Artist vs. Album Artist vs. Album

Here is an example:

Ray Charles' last album "Genius Loves Company" in which Ray was singing with a different singer for every song. So the Artist for track 1 (Here We Go Again) will be "Ray Charles & Norah Jones", track 2 (Sweet Potato Pie) will be "Ray Charles & James Taylor", track 3 (You Don't Know Me) will be "Ray Charles & Diana Krall", etc... But this is really a Ray Charles album so the Album Artist Should be "Ray Charles".

sidssp is correct. This is how "Album Artist" is intended to be used. But there are two problems with this IMO:

1. Having "Ray Charles & Norah Jones" and "Ray Charles & James Taylor", etc on the individual tracks as the "Artist" and "Ray Charles" on all the tracks as the "Album Artist" is cool when one is searching the library. However, when one is browsing the library this is a major PITA. The browser control keys off "Artist" ... and there is no way to switch it to use "Album Artist". When I search for "Ray Charles" I want to find any track he is on ... regardless of whether he is the main artist or featured artist. I can then select the exact track I want from the results. But when I browse for "Ray Charles" I am looking for a Ray Charles album(s). Unfortunately, the Artist list shows me "Ray Charles & Norah Jones", "Ray Charles & James Taylor", etc. Now I can select all of the Artist entries and get a list of all the albums that I want, but this is really a pain and unintuitive. Which leads me to the bigger problem ...

2. The iPod does not utilize "Album Artist" at all. If one utilizes the "Artist" field to reflect the main artist and featured artists as intended, then there is no way to quickly locate the main artist on an album, and then select all or individual albums by that artist. Which in my case effectively renders the new "Album Artist" field useless because there simply is no workaround.

OAW

PS: This is nearly as stupid as introducing playlist folders in iTunes and not having any sort of iPod support for the feature!

iTunes 7 adds support for the ¨Album Artist¨ tag (as used and required by Windows Media Player). Adding support for this tag was actually a request I made myself a while ago.

Unfortunately iTunes is not using this tag in a useful way (as it was intended). The purpose of this tag (as used by Windows Media Player) is to cope with Albums that contain more than one artist, a good example album is Queen's Greatest Hits III (see http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewAlbum?id=161431875&s=14344 4 ) this album contains tracks by or featuring David Bowie and George Michael (amongst others) as well as Queen themselves, despite this, everyone would consider the Album itself to be by Queen.

The purpose of the Album Artist tag is so that you can browse by the Album Artist and see the entire album listed (and not just those tracks specifically by Queen themselves). Therefore iTunes should if in browse view mode and sorted by Album Artist show the entire album grouped together - IT DOES NOT. Instead it appears to be being sub-sorted by Artist (as well as Album Artist) and this results in it being split in to 3 or more sections. This applies to all three view modes including the Coverflow view.

As things stand the only benefit I get from iTunes now supporting the Album Artist tag is greater compatibility with Windows Media Player, apart from that it appears completely useless in iTunes as currently implemented.

John,

Yeah the "Album Artist" sort is kind of stupid. "Artist" should not be used as a secondary sort in this situation. Having said that, trying sorting by "Album by Artist". It will group the entire album together as you wish.

OAW

PS: Just in case you don't know how to do this, just click the "Album" column and it will switch between "Album", "Album by Artist", and "Album by Year". A really cool new feature. 🙂

I have waited a very long time for the Album Artist Tag to be added. I really hate having to cheat and lable albums with a mixed artistry as a complilation just to have them reside in one area of iTunes. Although it works, and it actually carries over to the iPod, it does not keep within the spirit of the album itself.
I have sent off feedback asking that we be allowed to choose how we "browse" from the browse feature of iTunes. It would be nice if we could click the word "Artist" and have it switch to "Album Artist" (similiar to how you can now click Album and select, Album, Album by Year, and Album by Artist. I also requested that browsing Album Artist be added as a menu to the iPod software.
It could be that similar feedback, the same idea or something different, might prompt some action, and hopefully sooner at that.

This is an excellent idea. I was thinking to just change "Artist" to "Album Artist" in the browser. But clicking the column to toggle between the too is a better idea. And adding a browse by "Album Artist" feature is simply a must have. I refuse to even use the tag until it is there because it will just ruin the iPod experience if I do.

OAW

PS: I have a different method if "cheating" to keep the album grouped together. I always make "Artist" contain what should go in "Album Artist". And then I add "f. Joe Blow" to the end of the particular track where "Joe Blow" is a featured artist. This way I can keep the album together AND see who the featured artist is on the iPod because the track name scrolls whereas the artist name does not.

I like the spirit of album artist, but the implementation is a little off, I think.

I have always wanted a field called "featured artist" or "song artist" or something of that nature. This way, artist could say "Santana" but a more specific coulmn could tell you that it features Rob Thomas. This way you don't lose any information but maintain the ability to sort also.

While you can do this with "album artist", it requires shifting all my current labels from the "artist" column to the "album artist" column and then working from there. And I think its more of an exception than a normality for there to be featured artists or guests on an album, so it should just be a separate sub-field.

Perhaps it could even seamlessly tag it on the end in dark gray, i.e. "Santana f/ Rob Thomas" all appears in the "artist" column;the browser only sees "Santana", but the searcher sees it all.

I'll submit this to the proper feedback page if it gets any good comments.

I don't like this addition of Album Artist. It's thrown off a lot of my iTunes.

What I used to do is put the (featuring "artist name") as the title of the song.

e.g. Santana - "Smoothe (feat. Rob Thomas)."

That worked fine for me.

While i think it was meant to be for situations where the main artist of the album was say Queen and it had some song that had say Queen and Bowie puting the Artist as Queen and Bowie still spilts up the album by artist and in album view it splits the album and in the browser you still end up with more artists than you want.
This is because Artist is the Primary Sort as it used to be. Where as now they should but haven't change it to Album Artist.
However I have say several Greatest Hits albums all called Greatest Hits before i had to Call them Greatest hit[Queen] and Greatest Hits[Guns N' Roses] for exampele to stop them all being mixed up by track number when organised by album now however by puting the album artist they seem to have been separtated without the neccessary extra [ARTIST] bit at the end.

May be 7.0.1 or later will inplament Album Artist better?