are there any examples of record companies/ labels or actual media with the word ‘compilation’ included?
Actual media?
Not sure what you mean, but there are thousands of releases with “compilation” in the title: Search Results - MusicBrainz
Labels often use the term “compilation”, and there are some labels actually only releasing compilations.
But I fail to see how it relates to this discussion, what’s your point?
1 Like
Hello Zas,
I read your response in the forum before I saw the email.
My post was intended to show my point of view which I have held since I was a kid. I think it’s a useful distinction. In MB the distinction rests in the ‘Release by’ info. Multiple-artist releases are by ‘Various Artists’ and single artist releases are by ‘The Artist’.
I was hopeful that it might prompt some support though deep down I felt there was a slim chance.
No-one seems to recognise ‘collection’ as a viable category. Discogs doesn’t and Apple use the term compilation for both types. Interestingly the first poster used the term ‘Collection’ in his post.
I thank you for your email but I doubt I’ll post in this forum thread again. I will follow it though.
Regards,
Jon
Hello Zas,
I was asking because I don’t have any CDs with the word “Compilation” in the title and like @ardain was not used to it being used in this way. I was surprised at the claim that there were, so I wanted some examples.
Itunes has a different concept of Compilations to MB. The actual wording in itunes is
‘Album is a compilation of songs by various artists’. So,
Bob Seger’s Greatest hits is not a compilation per itunes.
The soundtrack to the film ‘Stand By Me’ is a compilation per itunes.
I ripped both into itunes. See attached.
I’d like to be able to set the metadata in Picard from MB automatically without having to manually adjust each track…
What does that have to do with what I said? If you want the Greatest Hits to not show up as a compilation than just uncheck the box. Not everything is going to be 100% compatible with iTunes. I’ve had to do that on Greatest Hits since using MB/Picard. It annoys me too that I had to write a script that all writers and lyricist are composers, because iTunes only uses composers, but I didn’t try to make MB change. When in Picard, change the 1 to a zero if it has it or just uncheck the box in iTunes itself if Picard adds it because MB calls it a compilation.
Is there a way to write a script that if the same artist is on all tracks to not mark it a compilation? I’m not sure. That would be cool, but I don’t see MB changing anything for a one-click check box on iTunes.
1 Like
All I said was
Itunes has a different concept of Compilations to MB. The actual wording in itunes is
‘Album is a compilation of songs by various artists’
I’ve always known Greatest Hits (or similar) releases to be compilations - even before MusicBrainz.
Discogs for example categorizes them as such.
So does AllMusic
Spotify:
RateYourMusic:
Apple Music (an extension of iTunes in ways)
Services that don’t abide to this rule, YouTube Music and Deezer
Which does seem contradictory considering Apple Music does consider compilations to be a collection of songs previously released on other releases (such as albums, singles, EPs etc) as a compilation
Wasn’t trying to being rude. You asked “So anyway, how can I distinguish between ‘various artists’ compilations and ‘greatest hit’ compilations.” I answered. I agree that it would be cool if there was a way outside of manually ticking each box. When I answered. I didn’t know if you even knew that was a possibility based on your previous statements. I was only trying to help.
It is. @dpr is right in that it’s annoying that the compilation field used by picard does indeed check the box in iTunes because it’s using the compilation field in the tag. But that box is intended only for V/A compilations, not all compilations. Is this an issue on other players?
Blockquote
Wasn’t trying to being rude. You asked “So anyway, how can I distinguish between ‘various artists’ compilations and ‘greatest hit’ compilations.” I answered. I agree that it would be cool if there was a way outside of manually ticking each box. When I answered. I didn’t know if you even knew that was a possibility based on your previous statements. I was only trying to help.
Blockquote
Thanks.
Just sometimes there seems to be an attitude of ‘MB is always right’ and Apple is evil on here…
Oh, I know about the anti-Apple attitude. Trust me :-). I’ve ignored it for years.
2 Likes
Not with MediaMonkey which can be considered to be a “variation” of iTunes (due to it supporting most iPod’s natively), but thats because MM doesn’t even have a tick-box choice.
The only other player I use is Plex, sometimes, but that’s just a big ol mess about how that figures out compilations and VA’s, which isn’t in scope here or even for this board in general.
The picard user guide Appendix B: Tag Mapping — MusicBrainz Picard v2.9alpha1 documentation
has the entry for Compilation
and the footnote:
5. For Picard>=1.3 this indicates a Various Artists album; for Picard<=1.2 this indicates albums with tracks by different artists which is incorrect (e.g.: an original album with a duet with a feat. artist would show as a Compilation). In neither case does this indicate a MusicBrainz Release Group subtype of compilation.
If MB just had a ‘Various Artists’ flag then it would be solved.
Just to let you know the ipod and iphone behave differently even when fed from the same itunes…
2 Likes
Yeah doesn’t surprise me. My Sony Walkman digital music player doesn’t really understand compilations properly either 
The ipod works properly …
I think you are mixing up too many things here, MusicBrainz Picard isn’t MusicBrainz database, compilation attribute on MB isn’t compilation tag in Picard.
You ask about MusicBrainz definition of a compilation and ends with iTunes definition of a compilation.
If what you are trying to solve is a Picard issue related to compilation tag & iTunes compatibility have a look at Picard 1.3 changelog:
- Compilation tag/variable functionality (for tagging & file naming) has been split into two:
- %compilation% is now aligned with iTunes, and set only for Various Artists type compilations
- %_multiartist% variable now indicates whether this release has tracks by multiple artists
(in order to prepend the artist name to the filename as shown in the default file naming script)
6 Likes
Since you asked, here’s another example.
https://www.amazon.co.jp/dp/B07THTJXKM is a best hits album by a single artist. The record company, Universal Music Japan, says in the copyright statement,
So at the very least, the MusicBrainz definition overlaps with Universal Music’s definition. (Universal Music is the biggest record company in the world.)
1 Like