Tagging best practices suggestions, please?

[Fredo]

Hi: I have the following structure in Artist & Album view in the MM database:

Peter Kater (artist)
---- How the West Was Lost (album - indented)
---- Pursuit of Happiness (album)
Peter Kater & R. Carlos Nakai (artist)
---- Natives (album)

For purposes of organization, I am inclined to consolidate it to:

Peter Kater (artist)
---- How the West Was Lost (album)
---- Pursuit of Happiness (album)
---- Natives (album)

Moving the Natives album would change the Artist tag in the Natives album from "Peter Kater & R. Carlos Nakai" to "Peter Kater". That is desirable because I will eventually Add / Rescan all tracks, and the changed tag will preserve the new organization.

But I have therefore lost the artist R. Carlos Nakai from the Natives album.

What is the best way to handle this grouping and preserve the artist Nakai? One option, of course, would be to not consolidate. Another might be to try something like this:

Peter Kater (artist)
---- How the West Was Lost (album)
---- Pursuit of Happiness (album)
---- Peter Kater & R. Carlos Nakai (artist)
---- ----- Natives (album)

There are lots of occurrences of this situation in my database, especially with classical music.

Thank you,

Fred

[Lowlander]

There are 2 fields:
Artist: Performer(s) of the track itself (you could keep both artists listed here)
Album Artist: Performer(s) under who's name the Album is published (Various Artists in case of compilations)

If you use the multi-artist separator (; by default) the Album will be shown under both Album Artists. Thus if you use Album Artist = Peter Kater;R. Carlos Nakai it will show under Peter Kater as you want (and also show under R. Carlos Nakai).

[Fredo]

Lowlander: Sorry, I am confused. In MM -> Album & Artist view, I see these columns:
Title | Artist | Album | Date | Genre | Rating | and a few more

You said there are two fields: Artist and Album Artist. I only see Artist. Am I missing something?

Thanks,

Fred

[Lowlander]

Right click on a track and select Properties to see all available fields.

You can also right click on the column headings and enable Album Artist to see it in the main view.

[Fredo]

Got it - thanks very much! I had altered my display columns, so I knew about that at one time