# I want to prevent Artist Sort and Album Artist Sort from being written by default

**URL:** <https://community.metabrainz.org/t/i-want-to-prevent-artist-sort-and-album-artist-sort-from-being-written-by-default/586290>\
**Category:** MusicBrainz Picard\
**Created:** [May 24, 2022, 3:28am UTC](https://community.metabrainz.org/t/i-want-to-prevent-artist-sort-and-album-artist-sort-from-being-written-by-default/586290 "2022-05-24T03:28:16Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![lithomangcc](https://community.metabrainz.org/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/l/ba9def/32.png) [@lithomangcc](https://community.metabrainz.org/u/lithomangcc)\
**Post date:** [May 24, 2022, 3:28am UTC](https://community.metabrainz.org/t/i-want-to-prevent-artist-sort-and-album-artist-sort-from-being-written-by-default/586290/1 "2022-05-24T03:28:17Z")

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If the file already has these I can prevent them from being overwritten but if they aren’t present I have to manually delete them. I don’t want my artists sorted by Last Name, First Name and my playback software eliminates “The” from band titles

---

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**Author:** ![outsidecontext](https://community.metabrainz.org/user_avatar/community.metabrainz.org/outsidecontext/32/90_2.png) [@outsidecontext](https://community.metabrainz.org/u/outsidecontext)\
**Post date:** [May 24, 2022, 8:23am UTC](https://community.metabrainz.org/t/i-want-to-prevent-artist-sort-and-album-artist-sort-from-being-written-by-default/586290/2 "2022-05-24T08:23:58Z")

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You can use a script in Options \> Scripting to unset this data:

```taggerscript
$unset(artistsort)
$unset(albumartistsort)

```

Or if you actually also want to delete existing tags from files when saving use `$delete`:

```taggerscript
$delete(artistsort)
$delete(albumartistsort)

```

Alternatively you can also keep the tags but set them to the artist name:

```taggerscript
$set(artistsort,%artist%)
$set(albumartistsort,%albumartist%)

```

Or maybe you want “The Beatles” still be sorted under “B” and not “T”:

```taggerscript
$set(artistsort,$swapprefix(%artist%))
$set(albumartistsort,$swapprefix(%albumartist%))

```

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![lithomangcc](https://community.metabrainz.org/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/l/ba9def/32.png) [@lithomangcc](https://community.metabrainz.org/u/lithomangcc)\
**Post date:** [May 25, 2022, 3:35am UTC](https://community.metabrainz.org/t/i-want-to-prevent-artist-sort-and-album-artist-sort-from-being-written-by-default/586290/3 "2022-05-25T03:35:22Z")

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> [@outsidecontext](#):
>
> ```auto
> $unset(artistsort)
> $unset(albumartistsort)
> 
> ```

Thank you it was driving me crazy