Re: WMP 10 and Playlist

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RCTaubert wrote:
I did read the article. Even went back and re-read it to make sure I didn't miss anything. I don't believe I did.

1. Album artist MIGHT be the same as the artist singing the song. If the CD has more than one artist then more than likely it is going to be 'Various Artist'.

Not necessarily. If you're taking the 'Various Artists' from AMG input, then you are not going to find anything consistent there.



2. Congributing Artist is most likely NOT the main singer of the song. According to your reference, "The Contributing Artist is used to add names of all the extra people who appear on individual tracks in an album."

If it's a Soundtrack or Tribute or Classical or Jazz album, then there's an excellent chance that the Contributing Artist is the main performer/singer.


3. if you go to "Auto Playlist...New...<Click here to add criteria>...Choose a Filter" you WILL NOT find 'Artist' or 'Contributing Artist'. Only 'Album Artist'.

I see Contributing Artist.

4. select a song from any list and select 'Advanced Tag Editor'. I HAVE NOT been able to find a column for 'Contributing Artist'.

The field is labelled as Artist, one of many places where WMP is inconsistent in its terminology.


The only place I have seen 'Contributing Artist' is under 'Library...All Music'. There is a section there for 'Contributing Artist'. 

Yes. It's very confusing.


5. Your reference does not definitively define where 'Contributing Artist' come from. The information in the table seems to conflict with the text
defining 'Contributing Artist'.

That would be why the section with the table is labelled 'Confusions' - precisely because the inconsistent labelling is a big flaw in WMP.


And nowhere did I see anything describing
how WMP maps the fields from the internet database (where info is pulled from on the internet to fill WMP fields when a CD is ripped) to the WMP fields.

Under Album Wizard (ie the internet database extraction process), it notes that the Album Artist is called Artist, and the [Contributing] Artist is called the Performer.

I do know that when you submit info to CDDB if you do not specify an artist 

It's not CDDB, it's a privately managed database.

per song, it assumes the 'song artist' is the same as the 'album artist'. If you specify a different artist for each song, then album artist is assumed to be 'Various Artist'.

In addition, when you rip a CD unknown to the internet database you can input the info manually. If you enter an album artist it does not fill in the artist field with that information. 
No, because they're different fields.

Whatever you put into the first
artist field will be automatically copied to all artist fields. You can change any or all of them to be different.

Yes. But the Album Wizard labels most of its fields differently to the rest of WMP. It doesn't even have the same set of default Genres.


So, from my point-of-view, the only reliable field is the 'Artist' field in the database located on the internet. 

I can't see how you find that reliable in any way.

if that is blank, then WMP should
assume unknown or ask for the data. It SHOULD NOT arbitrarily pull that information from other fields whose accuracy is questionable.

I thank you for your input, but unless you can definitively tell me a particular field in WMP is ALWAYS going to be the Artist attributed to singing the song, your info in not much help.
There is no way of gauging that from any information downloaded from the net.


I want the Artist that sings the song on the CD, information that is stored in the on-line database.
It's not necessarily stored anywhere except maybe on the album notes. If you were going to go by AMG, then any song written by say Beethoven, would also be sung by him.


I DO NOT want some programmer at MS deciding what
that info should be if it is not available in the on-line database. If that information is not available from the on-line database put 'Unknown' in the field. Then I will know I have to supply the correct information.

It's usually poorly-paid musically-illiterate typists putting in random info as far as I can tell. More often than not now, classical CDs with an AMG record in the database have no track information whatsoever.
So it is up to you to supply the correct information, as I must have done with thousands of my own CDs.
.

Relevant Pages

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