mAirList has offered the ability to enter more than one artist for a playlist item since the beginning of v3.x.
In certain situations this is definitely a nice feature, but it turned out that it makes other things, especially in mAirListDB, much more difficult. For example the new “artist group” feature I’m going to implement. (The ability to specify that e.g. “John Lennon” and “The Beatles” should be considered the same artist when it comes to scheduling and artist separation.)
So I’m considering to drop this feature, and all items will only have a single artist field. I wonder if this is good idea; and if anyone is using the multiple artist feature now anyway.
I’m using the multiple artist quiet a lot because now a days there are a lot of artists working together. (featuring etc.) I don’t think you can cover that with artist groups. I think the artist group function would be a nice extra feature. Maybe you can add an extra secondary artist field?
I’m also using multiple artists per item when they exist.
It’s sad to see this feature disappear.
I found it important because of artist separation rules.
One example:
DAVID BOWIE & MICK JAGGER - Dancing In The Street.
You could create an artist group “ROLLING STONES” and add Mick Jagger to that group, but what would you do with the separation of songs by David Bowie for this particular song?
David Bowie won’t be scheduled when there’s a Rolling Stones song already scheduled. (and vice versa)
I think artist groups is a great new feature to separate Mick Jagger’s songs from songs by The Stones, or to separate Melanie C from The Spice Girls, but here again … what with this song: BRIAN ADAMS & MELANIE C - When You’re Gone?
Would it be an option to have fields like “ARTIST 1”, “ARTIST 2”, … instead of multiple artists in only one single artist field?
Apart from that I think you shouldn’t set artist groups per song or per item, but more as a global reference inside the database.
So that whenever you add a new item to your collection and one or more artists for that item already exist in an artist group, the scheduler automaticly detects that when scheduling songs.
[quote=“roskilde96, post:5, topic:8242”]You could create an artist group “ROLLING STONES” and add Mick Jagger to that group, but what would you do with the separation of songs by David Bowie for this particular song?
David Bowie won’t be scheduled when there’s a Rolling Stones song already scheduled. (and vice versa)[/quote]
An artist will be able to be in more than one artist groups, so just make two groups:
Group A: “David Bowie”, “David Bowie & Mick Jagger”
Group B: “Mick Jagger”, “The Rolling Stones”, “David Bowie & Mick Jagger”
Got the idea?
There will be a major database schema upgrade coming soon which will introduce artist groups and a couple of other features.
As a temporary workaround I could add an option that splits the (now single) artist at the & or / character for means of artist separation.
Does that mean there should be a new artist group created for each song that contains more than 1 artist?
Even when there’s only one song by “Artist X & Artist Y”, we should create a group for that song if we want decent artist separation.
When an artist has made several duets in his carreer, do we need to create a group for each duet then?
That’s a lot of extra work, I guess.
Anyway, thumbs up that mAirList has a music scheduler on board. Normally you’d need to buy extra software for this.
Sounds like a good solution. Maybe the Item Properties window can detected when you enter multiple artists (&,feat.,/) and then ask you if you want to create a new artist group. Or just a button next to the artist field?
I think the scheduler could perform this separations automatically, without the need for an actual artist group.
Example: A song by “David Bowie & Mick Jagger” has been played one hour ago; the scheduler detects the & sign and will register a play for both “David Bowie” and “Mick Jagger” one hour ago and account for that when he is considering a solo song that by either of the two artists.
“&”, “feat.”, and “/” seem to be a good start for separators. “,” is not so a good idea because some people save the artists as “Last name, first name”.
I can add this feature to the current v4.2 snapshot in almost no time.
Of course we would still have “real”, manually addable artist groups for the combo/solo artists (“The Beatles” + “John Lennon” + “Paul McCartney”). This requires a database schema upgrade though, and I must carefully plan that.
Thanks, Torben.
If the scheduler indeed is capable of recognizing multiple artists when the “&” or “/” characters appear in the artist field, I’m happy with that.
Having Artist Groups is then a great extra feature. Multiple artists per song and artist groups are just two different things. I don’t think one feature can replace the other.
