Foobar does support BAND and "ALBUM ARTIST".
If an mp3 file contains an id3v2.3 TPE2 frame, it will appear in Foobar as BAND. This can be read and written.
Foobar also supports a custom tag for holding Album Artist information, called "ALBUM ARTIST", and this has special behaviour in Foobar. Writing Album Artist information into BAND (TPE2) would not result in the same good behaviour (grouping and built-in script support would be broken).
Album Artist should map to TXXX ALBUM ARTIST, and Band should map to TPE2, rather than needing to add an Album Artist=TPE2 and AlbumArtist=TXXX ALBUMARTIST.
Sorry, but you are wrong
The standard is that it should be BAND/ORCHESTRA. Anything else is breaking the standard. Some apps have deviated from the standard, but that's not a good reason to start changing for the worse now. Mp3Tag WAS regarded as a sensible tagging app; this certainly changes my feelings about it.
I know it also infuriates people who tag classical music, as TPE2 holds the orchestra. There is no such thing as an Album Artist for classical music. Disregarding support for BAND (or calling it Album Artist) is just wrong.
The best thing to do would be to support the standard by default, and through Mp3Tag options allow the default mapping to be changed, so people can break the standard if they wish.
You are correct in that Foobar reads and writes BAND as a TPE2 frame. I edited my original post to correct that mistake. But to ask Mp3tag to support "the standard" is impossible, because there is no single standard. Foobar does what it does to maintain maximum alignment with ID3V2.4, which makes Foobar an outlier from all other applications. For better or worse, the vast majority of applications align with ID3v2.3.
I still think that the Mp3tag remappings align best with the most commonly used uses and applications, and thus manages the tradeoffs better than other alternatives. Since I prefer to use ID3v2.3 tags for maximum compatibility with the most applications, I don't use Foobar for anything other than Replaygain tags, so the incompatibility with Foobar's use of the BAND tag does not affect me. If one is set on the use and promotion of ID3v2.4 or is a very heavy user of Foobar, I can see how one can disagree with my opinion.
There IS a standard for ID3 tags, and the standard is that TPE2=BAND/ORCHESTRA. The standard doesn't define support for Album Artist, which is why there is a problem for apps that want to store it. However, the standard does support custom tags, so apps should use that, rather than abuse tags that have a defined meaning.
There is no difference in the meaning of TPE2 between id3 v2.3 and v2.4. Aligning TPE2=Album Artist is equally wrong with either id3 tag version.
There is no standard in this space for frames or tags. In other words, I distinguish between "proposed standards" and "common practices", of which there are many in this space and "standard(s)", of which there are none in this space. By "standard", I mean something that has been comprehensively developed, reviewed, accepted, implemented, and compliance-tested, maintained, and enforced on an on-going basis. Many have proposed pieces of a solution for the tagging puzzle for some music formats, but to leap from these many proposals to declaring any of them standards just is not credible to anyone who deals with and understands the use of the term "standard" in a technical or practical sense in the engineering or software community.
To put it another way, if there was a standard, we wouldn't be having this discussion here - we'd take it to the standards body and work something out there. Which standards body is managing what standard for tagging? It's clearly not ID3.org - yes, they are a group of highly talented and motivated individuals who have proposed structures over the years, and I would love it if they actually were the accepted standards body to resolve issues like this, but wishing it so or declaring it so does not make it so.
More concisely, "where there are many standards to do the same thing, there is no standard".
www.id3.org is widely regarded as the standard to be followed. Okay, granted it is called an Informal Standard, but if there is anything to be followed for id3, this is it.
There are lots of other things that Mp3Tag does that are not supported by iTunes, WMP, etc. Should those be removed to be "compatible" too? eg. null chars to divide multiple artists in id3 v2.3 is not standard; it was only introduced for v2.4. iTunes doesn't support multiple artists, genres, etc, in any id3 tag version.
Band/Orchestra is actually quite a useful tag to have, esp. for classical music. To throw that away to mis-use for Album Artist is just a bit annoying, when there is actually some software that supports it for it's intended purpose.
ID3.org is a standard? We seem to have a radically different understanding of the term. The need to demand that anyone needs to remove or change anything to be "compatible" seems to only derive from one trying to argue that there is a standard, and if you think I have done so, then I failed to explain my views.
If you believe there is a standard, I will stop trying to persuade you otherwise, and it would seem you have no need to argue against my views. I encourage you to take your views to the folks at ID3.org to define a resolution that they will enforce with Mp3tag, iTunes, and other applications.
While you are over there, I hope they are as impressed as I am in your declarations of anything being a "mis-use" for "it's intended purpose".
It's because major applications opt not to follow the standard/guidelines that id3 tags are in this mess. Every tagging/ripping app seems to have different quirks.
I've been impressed that up until now, Mp3Tag has not been swayed to follow the poor decisions made by the big companies that have shoe-horned Album Artist over the top of a tag that has nothing to do with Album Artist, ignoring informal standards/guidelines/whatever you want to call them.
Actually, I seem to recall a few years back there was a similar change introduced into Mp3Tag, which was subsequently backed out following objections and confusion.
Anyway, I'll give the new beta version a go to see if it is possible to reconfigure it back. I can always go back to the previous version if it's not possible to tag properly.
So, I gather that I'll be able to reconfigure the tag panel and columns to remap TPE2 back to BAND, and Album Artist to write a custom tag ALBUM ARTIST, but have to remember that the script language won't work the same. Not sure what I'll get in Extended Tags - I think it's going to be confusing.
TPE2=Album Artist shouldn't affect me (I don't add an Album Artist tag unless it's necessary for albums with guests, and I rip all new albums to FLAC). But I am bothered that I won't be able to add Band tags, because this will be interpretted as setting an Album Artist tag and mess up my other software that reads TPE2=BAND and TXXX ALBUM ARTIST or Vorbis Album Artist tag.
Is it still possible to write a TXXX ALBUM ARTIST tag? I gather that if I have a field called %ALBUM ARTIST%, it will now write to TPE2 instead, so it won't be possible to tag things to work in Foobar and other software that expects TPE2=BAND and TXXX ALBUM ARTIST.
Is it possible to write to a custom tag called BAND? i.e. a TXXX frame called BAND?
I'm not totally against Mp3Tag being configurable to allow it to follow the (bad) example set by WMP/iTunes, but isn't it better to continue to label TPE2 as BAND (as that is the official name), and map id3v2 - BAND - Album Artist, for compatibility with apps if people want it (could be the default for new installs).
Then it is still possible to write a custom Album Artist tag, rather than it writing to TPE2.
Be careful your saying ALBUM ARTIST although the new mapping for TPE2 is ALBUMARTIST
This means you can still write TXXX:ALBUM ARTIST but not TXXX:ALBUMARTIST
I actually use TXXX ALBUM ARTIST, because that is what Foobar2000 expects, and Squeezebox Server also understands that tag.
However, there are people who use TXXX ALBUMARTIST (Squeezebox Server used to only understand that tag). Those people may now be disappointed to find that Mp3Tag will not work for them any more.
again:
just to make sure i understand this right:
ID3v2.3 Frame................ Mp3Tag v 2.46............... Mp3Tag v 2.46d
TPE2................................. BAND .............................. ALBUMARTIST
TXXX:ALBUM ARTIST.......... ALBUM ARTIST................. ALBUM ARTIST
TXXX:ALBUMARTIST........... ALBUMARTIST.................. - not supported -
TXXX:BAND....................... - not supported - ............ BAND
is this correct?
and can anybody show me how this Mp3Tag-field-names are mapped with m4a, ogg, flac & wma files?
These changes are rather complicated for most people who don't have insights in the structure of ID3 Frames. At least I never cared about frames before, so i was very confused what i have to change now.
There should be a information message at the start of the Mp3Tag after the update which informs the user that they have to change the placeholders in:
converter commands
actions comands
export
playlists
filter
web scripts to get the same tags as before!
The message shoul also explain the relation between ID3 frames and tag field names. My first thougt was Mp3Tag writes now a different Tag called ALBUMARTIST instead of BAND. Basically I thought the Tag Field name is actually written inside the mp3, I had no idea about the existence of mapped frames behind the field names (although i read about mapped frames at some places here in the forum and at hydrogenaudio, but I didn't care because I never needed).
Reading a few questions here in the frorum, I think I'm not the only one.
Sorry to bring this thread up again, but I'm really struggling to use Mp3Tag with this change.
Having stuck with a previous release because I didn't want to mess up my tags, I finally gave in and thought I'd try the latest version with this tag mapping/naming change for TPE2.
I was thinking that I'd be able to change the mapping to achieve the equivalent of what the software used to do.
But so far I haven't, and I'm confused.
I used to use TPE2(BAND) for holding Band information, and TXXX ALBUM ARTIST for Album Artist information. i.e. a field called BAND in Mp3Tag would write to TPE2, and a field called Album Artist would write to TXXX ALBUM ARTIST.
This ties in with how I have always tagged, and what SqueezeBox and Foobar expect.
For Vorbis tags, it would also use BAND for Band and ALBUM ARTIST for Album Artist.
As far as I can make out in the new version of Mp3Tag, I cannot reconfigure Mp3Tag such that the old behaviour can be achieved.
I'm going back to 2.46c, which was the last version before the change. However, if anyone can work out what can be done to restore normality in the new version, I'd be happy to try again.
i.e. I want consistency in the grid column names, TagPanel fields and Extended Tags dialog, for all types of tag format, such that I can write to BAND and write to ALBUM ARTIST, so Foobar will still work properly.
I think I tried that, and thought it wasn't working. However, I've just tried again, and it seems to be working fine.
I think I thought it wasn't working, because my tag panel config changed after the upgrade. I had a field called Band that was bound to %band%, but it seems that after upgrade it had been bound to %albumartist%, so I had to change it back to %band%.
That's what was confusing me.
I thought I'd also have a problem with files where I'd previously written TXXX ALBUMARTIST tags, but these do appear to at least be read in and assumed to be BAND (i.e. if I load such a file and Ctrl-S, the custom tag ALBUMARTIST gets written back out as another TPE2 value instead).
Now I have to work out the damage to SORT tags, and what different apps are capable of reading
For the past month I have been fighting my squeezebox database because of corrupted ALBUMARTIST tags that I thought were due to a logitech bug only to find out today that they are a result of MP3Tag's upgrade and the fact that I can nolonger write to a "TXXX AlbumArtist" frame.
I can handle renaming the TPE2 frame but I heavily relied on the TXXX frame above and it has broken my dB and my own organization scheme. At the very least it seems that MP3Tag should allow one to map to a TXXX AlbumArtist tag if desired, or maybe I can and I just can't figure it out.
In the meantime, it looks like I will rolling back my version of MP3Tag and hope that somehow I can choose what custom TXXX tag I want to write to.
