> [@NextPVR cannot access tags for CD ripped using EAC to FLAC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/nextpvr-cannot-access-tags-for-cd-ripped-using-eac-to-flac/18408):
>
> New User - I downloaded MP3TAG after finding that NextPVR is unable to find metadata for CDs ripped using EAC to FLAC/WAV files. The only file I thought I could find to send to the MUSIC folder I point NextPRV to was "mp3tag.html; NextPVR wasn't able to use it. I did a search of the support forum but didn't see a relevant post / response; my apologies if I missed it. I'm guessing I'm missing something about what needs to be copied/exported to the MUSIC folder. Any help / suggestions would be…
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### Author:  [@donwiss](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/donwiss)
#### Post date: [October 16, 2021, 6:07pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/album-artist-vs-album-artist/54715/12 "2021-10-16T18:07:30Z")
Okay. Can I remove the ID3 tags without also removing the Vorbis ones. I gather removing tags, removes all.
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### Author:  [@Florian](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/Florian)
#### Post date: [October 16, 2021, 6:15pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/album-artist-vs-album-artist/54715/13 "2021-10-16T18:15:22Z")
> [@donwiss](#):
>
> Can I remove the ID3 tags without also removing the Vorbis ones
It's possible via Remove and Undo — the ID3v2 tags are removed by this. Alternatively, via Cut and Paste.
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### Author:  [@donwiss](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/donwiss)
#### Post date: [October 16, 2021, 7:09pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/album-artist-vs-album-artist/54715/14 "2021-10-16T19:09:09Z")
Thanks. Remove and Undo works perfectly. I searched the headers on one drive and found a few others. I would think this is also the solution to what started this thread, but I didn't keep track of that album name, so I have to find it first.
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### Author:  [@ohrenkino](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/ohrenkino)
#### Post date: [October 16, 2021, 8:15pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/album-artist-vs-album-artist/54715/15 "2021-10-16T20:15:45Z")
can't you filter for that with
%\_tag% HAS flac AND %\_tag% HAS ID3
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### Author:  [@donwiss](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/donwiss)
#### Post date: [October 16, 2021, 8:31pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/album-artist-vs-album-artist/54715/16 "2021-10-16T20:31:31Z")
If that works it will save me a lot of time. I am now loading up the entire Rock folder (the biggest) to test. I hope there is no limit to what is saved in the Undo feature. Or I'm screwed.
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### Author:  [@donwiss](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/donwiss)
#### Post date: [October 17, 2021, 3:51am UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/album-artist-vs-album-artist/54715/17 "2021-10-17T03:51:22Z")
Your filter works, and is more efficient than my finding the albums by scanning the headers. And then processing one album at a time. Though one can remove and undo only about 150 tracks at a time. Two problems though. (1) The headers that Easy CD-DA Extractor created wrong are still out there. As discussed in:
> [@File xxx cannot be opened for writing](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/file-xxx-cannot-be-opened-for-writing/54063/2):
>
> Can you provide an example file so that I can investigate this issue?
Every album I ripped or converted from 2006 to Fall 2013, and didn't subsequently edit with Tag&Rename has this problem. The fix is easy. Open the editor in Tag&Rename, then save. It is annoying to have to deal with them when they pop up. I'd rather find a way to find these corrupted headers and fix them all at once, instead of stumbling on them when doing something else.
(2) One can only remove and undo a block at a time. I was doing 169 at a time, but after a while Mp3tag bogged down and slowed to an imperceptibe crawl. Like it was leaking memory. A check in Task Manager found Mp3tag was using 1.2 GB RAM. So I had to close Mp3tag and open and start again.
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### Author:  [@system](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/system)
#### Post date: [February 9, 2026, 12:29pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/album-artist-vs-album-artist/54715/18 "2026-02-09T12:29:28Z")