# Moving all characters before hyphen in Title field to the Artist field

**URL:** <https://community.mp3tag.de/t/moving-all-characters-before-hyphen-in-title-field-to-the-artist-field/15278>\
**Category:** Support\
**Created:** [December 7, 2013, 7:18pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/moving-all-characters-before-hyphen-in-title-field-to-the-artist-field/15278 "2013-12-07T19:18:53Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![absoluthotness86](https://community.mp3tag.de/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/9e8a1a/32.png) [@absoluthotness86](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/absoluthotness86)\
**Post date:** [December 7, 2013, 7:18pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/moving-all-characters-before-hyphen-in-title-field-to-the-artist-field/15278/1 "2013-12-07T19:18:53Z")

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I have been trying to figure out how to do this...

I download music via Frostwire, so a lot of metadata is messed up in the wrong fields and contains a lot of junk.

Please watch my 51 second video explaining what I am trying to do and what I need help with.

Click on the link below and it will open to YouTube in a new tab or window. Thank you!

[Audio-Visual Explanation Of Help Topic](http://youtu.be/GMVVkBRmTF8)

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**Author:** ![DetlevD](https://community.mp3tag.de/user_avatar/community.mp3tag.de/detlevd/32/123_2.png) [@DetlevD](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/DetlevD)\
**Post date:** [December 7, 2013, 7:48pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/moving-all-characters-before-hyphen-in-title-field-to-the-artist-field/15278/2 "2013-12-07T19:48:44Z")

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You should study the help area on this forum and read also some user postings ... and do not look bad videos on youtu.be.

There is one proposal, out of the plethora of similar requests ...  
[Problem deriving artist from filename](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/8916/3)

To make it short ...

 **Use converter "Tag-Tag". Target field %ARTIST% Format string $regexp(%TITLE%,'^(.+?)\s\*-\s\*(.+?)$','$1') Prepend to existing value in artist field. Format ARTIST tag-field with: $regexp(%TITLE%,'^(.+?)\s\*-\s\*(.+?)$','$1')' '%ARTIST% Append to existing value in artist field. Format ARTIST tag-field with: %ARTIST%' '$regexp(%TITLE%,'^(.+?)\s\*-\s\*(.+?)$','$1') Remove first part from title field Format TITLE tag-field with: $regexp(%TITLE%,'^(.+?)\s\*-\s\*(.+?)$','$2')**

DD.20131207.2235.CET

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**Author:** ![dano](https://community.mp3tag.de/user_avatar/community.mp3tag.de/dano/32/6_2.png) [@dano](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/dano)\
**Post date:** [December 7, 2013, 8:26pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/moving-all-characters-before-hyphen-in-title-field-to-the-artist-field/15278/3 "2013-12-07T20:26:11Z")

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> [@](#):
>
> and do not look bad videos on youtu.be.

What?

Anyway, pay more attention to the Convert function that you are using.  
You can already split the filename to artist and title from there.  
Just include the hyphen in the pattern: %artist% **-** %title%

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**Author:** ![system](https://community.mp3tag.de/uploads/default/original/2X/c/ce7035d426cb755a7916793326d23b465222a407.png) [@system](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/system)\
**Post date:** [February 9, 2026, 12:24pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/moving-all-characters-before-hyphen-in-title-field-to-the-artist-field/15278/4 "2026-02-09T12:24:48Z")

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Closed on February 9, 2026, 12:24pm UTC