Unknown artist...

[realysm42]

So I noticed some missing songs on my playlist and went to where I keep all of my music on the PC; I have found it keeps picking a couple of albums and putting them in the "unknown artist" folder, for no apparent reason.

It's f*cking annoying tbh, anyone else had this issue?

[Marvt74]

What do you use to listen to music? My guess is that those songs are missing tags for artist and as such the software is re-organising your library.

I know iTunes tends to do this unless you tell it otherwise.

2 options

1. Sort out the tags for your music.
2. Find the setting and turn it off in your player.

[sq225917]

No I've never used your PC!

[realysm42]

No I've never used your PC!

That's helpful, I thought it might be a common issue.

Cheers Martyn, I'll check it out.

[Gazjam]

Its your Tags Martin.

Find where the offending tracks live on your hard drive and use MP3Tag to update the ARTIST tag.
Just to be sure, copy the same text into the ALBUMARTIST field as well.
http://www.mp3tag.de/en/

What software player do you use btw?
Depending on which one you can Tag from within the application, if so try that first.

[realysm42]

Cheers Gary, I use foobar 2000.

[Tim]

Cheers Gary, I use foobar 2000.
You can you use foobar to update the tags too Martin, just right click the tracks and select 'Properties' within foobar. Either will get the job done, but MP3tag is a great tool to have as Gary suggested. I would give that a try for certain.

[Alex_UK]

+1 for MP3Tag - does the job and free

[realysm42]

Sorry chaps, I've never actually had to do this before, which fields do I need to work with, the screenshot below shows one of the offending albums, which field do I need to work with to make it play ball (it looks like it's got a fair amount of accurate detail to me):

http://i135.photobucket.com/albums/q153/realysm42/Untitled-15.jpg

[realysm42]

Also, does it matter that I have everythinhg ripped as lossless wavs?

[Beechwoods]

Not really, I think Foobar stores it's metadata for files like that locally - you just need to make sure it's completed either when it's initially ripped, or afterwards.

[Stratmangler]

Also, does it matter that I have everythinhg ripped as lossless wavs?

Other than the fact that most media players don't read metadata from wavs....?

[Stratmangler]

To further my point above, neither does Mp3Tag.

[realysm42]

Other than the fact that most media players don't read metadata from wavs....?

Where do they read it from then?

Or do you mean there's a problem with the Wav format in this respect?

[Stratmangler]

Where do they read it from then?

Or do you mean there's a problem with the Wav format in this respect?

Nail, head, etc. :)

[Vincent Kars]

You have 2 artist, Album Artist and Artist (Artist Name in your case)
Most media players think tracks belong to 1 album if Album and Album Artist are the same.
Populating Album Artist will probably solve your issue.

WAV can be perfectly tagged but the standard offers only a very few relevant tags for a media player. A couple of programmers solved this by writing/reading ID3 style tracks in a info chunk. Foobar is one of them supporting this "standard"

Bit more detail: http://thewelltemperedcomputer.com/KB/WAV_KB.htm

[Welder]

I’m a great believer in cue sheets. Create one at the ripping stage even if you’re not sure how to use them. Later, when you music collection gets large or you start to try out different players they are invaluable.

[Tim]

I’m a great believer in cue sheets. Create one at the ripping stage even if you’re not sure how to use them. Later, when you music collection gets large or you start to try out different players they are invaluable.
+1

[Beechwoods]

I wholeheartedly agree with the CUE sheet recommendation. I have a lot of Shorten format lossless files that don't support tagging. And FLAC files with partial tags. CUE sheets allow me to non-destructively apply my own tags, without affecting checksums etc. Foobar's support for CUE sheets is excellent - there's a plugin that will build them with a click as well. You can also use CUE sheets to correct track starts and finishes with some limitations - great if you have single files you want to make into 'separate tracks' without affecting the files themselves.