Aprzybylo,

Re. the first problem, I agree that editing tracks twice is annoying, however, this shouldn't be a common scenario since the splitter should be a character that isn't commonly used.
Re. the second problem, there's definitely a problem that the same splitter can mean 2 different things, depending on the state of the tags when the track was scanned. I recognize that this is a problem, but as stated in the bug, making this change at this stage of 3.1 development is too risky.

-Rusty

I understand your point however I have two problems with that way of working.
- having edit song twice to set correctly the field is annoying especially if you have many songs to correct. Maybe check box with artist to indicate if you want to split or not?
- also you allow the field to remain unsplitted but there is no way to "unsplit it" once it is separated. Let say I have "Simon & Garfunkel" that somehow became 2 artists. If I would like to come back to single artist it's not possible since when you edit it becomes separated automatically. SO I see an inconsistency here. AT one point you allow artists to remain together in one but you don't allow to set them that way.

I see your point. Our rationale for the current behavior is based on MM's philosophy of maintaining consistency between the tags and the DB, and never making changes to tags unless that was clearly the user's intent.

So in your example, if Track1 has Artist tag="Artist1|Artist2" and separator = |, then when the user scans the track, MM should read it _exactly_ as it appears in the tag i.e. as a single artist called "Artist1|Artist2". The only time MM should show an Artist field as split is when it scans a track that has a tag that is actually split (in the manner specified by ID3 or vorbis tagging standards).

The workaround in your situation is to change the Artist field from Artist1|Artist2 to Artist1-Artist2 and then back to Artist1|Artist2 (assuming | is the separator). I realize that this might be confusing, but I'm afraid that the alternative (see http://www.ventismedia.com/mantis/view.php?id=5529 ) could be more dangerous. I welcome additional feedback, but expect that 3.1 will roll out the door as is (in terms of this feature), and we'll make improvements in subsequent releases.

-Rusty

what do you mean file was tagged as having multiple artist? I import the file that has never been in my library before. I think i would then expect to split that file.
Also, since some artists stay not splited is there a way to "unsplit" one selection.

Importing a new song will split the artists appropriately IFF the track is tagged as having multiple artists. But if a track is tagged as 'U2;BB King' and is saved as a single artist (called 'U2;BB King' in the tag, would it really make sense for MM to split the Artists on a scan?

-Rusty

I understand that if I change the delimiter it doesn't affect the current entries in the database. However if I import new song then I would expect that it works accordingly to my current setting, i.e. artists should be separated.

Ok, so the reason for this is that this setting only determines how MM represents tags with split attributes. i.e. changing the setting from ';' to '&' won't cause MM to all of a sudden split the tags of all tracks with '&'. To split the tags, you have to _actively_ make a change to the track's tag.

See the bug if this is unclear, and if it's still unclear, let me know.

-Rusty

Got it and I can reproduce. Looking into this.

Thanks.

That exactly what I have: the separator is set to "_&_" (with _ meaning spaces). If I import with this setting it`s imported as one artist (with &). I have to edit this song and re-enter the artist field.

To get & to work correctly on a rescan, you have to enter the separator with spaces. e.g. _&_ (where _ is a space).

This is a usability bug, but the workaround is clear. Tracked at: http://www.ventismedia.com/mantis/view.php?id=5467

-Rusty

Import new song that has "artist1 & artist2" as artist with " & " set as separator.
It will import as "artist1 & artist2" as artist, after manual update it's ok i.e 2 separate artists.

Anyone else observing this issue? I can't reproduce it.

-Rusty

I wouldn't recommend using '&' anyway - seems to be asking for trouble. Much of the time when you get CD information from the internet (amazon, freedb, etc), artists that have a conjoined name - such as "Little Anthony and the Imperials" - will come back as "Little Anthony & the Imperials". Note tho, that this DOESN'T indicate 2 different artists!

What you want for a delimitter is a character that has little to NO chance of ever being used in a band name.

Is there maybe an extra space in there, like "<space><space>&<space>"? I'm not sure how Monkey would handle this situation.

That was exactly my understanding. However I have " & " set as splitter and in some cases I still see "Artist1 & Artist2" as the entry in Artist node.