VMC using Album Artist tag instead of Artist....

[StrickoUK]

Hi guys. I'm fed up with the music application under VMC.

Specifically, I want to be able to see all of the carefully maintained tags on my music collection. My compilation albums have all got individual Artist values, I've got multiple values on Artists for collaborations, etc etc. All the good stuff. All this is visble under WMP on my various networked PC's, and on my media players and an internet radio....

But, I can't see them on my Media Centre running Vista. Although it has an "Arttist" view and an "Album Artist" view, both seem to ignore the Artist tag, and only use the Album Artist, making all of the details invisible.

Under XP MCE, Artist worked fine, but we needed an separate "Album Artist" view. Under Vista, we got the new view, but they crippled the Artist view. It's not been fixed under Windows 7 either.

Even a "folders" view would help, as I'm using the recommended /artist/album folder structure.

Anybody got any ideas how to get around this? Alternatively, is there a separate music player plug-in that would do this? Or even a complete MC replacement like Sage that might help? Anything..............

[philzgr8]

Unfortunately I have nothing to offer by way of a solution. Only my own tale of woe with MCE and WMP right since XP. As of late last year I was forced to finally delete my entire music collection and re-rip the lot. I now have any settings allowing MCE or WMP to change my music files in any way switched off and purely rely on a folder structure of Artst/Album. I use a Music Browser plugin to view and play my collection until or unless I can find something better. I also use Mp3tag to maintain tags and cover art.

[StrickoUK]

That's not good news, I'd looked at the tool you suggest as a way of getting Album Artist under XP MCE, but it only works under Vista, where essentially the same information is already available....

Everybody seems totally focussed on video and DVDs in the discussions around Windows 7. I've raised the issue over on Green Button, but even had to explain it to one of the lead guys.

If I find anything, I'll let you know.

[Satch]

I totally share your pain. Music is a large component of my VMC setup.

I've got another slight variation to the compilation issue. I've got over 400 singles (individual tracks which I don't have the whole album) and I've put the label 'Single' in both the Album and Album Artist tags. I can see all of these singles in the Songs view, but cannot see the artists in the Artist view, even though the Artist tag is correctly filled out.

e.g. I have the song Jump by Van Halen. Jump is the track title, Van Halen is the artist, and Single is both the Album and Album Artist tag. I can see Jump in my Songs view, but not Van Halen in my Artists view. Very annoying, and no way I see I can change it.

Sorry this post isn't much help to you. It is more of a rant...

[syrilion]

Again, not a direct way of fixing the problem, but I too have a large collection of music including mixes and various singles.

I found that windows media player has the ability to identify album info and to change album info using the microsoft album information server. It normally does this automatically, but you can manually override this. What I have done to group the singles together is:

1. use windows explorer (using the right click>properties>details) and change all the singles mp3 tag album artist properties to the same value.
2. You can then assign any image to the "album" by dragging an image into media player. When this is done it will appear that way in media centre.

A bit of mucking about, but it works. I have done this with a collection of 77 tunes which I have named "Syrilions Anthems". It appears as one album in the "album artist" view, which is what music view i use.

[StrickoUK]

Just a quick update. No one, on any forum has come up with a "fix" to this one. There are "workarounds", like leaving the album artist blank, but it still looks like a hole that MS dug when they rebuilt for Vista, and they are not fixing for W7.

As an alternative, I've been looking at the JRiver Media Player. This includes a "Theater View" which is a MCE equivalent. Very different look and feel, BUT, it's highly configurable. I've only started playing with it (both the current version 12, and a late beta of v13) but it looks like you can tailor the whole menu structure, and build "views" based on any tags you like. Definitely builds totally different lists for Album and Album Artist, so it has the basics for dealing with my underlying problem.

Only drawback I've found so far is that there is no equivalent for My Movies. It handles DVDs and AVI files, no problem, but doesn't show the synopsis, and cast stuff that My Movies does. There's lots of people asking for it, and they seem to be working on it.

Oh, and you have to pay for it. But it beats shelling out for a Vista license if you've an old XP license lying around.......