Genre tagging: using available tag and order sorting

[simoncn]

The character is NUL (not NULL). In UTF-8 it is the 8-bit value 0x00.

[alan9990]

oops... thank you.

Apologies if I appear to be eternally dim, but to be clear if I enter

Code:

ALBUMARTIST Barbra Streisand0x00Kris Kristofferson

in my tag editor, this will mean that Minimserver creates an entry under each separate artist?

Obviously I'm going to experiment, just want to better understand it before I start further editing.

I don't need to use any additional keystrokes or anything? Just type that in, and it gets read as NUL yes?

[simoncn]

No, this will not convert the character string "0x00" to a NUL character. You need to use a tag editor that can insert NUL characters between the values of the tag. Most tagging programs can do this using a separator defined by the tagging program (for example, \\ or ;).

Also, I notice that you have used ALBUMARTIST in your example. In MinimServer, ALBUMARTIST can only have a single value. Most other tags (including ARTIST) can have multiple values if your tagging program supports this.

[alan9990]

Ah well...

This is why I'm struggling a bit to understand.

I thought that the ID3v2.4 standard, as opposed to ID3v2.3, allows ANY valid tag field to use a NUL separator??

Did I get this wrong?

However, am now on the trail to a solution... it's my tag editor itself that needs to "know" what a NUL is?!

I'll go and read more docs and see if that's in there.

[simbun]

(24-03-2026 18:17)alan9990 Wrote:  I thought that the ID3v2.4 standard, as opposed to ID3v2.3, allows ANY valid tag field to use a NUL separator??

Did I get this wrong?

The ID3v2.4 standard does accept multiple values in any field, but MinimServer only accepts a single value in AbumArtist.

To add multiple values to an ID3v2.4 file through the kid3 gui you need to enter:

Code:

Artist: Artist 1|Artist2|Band A

To add multiple values to a FLAC file you need to enter it into kid3 as separate entries:

Code:

Artist: Artist 1
Artist: Artist 2
Artist: Band A

You're making it harder for yourself by using kid3. Is there a reason you can't use Puddletag?

(22-03-2026 10:11)simbun Wrote:  Have you tried Puddletag? To instruct Puddletag to create multivalued tags you need to delimit the list with '\\' e.g. Artist1\\Artist2. I've no personal experience with it but have seen it recommended on other forums.

EDIT: It looks like puddletag will be able to "convert" your pipe delimited tags to proper multivalued too: https://docs.puddletag.net/source/functi...-separator

I spent a bit of time with it after writing the post and it's actually really nice.

[alan9990]

Many thanks again!! Yep, NOW that I've better understood what's going on, I can confirm from the author of Kid3 (via a post on another forum) that | is indeed the correct NUL separator when using .mp3 files!!

I even checked this by running a hex dump on one of the files... and indeed there are two separate values.

I will certainly look at Puddletag!

Your example above is precisely how I already separate my Artists.

But if I've correctly understood you, even if I successfully separate entries using | then Minimserver is only going to see one of the entries anyway??

This would mean I've been wasting my time somewhat... as even to successfully separate them, I am only "allowed" one entry as displayed by Minimserver?? Or again - quite possibly I'm still being completely dim!!

[simbun]

(24-03-2026 18:57)alan9990 Wrote:  But if I've correctly understood you, even if I successfully separate entries using | then Minimserver is only going to see one of the entries anyway??

That limitation only applies to the AlbumArtist tag.

[simoncn]

.... and if you have multiple AlbumArtist names, they will all be ignored with a warning message shown in the log.

[alan9990]

(24-03-2026 20:46)simoncn Wrote:  .... and if you have multiple AlbumArtist names, they will all be ignored with a warning message shown in the log.

Right, okay yes - I have FINALLY! understood this part. Apologies.

I have indeed installed Puddletag. Can confirm it's a very nice bit of software, which I can see myself switching to.

But I'm in no way at all about to remove all the dual/multiple "Albumartist" values simply because I have no idea which of the two or three Artists the album should then exist under...

I've been circumspect to always keep to the

Code:

MUSIC/Artist/Album/<filename>

structure, so it would require a massive (massive!) restructuring of the library itself. Again - a complete non-starter.

Even were I to entirely remove all of the thousands of shared "Albumartist" values from the tags, I'd have no clue how to accurately reorder the music files as a result. For example "Ella & Duke At The Côte D'Azur" ... this album is released under both artist names. It would be arbitrary to assign it to one particular artist surely?

So given then that currently ANY album that has shared Albumartist values is being ignored (can confirm this via the log file), do you have any other suggestions?

I was able to verify via Puddletag and a very handy inspection window that all of the correct separators are being used. Thus I have properly separated values. But since I'll be out of my license evaluation period in a couple of weeks... there truly is zero point in using a server that ignores a third of my library, much as I already deeply appreciate the simple "no nonsense" approach that Minimserver takes.

[simbun]

(28-03-2026 14:54)alan9990 Wrote:  I've been circumspect to always keep to the

Code:

MUSIC/Artist/Album/<filename>

structure, so it would require a massive (massive!) restructuring of the library itself. Again - a complete non-starter.

Even were I to entirely remove all of the thousands of shared "Albumartist" values from the tags, I'd have no clue how to accurately reorder the music files as a result. For example "Ella & Duke At The Côte D'Azur" ... this album is released under both artist names. It would be arbitrary to assign it to one particular artist surely?

Do you create folders for collaborations e.g. /MUSIC/Ella Fitzgerald & Duke Ellington/Ella & Duke At The Côte D'Azur?

(28-03-2026 14:54)alan9990 Wrote:  So given then that currently ANY album that has shared Albumartist values is being ignored (can confirm this via the log file), do you have any other suggestions?

I only have 30 albums with multiple albumartists so I use the workaround described previously, but if you have hundreds/thousands then you're likely better off with another server.