#Properly tagged 'Above & Beyond presents OceanLab' = wrong database artists (tagged to spec)

1 messages · Page 1 of 1 (latest)

turbid relic
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Yes, I concur. In that specific case, the logic should be that one of the artists is Above & Beyond, and the other artist is whatever is after "presents". Tricky because it's hard to identify when it's a single artist and when it's multiple, and there is no database where this kind of soft info is reliably queryable.

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Perhaps MA can add explicit artist names not to be split by MA's multi artist detection.

mild crane
winged kiln
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‘Above & Beyond’ is a single artist, an artist group, its in their tags, folder is also named that, but MA splits it.

winged kiln
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Okay, put it through the siliconrobot to help me properly tag them to spec. Ill see what it does. Thanks.

mild crane
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You need to add the music brainz ids. Without that it is impossible to know if it is two or three artists

winged kiln
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@mild crane

I've 2 Musicbrainz Release Artist ID set:

370bd5a3-4abf-4356-8576-3a8fc0c11d65 > https://musicbrainz.org/artist/370bd5a3-4abf-4356-8576-3a8fc0c11d65
a558ed3c-ab7d-49b8-a52d-14071b95fa4f > https://musicbrainz.org/artist/a558ed3c-ab7d-49b8-a52d-14071b95fa4f

So if I read docs correctly, this should results in two artists in MA database:

  1. Above & Beyond
  2. OceanLab

What I see in Library are the following artists:

  1. Above
  2. Beyond presents OceanLab
  3. OceanLab

I Think this might be a result of parsing the artist name then? Arists name is (also tagged this way) "Above & Beyond presents OceanLab'. But since the MusicBrainz Release Artist ID's are set in the proper way, I think this behaviour shouldnt happen.

Schermafbeelding_2026-05-10_om_13.42.08.png
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I think this is the result of the mandatory tags 'artist' and 'albumartist'. These are purely textual and no ID is needed for them, so this breaks 'Above & Beyond presents OceanLab' into:

  1. Above
  2. Beyond presents OceanLab

But since MB id's are properly set, the mandatory one should be ignored and only the two arists in the ID's should be created in database:

  1. Above & Beyond
  2. OceanLab
Schermafbeelding_2026-05-10_om_13.44.02.png
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"Primary Source of Truth: Embedded tags are treated as the definitive source for artist, album, and track names."

I think for artists the definitive source should be the MB id's and not the specified artists name in artist tag field (since this seperates them at '&').

If ID is set, use those to add artist to MA DB (thats number 1 as in spec).
If ID's are not set, fall back to 'artist name' tag field (textual), and to the magic seperation. (number 3 according to spec)

According to docs this is how it should work, but it doesnt?

"Multi-Artist Tracks
For tracks with multiple artists, MA supports several approaches:

  1. ARTISTS tag (recommended for ID3) - A dedicated multi-value field listing each artist separately. This is the most reliable method for ID3.
  2. Multiple ARTIST fields (recommended for FLAC/OGG/Opus). The Vorbis comment spec allows multiple ARTIST fields (one per artist). MA reads all of these. (Note that taggers may add multiple ARTISTS (plural) fields. This is not standard according to the Vorbis spec but MA will handle this case)
  3. ARTIST tag parsing - If neither of the above are present, MA will attempt to parse the ARTIST string. Semicolons are treated as the primary separator. Featuring-style separators (e.g. feat., vs., etc.) are always split. Other separators (&, comma, +, “with”) are only used when MusicBrainz Artist IDs indicate multiple artists are expected."
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Really don't understand what I'm doing wrong in my tagging.

mild crane
winged kiln
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It's so frustrating, I'm really trying my best to give as much info as I can and am really trying my best to tag to spec

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Don't want to be rude to you 🙂

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I mean, technically this "Other separators (&, comma, +, “with”) are only used when MusicBrainz Artist IDs indicate multiple artists are expected." happens. But it shouldn't, right?

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At least, not in this instance in the way it does

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Matrix & Futurebound works fine tho. So skip that.

It's just 'Matrix & Futurebound' in database and doesn't get split into 'Matrix' AND 'Futurebound'. (also textual artist name and proper id's)

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Properly tagged 'Above & Beyond presents OceanLab' = wrong database artists (tagged to spec)

mild crane
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Its a bit hard to see exactly what are in your tags but from what it looks like there is ONE ARTIST MBID and TWO ALBUM ARTIST MBID. That should result in the track showing one artist and the album showing two. HOWEVER, we have not seen the use of the word "presents" before to separate two artists so that will result in splitting on the &. Having said that the PR I mentioned is to exclusively use the MBIDs when they are present which will resolve all of these types if things. The reason why we didnt do it before was because of too many API calls. Now that we have our own mirror we can do better

winged kiln
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Thank you so much for your patience and explanation. Very grateful for your PR.

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It's an edge case I'm sure 🙂

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I'll send proper screenshot with set tags in english, one sec.

mild crane
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The current solution is covered in a note in the docs

The album artist tag must be semi-colon separated

winged kiln
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Thanks, for now. When PR is merged and released in stable, I can just use 'Above & Beyond presents OceanLab' instead of 'Above & Beyond; OceanLab', right?

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If they have their id's set ofc.

mild crane
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I'm surprised musicbrainz has it that way in their database currently

winged kiln
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I'll just leave it as is. Won't touch it. It's an edge case and i'm fine for now. Got a link to your pr so I can track it?

mild crane
winged kiln
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Ill appriecate it if you could share it with me when youre done. Thank you!

mild crane
winged kiln
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Thank you for your crazy fast PR. Really appreciate the effort!