Titled Artists

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Titled Artists, Supporting Artists, Contributors, etc

These are not tags/attributes, but are notional terms inferred at album level from the various attributes that represent artistic roles in the track tags (Artist, Album Artist, Composer, Conductor, Performer, Band/Ensemble). You may see reference to these terms in this wiki, or in some places in the software, so they require some clarification.

Each album can have one or more Titled Artists - these are the artists that are common to all tracks - either in the Album Artist attribute (which takes precedence), or from the Artist attribute. Titled artists are those that are credited with the whole album and put in the album header. Some examples:

  • If all tracks in the album Parallel Lines by Blondie have "Blondie" set in the Artist attribute, then "Blondie" is the titled artist of the album, as you'd expect.
  • If all tracks in the album Raising Sand have "Alison Krauss; Robert Plant" in the Album Artist attribute (where ; is configured as a separator), both Alison Krauss and Robert Plant are titled artists of the album - it will appear under both their entries in the hierarchical view by Artist, and in the Artist cloud.
  • If all tracks on Mark Ronson's album "Version" have "Mark Ronson" in the Album Artist attribute then he is the titled artist of the album, even if the Artist attributes credit the individual track contributors (Lilly Allen, Amy Winehouse, etc).

A Supporting Artist is an Artist who contributes one or more tracks to an album under someone else's name (the individual track artists in an album like the Mark Ronson example above). It can also be used for supporting roles on an album common to all tracks, eg. band, composer, conductor, etc.

A Contributor to an album is an Artist who contributes one or more tracks to a compilation album.

A Supporting Contributor on an album refers to a supporting role on one or more tracks (but not all), eg. a composer, performer, or band.

Note that the Artist page categorises albums into 4 separate groups (as described above), in order to clarify the artistic role that they have on each:

  • As Titled Artist
  • As Supporting Artist
  • As Contributor
  • As Supporting Contributor

Note: Contributors only show up in artist lists if they have at least one album to their own credit (ie. for which they are the titled artist). This helps prevent bloating of the artist lists and helps focus on the artists with their own albums. This means that Artists who are ONLY contributors to albums and are not the Titled Artist of any album of their own, are only findable by name in the main browser by : (a) Entering their name in the search box under "Filter", (b) In the Cloud View by Artist, expanding the "Other Artists" section at the bottom. They can however be created as an entry in the catalog.

The gallery view ordered by artist only lists each album once, under their titled artist (the FIRST titled artist when it has multiple), whereas the Hierarchical view by Artists lists all the Titled Artists so can show the same album under more than one entry if it has more than one titled artist.

NB. For all the above substitute "Composer" for "Artist" when specialised classical music functionality is turned on and an album is categorised as classical (Composer becomes the primary attribute rather than Artist).

Contributor Credits on an Album

For secondary Contributor attributes (band/orchestra, conductor, plus artist on classical albums) Muso will show credits on an album hierarchically, ie:

  • credit on the album those that are common to all tracks,
  • credit on the track group for those common to all the tracks in the group but not in the album credits,
  • credit on the track those that are not in the group or album credits.

Special processing is given to Track and Track Group credit functionality for the Performer/Soloist attribute (often used for Opera performers or Jazz session artists):

  • show all performers at track group level if they are ALL the same for the whole group, otherwise show them all on a per-track basis (within the group) - and in both cases show even if the same as the album artist (titled artist), composer, or if common to the whole album.
  • album credits still show performers common to ALL tracks

The is also some special processing for the Composer attribute on non-classical albums:

  • show composer at track level only (in brackets after the track name), and make it distinguishable from performers if these are shown at track level.