# Why is the album artist field show as blank?
**URL:** https://community.mp3tag.de/t/why-is-the-album-artist-field-show-as-blank/69148
**Category:** Support
**Created:** [July 19, 2025, 4:16pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/why-is-the-album-artist-field-show-as-blank/69148 "2025-07-19T16:16:27Z")
**Posts on this page:** 6
**Page:** 2
### Author:  [@Ronstang](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/Ronstang)
#### Post date: [July 21, 2025, 1:10am UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/why-is-the-album-artist-field-show-as-blank/69148/21 "2025-07-21T01:10:44Z")
What could we have changed here to make Mp3Tag no longer display the tags of mp3? It was working fine the other day until I had the problem with not showing the album artist in FLAC files and now it simply shows all the fields of mp3s as blank...but they are not.
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### Author:  [@MotleyG](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/MotleyG)
#### Post date: [July 21, 2025, 3:06am UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/why-is-the-album-artist-field-show-as-blank/69148/22 "2025-07-21T03:06:50Z")
Probably linked to this other thread you started. The APE tags are causing mp3tag to display only those MP3Gain values.
> [@Running Mp3Gain album analysis makes mp3 tags disappear in Mp3tag only](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/running-mp3gain-album-analysis-makes-mp3-tags-disappear-in-mp3tag-only/69163/3):
>
> There is nothing crazy, everything is where it should be. However after running MP3Gain, it has stored the gain tags as APE values. All of your other tags are in the id3 format tags. You can see this indicated in the top bar of your first screenshot in post #1. There are plenty of other threads here with suggestions for handling this issue with MP3Gain. [https://community.mp3tag.de/search?q=Mp3gain%20ape%20order%3Alatest](https://community.mp3tag.de/search?q=Mp3gain%20ape%20order%3Alatest)
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### Author:  [@ohrenkino](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/ohrenkino)
#### Post date: [July 21, 2025, 6:12am UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/why-is-the-album-artist-field-show-as-blank/69148/23 "2025-07-21T06:12:59Z")
> [@MotleyG](#):
>
> The APE tags are causing mp3tag to display only those MP3Gain values.
This is only correct if you set MP3tag to also read APE tags.
If you switch it off, you see the contents of the other tag versions.
And just a second: what kind of files are we talking about?
The original screenshot showed flac files - but flac files do not have APE tags.
Does the phenomenon of the reappearing ALBUMARTIST only apply to MP3 files?
So right now it would be nice @Ronstang if you could show us screenshots of
- the extended tags dialogue from a file with reappearing ALBUMARTIST
- the Options Ctrl-O\>Tags\>Mpeg
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### Author:  [@MotleyG](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/MotleyG)
#### Post date: [August 3, 2025, 12:08pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/why-is-the-album-artist-field-show-as-blank/69148/24 "2025-08-03T12:08:42Z")
> [@Ronstang](#):
>
> Tag & Rename changes are immediate and I have it set to populate the album artist field if any changes are made to the tags.
You mentioned in your first post that you have set up some kind of automation in Tag & Rename to add a missing Albumartist field when examining files in that program. Have you checked to confirm that this automated process is in fact writing the tag field you wish?
“Albumartist” (one word) and “Album Artist” (two words separated by a space) are recognized as two different fields. FLAC did not have a specification for this early on and some software used the two-word approach to add it. But more modern support has gone to the common approach of the single word concept for that and any other fields. Thus you see this option in Foobar mentioned by @ohrenkino .
> [@ohrenkino](#):
>
> Check, if Foobar has the following setting:
> 
I suspect your suggestion that…
> [@Ronstang](#):
>
> these files are 15 years old and I have no idea what software was used to generate or edit the tags all those years ago.
… would be a good indication of why there is a difference. Some legacy players have built in support to display either value. But for a tag editing program it is essential that only the tag you truly intend to edit gets changed.
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### Author:  [@MotleyG](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/MotleyG)
#### Post date: [August 3, 2025, 12:33pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/why-is-the-album-artist-field-show-as-blank/69148/25 "2025-08-03T12:33:47Z")
> [@Ronstang](#):
>
> What could we have changed here to make Mp3Tag no longer display the tags of mp3?
Only you can know what may have changed. Virtually any combination can occur where you rename the tag field with or without spaces for example, or even completely change a name.
> [@Ronstang](#):
>
> …I had the problem with not showing the album artist in FLAC files and now it simply shows all the fields of mp3s as blank…
Please note that you cannot interchangeably refer to FLAC or mp3, nor other formats like m4a. Each have their own tagging methods.
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### Author:  [@system](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/system)
#### Post date: [September 2, 2025, 12:34pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/why-is-the-album-artist-field-show-as-blank/69148/26 "2025-09-02T12:34:30Z")
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