Multiple value delimiter

[alan9990]

(14-03-2026 12:46)alan9990 Wrote:  

(14-03-2026 12:44)simbun Wrote:  

(13-03-2026 22:30)alan9990 Wrote:  What I cannot find again is the instructions where it explains how to customise this display...?

I read it a couple of days ago but now cannot find it again. It allows me to set the display from Rosemary Clooney|Duke Ellington to Rosemary Clooney / Duke Ellington as displayed.

It's possible there's an alternative as MinimServer is VERY configurable, but the only way I know to translate Rosemary Clooney|Duke Ellington to Rosemary Clooney / Duke Ellington is to use the tagUpdate functionality:

Code:

@ALBUMARTIST=Rosemary Clooney|Duke Ellington
=ALBUMARTIST=Rosemary Clooney / Duke Ellington

The problem with this approach is that the "artist" Rosemary Clooney / Duke Ellington will appear in the albumartist index and searches.

I've been setting up a MusicBrainz Picard workflow for a friend over the last couple of days (which I might post to the forum in the next couple of days because it works so well with MinimServer) and the solution he's using (same as mine) is:

Tags:

Code:

ALBUMARTIST: Rosemary Clooney; Duke Ellington (multivalued)
DISPLAY ALBUMARTIST: Rosemary Clooney / Duke Ellington

MinimServer config:

Code:

itemTags:Display Albumartist
tagFormat: Albumartist.displayformat={$Display Albumartist}

NOTE: If you don't want to fully populate the display albumartist tag then you'd need to add:

Code:

tagValue: Display Albumartist.default={AlbumArtist}

Then use tagUpdate to remove one of the artists from the album:

Code:

@ALBUMARTIST=Rosemary Clooney
&MUSICBRAINZ_ALBUMID=01555e07-19fa-4fe4-be62-66dadcf233df
-ALBUMARTIST=Rosemary Clooney

Obviously you lose Rosemary Clooney from the Artist (albumartist) index (she'll still appear under the All Artists index and in searches) but at least she's credited on the album, and the underlying tags are complete.

If you don't have a MUSICBRAINZ_ALBUMID tag then you'd need to use as many tags as uniquely identify the album e.g. ALBUM + YEAR.

Oh, this is brilliant! Thank you. So much clearer now... Oh, I will be busy today

Just wanted to add: it's only now, when having a music server and the way that the entire streaming ecosystem interacts that I see why certain choices matter when tagging. My (arbitrary, let's call it) decision years ago to split album artists with the | was only so that my player at the time would find content under either album artist. For example suppose I were having a "Duke Ellington day" and I could just plug his name into the player, and off it goes. By that logic, I'd want it to be certain to find his collaborations (e.g. with Ella Fitzgerald).

But... with the way the control point apps work, I realise it doesn't finally matter - because I can search via Artist, Album Artist, or even Folder View, and its own search will pick up all the albums anyway!

Great stuff.

[simbun]

(14-03-2026 12:46)alan9990 Wrote:  Oh, this is brilliant! Thank you. So much clearer now... Oh, I will be busy today

I would definitely say this is for the advanced/OCD user, so practise on a couple of albums and feel free to ask any questions.

(14-03-2026 12:53)alan9990 Wrote:  My (arbitrary, let's call it) decision years ago to split album artists with the | was only so that my player at the time would find content under either album artist.

In their default configuration, Mp3tag and MusicBrainz Picard incorrectly tag multiple albumartists/artists too!

[alan9990]

(14-03-2026 13:20)simbun Wrote:  

(14-03-2026 12:46)alan9990 Wrote:  Oh, this is brilliant! Thank you. So much clearer now... Oh, I will be busy today

I would definitely say this is for the advanced/OCD user, so practise on a couple of albums and feel free to ask any questions.

(14-03-2026 12:53)alan9990 Wrote:  My (arbitrary, let's call it) decision years ago to split album artists with the | was only so that my player at the time would find content under either album artist.

In their default configuration, Mp3tag and MusicBrainz Picard incorrectly tag multiple albumartists/artists too!

well, since you invited me to, I will just ensure that I completely understand something:

from your above, you seem to be saying that if I use ; as the separator and despite I now see that whatever I subsequently do, only ONE artist can/should be displayed under Albumartist (so far so good), nevertheless the use of ; means that at least this string can be separated into two distinct Album artists, as opposed to | or / and which simply read as a single string.

The reason I ask is firstly to understand of course, but it then begs the question that since I am going to need to find a programmatic way of retagging (over 7000 albums) once I am settled on my preferences, in fact were I to simply omit any and all "double naming", the issue wouldn't even occur!

So I'd have lost the ability to link the album artist to one of the joint artists, but in any event I'd still be able to search and play the album... because it's a database.

End of the day, this whole DAC/streaming/control point model is clearly the way forward for me, so I don't see any need to worry about changing a decade old paradigm just because "it's what I've always done"

[simbun]

(14-03-2026 13:27)alan9990 Wrote:  from your above, you seem to be saying that if I use ; as the separator and despite I now see that whatever I subsequently do, only ONE artist can/should be displayed under Albumartist (so far so good), nevertheless the use of ; means that at least this string can be separated into two distinct Album artists, as opposed to | or / and which simply read as a single string.

My use of the semicolon was just to separate the artists, it's not a multiple value delimiter.

Each tagging application uses a character to visually separate the values in a multiple value tag:

• foobar2000, dbPoweramp and Picard use ;
• Mp3tag uses \\
  

None of these characters are stored in the tags, instead it's best to think of them being stored as:

Code:

ALBUMARTIST: Rosemary Clooney
ALBUMARTIST: Duke Ellington

Which is how they're actually stored in FLAC (using the Vorbis tagging standard).

In some servers/players you can configure a custom delimiter, but this is out of spec and not widely supported.

(14-03-2026 13:27)alan9990 Wrote:  The reason I ask is firstly to understand of course, but it then begs the question that since I am going to need to find a programmatic way of retagging (over 7000 albums) once I am settled on my preferences, in fact were I to simply omit any and all "double naming", the issue wouldn't even occur!

So I'd have lost the ability to link the album artist to one of the joint artists, but in any event I'd still be able to search and play the album... because it's a database.

If both artists are correctly (multiple values) tagged in the Artist tag, they'd still appear in the All Artists index and search, but every album they've appeared on would also be returned, not just the ones where they're the main artist (albumartist).

[simoncn]

In the example you gave at the start (an album with ALBUMARTIST set to Rosemary Clooney|Duke Ellington), how are the ARTIST tags set for this album?

If you have the following:

ARTIST: Rosemary Clooney
ARTIST: Duke Ellington

then MinimServer should show correct results in browsing and searching without any need for you to do large-scale retagging.

Edit: If your Artist tags match the AlbumArtist tags for all your albums, you can show AlbumArtist index values separated with ' / ' instead of '|' by doing the following:

aliasTags: AlbumArtist:nil
tagFormat: AlbumArtist.indexFormat={$artist^^^ / ^}

This tells MinimServer to ignore the AlbumArtist tags in your files and replace them with formatted values derived from your Artist tags.

If you also want to apply the same formatting to AlbumArtist display values, change the above to this:

aliasTags: AlbumArtist:nil
tagFormat: AlbumArtist.indexFormat={$artist^^^ / ^}, AlbumArtist.displayFormat={$artist^^^ / ^}

[alan9990]

(14-03-2026 15:06)simoncn Wrote:  In the example you gave at the start (an album with ALBUMARTIST set to Rosemary Clooney|Duke Ellington), how are the ARTIST tags set for this album?

If you have the following:

ARTIST: Rosemary Clooney
ARTIST: Duke Ellington

then MinimServer should show correct results in browsing and searching without any need for you to do large-scale retagging.

Edit: If your Artist tags match the AlbumArtist tags for all your albums, you can show AlbumArtist index values separated with ' / ' instead of '|' by doing the following:

aliasTags: AlbumArtist:nil
tagFormat: AlbumArtist.indexFormat={$artist^^^ / ^}

This tells MinimServer to ignore the AlbumArtist tags in your files and replace them with formatted values derived from your Artist tags.

If you also want to apply the same formatting to AlbumArtist display values, change the above to this:

aliasTags: AlbumArtist:nil
tagFormat: AlbumArtist.indexFormat={$artist^^^ / ^}, AlbumArtist.displayFormat={$artist^^^ / ^}

Again, this is absolutely brilliant! Yes, I have been reading through these sections of the manual, but it's when you use them in a 'real life' case above that I fully understand the value of remapping.

Since I last posted in fact I've seen that indeed by simply remapping Albumartist|Albumartist to Albumartist / Albumartist in fact this achieves exactly what I intended at the outset. Yes, it is an album that has dual Albumartist entries, but in using this same example...

Rosemary Clooney / Duke Ellington shows up when searching for Rosemary Clooney, where it is included in the "albums" results and where it shows dual Albumartist names, and it also shows up when I search for Duke Ellington - and again, under the albums under his name, with the same dual Albumartist listed. This was my intention from the outset!

However, your examples of remapping are very relevant still because I'm currently working on the mess that is my GENRE tagging. And I have now realised that - exactly as was your intention with this software - I have no need to dive in and physically alter my tags. I just need to get creative with the definitions in tagupdate.txt !! It appears to support regex, so although it is still sometimes necessary to perform a full rescan to flush the stale data, I'm really going to put a lot more work into some sane, better organised tag structures.

[simoncn]

My suggestion was for an alternative approach that doesn't use tagUpdate. Adding tagUpdate entries for a very large number of tag values is possible but will slow down rescans and is better avoided if possible.

Also, tagUpdate doesn't support regex. This means every name match in the tagUpdate file must be an exact full name.

[alan9990]

(14-03-2026 21:01)simoncn Wrote:  My suggestion was for an alternative approach that doesn't use tagUpdate. Adding tagUpdate entries for a very large number of tag values is possible but will slow down rescans and is better avoided if possible.

Also, tagUpdate doesn't support regex. This means every name match in the tagUpdate file must be an exact full name.

Noted!