[X] "Album Artist" != "Band" in FLAC, AlbumArtist FLAC tag not being written via Band tag Options

[jakespatz]

I'm tagging FLACs using Mp3tag (v2.42)'s "Band" field, but the results aren't showing up properly under the "Album Artist" heading in Winamp, and it's making a mess of my library.

To be more detailed... I'm RE-tagging FLACs after converting them FLAC > WAV > FLAC. My initial versions all have proper tags, thanks to a prior release of Mp3tag... but now when I re-tag the info isn't getting stored properly. (I have to re-tag after the WAV phase because my audio editor wipes that particular tag.)

This issue was raised earlier, here:
http://forums.mp3tag.de/index.php?showtopic=8212
But nothing was offered in the way of a solution.

As I said, this wasn't an issue before; is there any easy way around it?

[Moonbase]

To add a little explanation: BAND is not and never was intended as »Album Artist«. Apple iTunes and Winamp simply (intentionally) misuse this field. Unfortunately, ID3v2 doesn’t provide for a »native« Album Artist field, so various ways to do it have evolved:

• iTunes and Winamp use TPE2 (BAND) for it.
• The foobar2000 community recommends using "ALBUM ARTIST" (with a blank).
• MusicBrainz Picard (newer versions) also uses TPE2 (BAND) in ID2v2 but "ALBUMARTIST" (no blank) in Vorbis Comments (FLAC, OGG).

I guess the only (half-easy) way to handle it would be to use a Mp3tag Action to convert from (whatever you have now) to (whatever you decide to use in the future), i.e. BAND -> ALBUMARTIST. This can easily be done using a "Format value" action.

Btw, you can easily re-encode FLAC to FLAC, skipping the WAV step. I think that could help not losing the tags.

My Winamp (5.541) shows the FLAC Album Artist in the Info Window when I use the "ALBUMARTIST" tag in the FLAC files, if that helps.

This post has been edited by Moonbase: Dec 31 2008, 14:46