I’m sure this topic has been posted before, but I keep finding it so troubling and given that I can’t find any standard about this, it keeps me quite frustrated.
For some artists, they store the format as Artist / Artist, or Artist, Artist, when having the comma separation leads to some music servers downright ignoring that there are multiple artists. I also find that sometimes the Album Artist Sort Order retains the same format as the multiple artist field, which can be slash or comma or semicolon separated.
My question is, What should the format be for the album artist and artists and their respective sort order?
Eg. Should a split between ‘Forgotten.’ and ‘sadness’, should be as such?
Artist (for the corresponding artist track): Forgotten. or sadness
Artist Sort Order: Forgotten or Sadness
Album Artist: Forgotten. / sadness
Album Artist Sort Order: Forgotten; Sadness
And is there even a standard for how to format the values? MusicBrainz Picard isn’t helping when it gives inconsistent values of how they’re separated.
For some artists, they store the format as Artist / Artist, or Artist, Artist
What you’re referring to are join phrases, which are entered in MB based on how they are printed, or presented on DSPs.
What should the format be for the album artist and artists
It depends on which player you’re using. Some players use the Album Artist field, and expect only one artist*, while others use the Artist field. There is no one-size-fits-all answer for all users. Regardless, a good first step would be to ensure you have “Standardized artist names” enabled in Picard.
Path: Settings -> Metadata -> Use standardized artist names
* If your player uses the Album Artist field and does not handle multi-value tags (e.g., Plex), you will need a tagger script, as well as the Additional Artists Variables plugin to pull the first artist listed with something like $set(albumartist,%_artists_album_primary_std%)