MediaMonkey Gold will not save changes to the "Album Artist" autotag when you simply want to eliminate the entry in the field. Or maybe I should say that the program saves the changes, but then insists on filling the field in again automatically the next time you open the list, using the track artist. This is annoying. I wish it would stop doing that. I do not want anything in that field. I have quite a number of compilation albums for which there is no album artist.

BKKKPewsey wrote:Is there a way of checking within MM what the tag values actually are?

No, Unsynchronized Tags will show when there are differences, but there is no way to check the actual values in the tags.

Lowlander wrote:Was the Album Artist tag in the file prior to scanning them into MediaMonkey? If it is empty MediaMonkey will fill it in with Artist value.

A very good point - I didn't realise that MM auto fills tags - even in DB, if the infer properties box wasn't checked.
Is there a way of checking within MM what the tag values actually are?
(Always got mp3tag to fallback on )

Was the Album Artist tag in the file prior to scanning them into MediaMonkey? If it is empty MediaMonkey will fill it in with Artist value. This is done in DB only and thus until you edit Properties it will have the Album Artist as unsynchronized tag field.

With regard to the <Album Artist> tag I have a problem with all versions of MM (currently on 4.0.5.1494)
When I add music to my media folders I first upload it to a *landing" folder called upload - this folder is automatically scanned by MM on startup.
From there I check that all tags are correct, album art ok etc then I use Auto-organise files (ctrl -R) which then places them in the correct artist folder.
My mask uses the <album Artist> tag and all works fine
However if I then check for unsynchronised tags quite often those same tracks (or some of them will show up with the Album Artist field in yellow
I do not have the infer properties box ticked so I cannot understand how if the tags were missing:

1. Why are they showing present and correct in MM?
2. How did the auto-organise function work?

My apologies if this may be a bit off-topic as this may be more of a problem with the unsynchronised tag function but something appears to be a awry

Guest wrote: as the shift+enter doesn't work in that scenario.

Off topic and double post, but works for me: http://www.mediamonkey.com/forum/viewto ... =7&t=66405

Guest wrote: I also notice some slowdowns when doing various tasks as the program presumably goes to do things automatically in the background

Double post: http://www.mediamonkey.com/forum/viewto ... =4&t=66404

In all fairness, after using 4.0.5 for a bit, it still has some idiosyncrasies but it does seem better overall in regards to some of the erratic behavior. I used to do a ctl+a, shift+enter to select all tracks and go into properties. This no longer works. Ctl+a does, but I have to manually right click in selected area as the shift+enter doesn't work in that scenario. I've noticed some degredation in hotkeys in general as they seem to be more tied to a specific window, i.e. won't work program wide. One has to be in a specific context now instead of them working across the program (as in shift+enter.) This is inconvenient as it causes extra work when batch processing but since the overall program seems to have taken a bump up in other areas I won't complain (just hope it gets changed back at some time.) I also notice some slowdowns when doing various tasks as the program presumably goes to do things automatically in the background (which is not needed often for my and I suspect many others uses.) It would be nice if one had more control over what gets done automatically vs manually and even nicer if one could save profiles to be able to save/change multiple settings for different uses (ripping vs general playback for instance.)

khelsing wrote:

tommycrock wrote:We (well I at least) were talking about the automatic change that gets made to album artist when you edit artist, even if album artist is already filled, something I'd like to be able to turn off.

With version 4.0.3.1463 that only seems to happen if all "Artist Album" and "Artist" fields of an album have the same content. Although in such a case this behaviour might make sense, I agree that it should be optional (and personally I would turn it off).

This is what I was responding to. When I have a whole cd that has the same artist and the same album artist, but the artist is not the album artist.... I don't want it 'helping me out.'

I am seeing a lot of posts of people who are still having this problem with 4.0.3 supposedly.

I guess you haven't used 4.0.3 or newer where changing the Artist no longer changes Album Artist.

tommycrock wrote:It would make sense to me if you were editing all the tracks of an album together, for it to auto-change album-artist (though I personally wouldn't want this). BKKKPewsey explained the problem I come across, adding a featured artist or making a single song by a different artist. And for such a 'take control of your tags', customisable and all round powerful program the behaviour continues to surprise me, leaving me with mis-tagged tracks that are orphaned from their album.

No, it doesn't make sense. Take the case of an audiobook lecture series. The Album Artist is usually the publishing company whereas the artist is the person doing the actual lectures (at least for me.) In this case, I am editing all of the tracks of a disk at once and absolutely *do not* want the program overwriting my settings. I've had a back and forth fight that has gone on for multiple iterations on a single cd many times about this. Believe me, it's enough to cause serious stress at times.

I use this tag and it p*sses me off no end. I don't want any program overwriting anything. It makes me feel like I have to *fight* with it rather than work with it. It upsets me enough that if another program comes along with features like MM I'll jump ship in a second if it never gets fixed.

I stand corrected.

Must have been version 4.0 when I last had to edit something, which means I need to start collecting more music again.

I'm using 4.0.3 so I know what I described still happens.

This has been changed. 4.0.3 doesn't change Album Artist on change of Artist. Either the new or old way, you'll always need to be careful when editing making sure Album Artist has the correct value for you.

If you amend the 'Artist' field of a track in an album, it will also amend the 'Album Artist' to the same. If you then go back and remove the added bit from 'Album Artist' when you proceed to the next track within that album and the amend the 'Artist' field again, it will no longer amend 'Album Artist' as it learnt from your previous action.

I like how it is. If you don't want the 'Album Artist' to be amended on the next track simply do as described above. You will only have to amend that first track of an album back to what it was. For compilations you should really have Various Artists though.