MusicBrainz Forums

A1: It doesn't
A2: Something like

$copy(_id3:TXXX:ALBUMARTIST,albumartist)
$unset(albumartist)

is possible, but I think you will soon find out what is the downside. :) Currently there is no good way to have tags visible in the UI but not saved to files.

What is ALBUM ARTIST?

Doesn't answer my question. What is ALBUM ARTIST? And what is BAND?

Yes, I know the answer, but I want to be sure you know it as well (not just from Mp3tag is telling you) and then the reason "Why?" should be more clear.

So, so to explain: when you say BAND you mean a TPE2 ID3 frame and when you say ALBUM ARTIST you mean a TXXX ID3 frame with description ALBUM ARTIST. The BAND and ALBUM ARTIST names are just something Mp3tag uses, nothing more.

TPE2 is defined as:

  TPE2
   The 'Band/Orchestra/Accompaniment' frame is used for additional
   information about the performers in the recording.

TXXX is defined as:

4.2.6.   User defined text information frame

   This frame is intended for one-string text information concerning the
   audio file in a similar way to the other "T"-frames. The frame body
   consists of a description of the string, represented as a terminated
   string, followed by the actual string. There may be more than one
   "TXXX" frame in each tag, but only one with the same description.

TPE2 is used as "album artist" by Windows Media Player, iTunes, Winamp, Media Monkey, Amarok and others. WMP used it first, even though it's not strictly according to the definition, and other players followed the trend. Like it or not, it is a de facto standard now.

TXXX with description "ALBUM ARTIST" is used by Foobar2000 and ... wait, nothing else :)

Is it clear now why Picard uses TPE2? I'd like to make this configurable, but I hope you understand why it's the the default. The very first versions of PicardQt didn't use TPE2, because only WMP used it back then. But after iTunes and Winamp started supporting it, it was more than obvious that it's going to become a standard and I changed it.

Luks, thank you for this information.
I understand that the most commonly used has been chosen and it is understandable.

But, even your defintion of TPE2 makes it a bad choice. It is either Band, Orchestra or Accompaniment. Those three are far from being close to the idea of Release artist.

luks wrote:

TPE2 is used as "album artist" by Windows Media Player, iTunes, Winamp, Media Monkey, Amarok and others.

It's like when a mistake is reproduced everywhere, initially coming from amazon or wikipedia. This is very frequent in what we are usually looking for, for MB. I mean broken tracklistings, for instance.

So foobar2000 on the other hand uses TXXX (thanks for reminding me those names) with ALBUM ARTIST description.
I think foobar2000 did choose to break this chain of error, be it praised for this.
Of course, mp3tag also starts using it (as any other random text you type) after the first time you type it (this sentence is quite lame I know).

So yes, it would be nice having it customizable.
The default option should then be the TXXX in my opinion.
If no one follows the right steps at one time or another, we will still have something called Band, Orchestra or Accompaniment to represent Release artist in year 3000. (^_-)

Anyway, as long as it is changeable, it is better.

I created a new enhancement ticket : #4510.

Thank you, Lukáš, for your understanding and patience.

MS could have used TXXX instead.
It then wouldn't have been a mistake. Maybe TXXX is a new thing that didn't exist at that time and they should have migrated.

As for the other mistakes you cite, these are the reasons (together with band) why I don't tag with Picard (just submit DiscID and PUID).
It would be nice to be able to checkbox the fields we want and to leave out other (or even remap).