If the player doesn't support multiple fields at all (hello Apple, Google, Plex.) then it's probably best to use Artist 1 and move Artist 2 in the track title, unless you don't mind seeing these collaborations listed as a new artist. Tag 'em in mp3tag with the \\ separator, and enjoy. If the player supports multiple values in the artist field according to the standards, happy days.
#MP3TAG PROGRAMMING LANGUAGE HOW TO#
So how to do it? Basically, pick whatever player you like, and follow their preferred convention. Other music players then started supporting some of those separators, and result: chaos.
#MP3TAG PROGRAMMING LANGUAGE SOFTWARE#
So because of software limitations and/or because they used id3v2.3, people started using the single input box they get, with separators they actually can find on their keyboard, like or / or, or & (which then introduces the risk of music players accidentally splitting artists like "AC/DC" and "Earth, Wind & Fire" into component parts). Other ID3 conform applications can read such binary values and use their own replacement character or string for displaying the mutiple values at the screen. In the moment when the complete tag is written to the file Mp3tag uses ID3 standard rules and converts this placeholder into the correct binary representation. In the moment when a user writes a string "\\" into a Mp3tag field this string means nothing more than the string "\\" itself. Mp3tag uses the "\\" and foobar uses the " " as a replacement just for displaying the binary separator for multiple values which otherwise cannot be shown to the user. Foobar2000, similarly, uses as its separator: However, the implementation of this in tag editors and especially music players is really bad: how many players offer multiple text boxes to input multiple artists, and then save it as a nice null-separated string? How many players display a nice list of multiple genres or artists if they encounter it? Pretty much none.Įdit: I've just looked up how does it: it uses \\ as separator so if you use that, mp3tag will store it standard-compliant as null-terminated string. For MP4/M4A, you can have multiple ©art atoms. One of the problems is that while id3v2.3 doesn't allow it, the id3v2.4 tag standard perfectly defines how to store multiple artists (or multiple genres, or even multiple album names (!) - any text field), it is specified as a null separated list.