Whenever I try to use my Rockboxed Iriver database function it is a complete mess, I need to know what to do, should my metadata include album artist or band properties or both ? I encode my files to MP3 V2 standard.

On Rockbox, they treat Album Artist as the BAND tag. What Foobar2000 uses is a TXXX frame which is a custom field. BAND on the other hand is in the ID3 specs.

I just use MP3Tag to copy my Album Artist field to Band.

I think "AlbumArtist" (no space) is more linked to "Band" in a few taggers.

Some players designate the "BAND" tag as Album Artist. Windows Media Player for example: if you're using their advanced tag editor, there's a tag field called Album Artist, but the tag field that it actually edits is the BAND field. Presumably WMP just calls it Album Artist because that's how the tag field is used. But it's a bit misleading.

Just a correction... the actual "tag" in ID3v2 used is TPE2. This is the current pop usage, and where iTunes and Microsoft applications store their Album Artist data.

Mp3tag maps MP3's TPE2 to it's "BAND" variable.. M4A's & WMA "real" Album Artist tags (aART & WM/AlbumArtist, respectively) are also mapped to BAND... so there is some consistency, at least in Mp3tag.

Agreeing with grommet...

There are no two tags called AlbumArtist and BAND. It is (should be) the same TPE2 frame that is defined as



%BAND% is MP3Tag is the correct the Frame for TPE2.

foobar2000 supports this frame by %band%.

Hi All,

I am confused a bit here: what frame in ID3v2 does foobar2000 uses for %Album Artist% field?

I noticed in most of my albums, in foobar2000, %BAND% had the TPE2 populated but not %Album Artist%.

Thanks,
McoreD

As mentioned, Album Artist is not mapped for MP3 ID3 in foobar2000. So, it's treated like any unsupported MP3 field/frame in foobar2000: it uses "TXXX"... so "TXXX ALBUM ARTIST" is added in this case and will be ignored by most applications.

Use the BAND variable in foobar2000 instead, like in Mp3tag.

Thanks, that makes sense grommet.

In foobar2000 for AlbumArtist it says:

Name of the artist of the album specified track belongs to. Checks following metadata fields, in this order: “album artist”, “artist”, “composer”, “performer”. The difference between this and %artist% is that %album artist% is intended for use where consistent value across entire album is needed even when per-track artists values vary.

I wished it looked up BAND tag as well.