Also, I’m confused about proper methodology and compatibility?
I noticed that Picard puts ALL the genres into ONE Genre Tag…
However, when I use Mp3tag and then “save” the file, if I use double backward slashes (\) to separate the genre the file is saved with multiple Genre Tags, and most programs apparently only see the “first” genre, such as Windows File Explorer.
So, I don’t understand what “separators” I should be using, including what ones I should be using in other tags that have multiple artists etc. which seem to mostly be using a forward slash / or sometimes a semi-colon ; .
Also, if I use for example the semi-colon ( or otherwise, Mp3tag apparently respects what’s used and keeps all genres in one Tag.
Anyway, I’m confused as donkey… I want to use a consistent methodology, and one that will work in most players properly. I don’t actually “need” to see multiple genres either by a player, at least not yet, likely something I’ll need to also cleanup, cause there are lots of mistakes in the genres.
The double backslash in MP3Tag is just MP3Tag’s way of marking multiple separate values for a single tag. There is no actual double backslash stored in the file.
Picard’s genres will by default also be multiple distinct values. But you can choose to have them all as one value separated by some separation character in Options → Metadata → Genres → “Join multiple genres with”.
So, if you don’t use a separator then how do you separate tags?
That’s part of my confusion, I don’t know what separators I’m supposed to be using in the different fields that have them, I see them all, and it seems ONLY the double-back slash \ one creates multiple Genre Tags? Otherwise, they are simply ALL in the same single genre tag.
The double backslash is what you can use in MP3Tag, yes.
In Picard you can edit multiple tags in the tag editor. Right click on a tag value and select “edit”. In the tag editor dialog you can edit the individual values (one per row):
So after much testing…
I think I’ve decided the Separator’s I’m going to use by default is the Semi-Colon with a space after for Genres and separating Artists in the Artist Tag, and then ALL other separations I’m going to use the Forward Slash / no spaces.
This seems the most common practice and what’s most compatible.
For example, when I put double slashes in Picard for things Mp3tag and MusicBee would just read them as all one long text, not interpret them as separators, same for Windows Explorer.
I may one day change if I need to, maybe put all as semi-colons, and if I have particular situations, but this should be fine.
UPDATE: I’ve switched to using the Semi-Colon as the separator for everything, and Semi-Colon and Space for Artist and Genre. This has worked perfectly in Viewing in everything and Editing in everything. Though now I have a problem with MusicBee not following the Standard, because the NULL backslash isn’t supported in 2.3, but they’ve decided to REPLACE my separators wtih the Null backslashes on SAVE, thus entirely ruining everything. So, now I literally can’t use their Editor, nice.
or otherwise, Mp3tag apparently respects what’s used and keeps all genres in one Tag.
