How does Meelo parse multiple performers in embedded metadata?

[xusiai]

Meelo creates a new artist when multiple performers are credited on a track and separated using a comma. This results in tracks not appearing on the individual artist view. Is this intended or a consequence of different metadata parsing standard?

Example metadata snippet from running mediainfo:

Title                                    : I Don't Deserve You (Radio Edit)
Album                                    : I Don't Deserve You
Album/Performer                          : Paul van Dyk, Plumb
Part                                     : 1
Part/Total                               : 1
Track name                               : I Don't Deserve You (Radio Edit)
Track name/Position                      : 1
Track name/Total                         : 7
Performer                                : Paul van Dyk, Plumb
Composer                                 : M. Bronleewe / P. van Dyk / T. Arbuckle Lee
Recorded date                            : 2012-01-01
File last modification date              : 2025-10-04 21:52:19 UTC
File last modification date (local)      : 2025-10-04 23:52:19
ISRC                                     : DEQ691200103
Copyright                                : VANDIT Records
Cover                                    : Yes
Cover type                               : Picture
Cover MIME                               : image/jpeg

This results in a new artist called "Paul van Dyk, Plumb" instead of listing it under "Paul van Dyk" and "Plumb" as separate entities. The result is that neither of their artist views show the track and it becomes quite difficult to discover without searching for the track name.

Is this because Meelo uses a different separator or is it intended behavior?

[Arthi-chaud]

Hi,
Thanks for the question. Yes, in theory, it should identify that Paul van Dyk and Plumb are different artist.
However since the album artist (see Album/Performer) is Paul van Dyk, Plumb, there is a rule in the parser that says If the album artist name equals the song's artist name, don't look for secondary artists. (That's because albums cannot have more than one primary artist).

To fix this, you would have to set the album artist field to just Paul van Dyk. (you might have to 1) move the folder out of the library, 2) Run a 'clean' task on the library, 3) move the folder back 4) run a scan. See #1051)

Let me know if that worked

[xusiai]

That makes sense. It becomes a bit of an issue when handling Singles releases though, at least for electronic music, where collaborations are common and both artists tend to be credited. I don't know how you'd solve this parsing wise.

I don't plan on altering the metadata because I have hundreds of these releases so I can't confirm whether doing so or not will fix it.

[Laflamme]

Since, by convention, MusicBrainz matches the albumartist tag to the literal text that appears on the album, unless you customize that tag, Meelo ends up with an artist list that looks like this:

• Hybrid
• Hybrid feat. Julee Cruise
• Julee Cruise
• Julee Cruise & Super DJ Dmitry

The album tagged with Hybrid feat. Julee Cruise isn't discoverable from the Hybrid artist page nor from the Julee Cruise artist page (and neither is the album tagged with Julee Cruise & Super DJ Dmitry discoverable from the Julee Cruise artist page).

In this situation, I would expect to have only three artist pages (Hybrid; Julee Cruise; Super DJ Dmitry), with albums displayed under all relevant artists.

I understand that, in the database, Meelo may need to assign each album to only one artist, but the frontend could work around that, and could leverage the albumartists (plural) tag, which has clearly defined values:

• Hybrid
• Hybrid;Julee Cruise
• Julee Cruise
• Julee Cruise;Super DJ Dmitry

Just like what the current parsing does, albumartists would prevent accidentally splitting artists like Simon & Garfunkel (on that note, the artists (plural) tag could be used for individual tracks with the same benefits).

If it is architecturally impossible to display the same album under more than one artist page, than only having the first artist listed in the albumartists tag (so just Hybrid or just Julee Cruise in my example) would be my preferred compromise.

That compromise is currently achievable by customizing the trackRegex and formatting files accordingly.

[Laflamme]

Thinking more about this, I would say that if we were to use the albumartists and artists multi value tags for more accurate artist identification, we could at the same time display the albumartist and artist tags strings (e.g "vs artist b w/ artist c & artist d / artist e"), to preserve the formatting chosen by the artists.