This isnt exactly Mp3tag related but i couldnt think of anywhere else to post where people would understand what im going on about.
My entire database is tagged in id3v2.3 format with a singular "album artist" per track. I then use the "artist" field for the main artist and any contributing artists separated with semicolons e.g. Beyonce; Jay-Z.
I also use multiple genres separated the same e.g. Pop; Blues
Apple music on my iphone (and possibly itunes where i was forced to impost my mp3s to sync) HATES multiple tags and multiple generes. In the music tree i can only see my album artists which is annoying and makes it impossible to find supporting artists through anything but the terrible search button.
I must be missing a big discussion somewhere on this issue as im sure every audiophile and mp3 tagger on here is encountering the same stuff
Does anyone know if there is a workaround i dont know about or even a discussion going on? I searched but to no avail
You could try to split the respective fields into real mult-value fields so that you see more than 1 field of the type ARTIST and GENRE in the extended tags dialogue (Alt-T) and then check whether your player shows an entry for each field.
A single test file should be enough.
This is the world of Apple, specifically iTunes and their IOS device player. There is no workaround here, all fields are treated as single lines, ignoring any separators you may have defined. And these players ignore any separate multi-Artist fields too.
You could use a separate player like Foobar2000 mobile to get the Artist handling to work on IOS.
Yes i've got foobar2000 the IOS app on my iphone but its just the same, doesn't recognize multi-tagged fields and just the Album Artist tag not the Artist tag
I've got tonnes of non-album tracks which makes it a grueller to find them
Has there been any breakthroughs since my last post?
There haven’t been any changes regarding how iTunes handles multiple tags, or using a separator such as a semicolon. Same for Apple Music, I think you are limited there. Other apps may handle their local library differently.
You also mentioned in the original post that you could only see the Album Artists in the list. I assume you mean the Column Browser in iTunes. This can be changed in the View>Column Browser menu, uncheck the Album Artist option at the bottom of the list. Also, if you want to show all Artists including those only found on a compilation, you can uncheck the Group Compilations option in the same menu.
I don’t use iTunes save for the mechanism to get the music on my phone. What I’m referring to is the iPhone “Music” app where only album artists are listed. I want to be able to see all artists in that list as I can with PC music apps. Perhaps there is some other method to transfer the music preserving all the id3 tags OR a different iPhone app that can read the tags, I don’t know. Currently the “Music” app is not useful to realise 75% of my library artists save for painstakingly browsing through compilation albums or searching (but you’ve got to know what you’re searching for!)
Modifying tags usually does not bring more features for a an application.
Naturally, you could add the contents of the artist field to ALBUMARTIST - which would then probably have other side effects like compilations being shown as one album per artist.
So, unless you know what the data should look like as you have found that out manually, but you don't know how to get the same result automatically with MP3tag, I am afraid, that this is a player problem and no MP3tag problem.
Thanks I know this is not a problem of mp3tag, as in my original post I’m just posting here because I know of no other forum with such knowledgeable people who might use or do something different to overcome the problem. Recognising it’s an app/iPhone problem but a lot of people have iPhones so I was hoping someone here knows of a workaround, different app etc.
From the above conversation it doesn’t seem there is unfirtunately
This is a limitation of how the music database works in IOS. Many of the other music player apps access this same database, so they have the limits as well. I do know that Foobar2000 uses its’ own library and you can search by Artist and AlbumArtist separately. But it requires music to be transferred to its own folder for this to work, not via the standard Apple library. So you would effectively double your storage usage to have the same content, or eliminate the Apple Music capability to use Foobar2000 in it’s place. There may be other apps, but I don’t think any can work with the main Apple library and give you the full Artist list you are seeking. This is a request to make to Apple to fix.
As a follow up to this discussion, I have since moved on to a relatively new iOS player app called BTR AMP. It definitely supports both the AlbumArtist and Artist tags in separate lists. It also supports Album, Composer, Genre, and others that you can choose and add as tabs.
Currently it does not separate fields with multiple values. But this apparently is on the list of features in development for a future release, and updates are coming often. The developer is very responsive and open to accepting suggestions. It may be worth exploring with the trial period.
For a deeper look, I have a detailed review posted here a while ago. There have been more updates since, currently at v16.1 now.