HowTo fix "Various Artists" to "Various" for Discogs search "ARTIST and ALBUM"

[make-nz]

For me it has allways been and will be "Various Artists" for the tag Albumartist, not just "Various".

Now, for Discogs search "ARTIST and ALBUM" you are out of luck with "Various Artists" and you get:

To fix this, insert a simple replace in

AppData\Roaming\Mp3tag\data\sources\Discogs Artist + Album.src

#[SearchBy]=Artist||$if2(%albumartist%,%artist%)||&artist=%s||Album||%album%||&release_title=%s
[SearchBy]=Artist||$if2($replace(%albumartist%,Various Artists,Various),%artist%)||&artist=%s||Album||%album%||&release_title=%s

If your Albumartist tags are a bit messed up, well fix it to whatever you like and change the replace accordingly.
If you use some kind of structured Albumartist like "Various Artists", "Various Artists Italian", "Various Artists German"… a regex could do the trick.

Or quick and dirty, just replace any Albumartist tag with "Various Artists" and created your own

Discogs Various Artist + Album.src

[SearchBy]=Artist||$if2($replace(%albumartist%,%albumartist%,Various),%artist%)||&artist=%s||Album||%album%||&release_title=%s

Fixed:

Let me know if I missed something.
Hope this helps.

[musifant]

Wow!
Thanks SO VERY MUCH!
This issue was annoying the crap out of me and you just presented such a simple elegant fix

[Florian]

FYI, this is also addressed in Mp3tag v3.35-beta.2:

[2026-05-22] CHG: Discogs Tag Sources: use Discogs convention of "Various" for various artists.

I'm using a slightly different replacement, which replaces VA, V.A., and Various Artists while ignoring case.

$regexp($if2(%albumartist%,%artist%),^(va|various artists|v\.a\.)$,Various,1)

[musifant]

It keeps getting better! Thanks