Separator character for multiple artists

[wagstaff]

A feature I would love to see added to the Serviio indexing engine is the ability to designate a separator character for media files with multiple artists and to have the indexing engine then locate the media file through any of the designated artists. For example, take the song "It's 5 O'Clock Somewhere" which was a collaboration between Alan Jackson and Jimmy Buffett. It would be desirable to tag the "Artist" field of the ID3 tag with both artists and be able to search for this song via either artist.

If we could designate some sort of separation character like a semicolon (;) or a comma (,) be used to designate separation between multiple artists in the ID3 tag (i.e. "Alan Jackson; Jimmy Buffett"), then the indexing engine, when reading this ID3 tag, could then list this song under both "Alan Jackson" and "Jimmy Buffett". Without this ability, the indexing engine defaults to crediting the song to a strangely named artist known as "Alan Jackson; Jimmy Buffett" who then appears in the artist listing shortly after "Alan Jackson".

Since more and more songs are the result of collaboration between multiple artists, all one has to do is remember at least one of the collaborating artists to be able to search for the song. I hope I have explained my idea clearly. Thoughts?

[zip]

It's not a thing for Serviio but I'd guess a standard. There is too many ways to separate the names, comma, semi-colon, etc. Also there is not way in the data model to associate a song to multiple artists. Maybe Album artist would help - but it'd be only one of those artists most of he time.

[wagstaff]

There is too many ways to separate the names, comma, semi-colon, etc.

This is why I suggested that there be some way to "designate" a separator character to the indexing engine, perhaps in one of the console tabs somewhere. Once a separator character is designated to Serviio, the indexing scan would recognize the character as being the separator between multiple artists in the ID3 tag field and associate the scanned media file to each of the listed artists in the ID3 tag field. A scanning engine I am familiar with that performs this exact function is part of the open source Squeezebox Server product that is currently maintained by Logitech:

http://downloads.slimdevices.com/SqueezeboxServer_v7.5.3/

It is mostly written in Perl, but the logic needed to implement this idea is there.

Also there is not way in the data model to associate a song to multiple artists.

You would know this better than I do, as I have no insight into how the data model for indexing the ID3 tag information was designed or constructed. I do know that this is not a limitation of derby (which is the current relational database supporting Serviio).

Maybe Album artist would help - but it'd be only one of those artists most of he time.

This is an interesting idea - are you referring to the TPE2 field in the ID3 tag that is treated as either "Band" or "Album Artist" depending on the software being used to edit/update the tags? This might be a possible solution for media files that only have two collaborating artists. For anything with three or more collaborators, however, the problem persists.

Anyway, Serviio is a great product regardless. I'm looking forward to all future enhancements.