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Move “feat.” artists out of the artist field

Uses filter, action group, regular expressions Works on any tag format Time 5 minutes, then one click each time Undo Cmd+Z / Ctrl+Z

The problem

Guest artists are written into the ARTIST field, so your player lists Juniper Vale feat. Mira Solberg as an artist of its own, separate from Juniper Vale. You want the guest in the title instead, which is how most music databases and streaming services do it:

Before After
ARTIST Juniper Vale feat. Mira Solberg Juniper Vale
TITLE Paper Boats Paper Boats (feat. Mira Solberg)
ARTIST Juniper Vale ft Kofi & the Tidewater Band Juniper Vale
TITLE North Pier North Pier (feat. Kofi & the Tidewater Band)
ARTIST Juniper Vale Juniper Vale (unchanged)

The solution

Try this on a copy of a few files first. Check the results before applying it to your library; use Edit → Undo in the same session to reverse the recorded changes. Keep the originals as a backup.

You'll find the affected files with the filter, then build an action group with two actions. Order matters: the title has to read the guest's name before the artist field loses it.

Find the files

  1. Show the filter with F3 and type:

    artist MATCHES "\s(feat\.?|ft\.?|featuring)\s"

  2. Only files with a guest in the artist field remain. Select them all (Cmd+A / Ctrl+A).

Create the action group

  1. Choose Actions → Actions… (Alt+6; Alt is ⌥ Option on a Mac).
  2. Create a new action group and name it Guests: artist → title.

  3. Add a Format value action:

    • Field: TITLE

    • Format string:

      %title% (feat. $regexp(%artist%,'^.*?\s+(?:feat\.?|ft\.?|featuring)\s+',))

  4. Add a Replace with regular expression action below it:

    • Field: ARTIST

    • Regular expression:

      \s+(feat\.?|ft\.?|featuring)\s+.*$

    • Replace matches with: leave it empty

    • Case-sensitive comparison: off

  5. Save the group, make sure only this group is checked, and run it.

The action group stays in the Actions menu. Next time, filter, select and pick it from the menu. Actions write immediately. If one action reports a warning for a file, its remaining actions and later checked groups still run. Review the warnings and the resulting fields before repeating a group.

How it works

The pattern (feat\.?|ft\.?|featuring) covers the common spellings: feat., feat, ft., ft and featuring. \.? makes the dot optional, and because case is ignored by default, Feat. and FT match too. \s on both sides requires whole words, so a name like Kraftwerk is safe.

Action 1 builds the new title from three parts:

Part Gives
%title% Paper Boats
(feat. plain text
$regexp(%artist%,'^.*?\s+(?:feat\.?|ft\.?|featuring)\s+',) the artist with everything up to and including feat. removed: Mira Solberg
) plain text (outside a function, ) has no special meaning)

.*? is lazy: it takes as little as possible, so the match stops at the first feat.. The pattern and replacement are in single quotes because they contain characters that format strings treat specially. See Quote the pattern and the replacement.

Action 2 deletes everything from the first feat. to the end of the artist field. The action takes its pattern as plain text, so no quotes are needed here.

Why the filter comes first

$regexp returns its input unchanged when nothing matches. Run action 1 on a file without a guest, and its title becomes Low Tide (feat. Juniper Vale). The filter guarantees that every selected file has a guest. If you put the group on a toolbar for regular use, keep the filter step.

Variations

Keep the guest as a second artist value instead

Some players handle multi-value artists well. Replace both actions with:

  1. Replace with regular expression on ARTIST: pattern \s+(feat\.?|ft\.?|featuring)\s+, replacement ;
  2. Split field by separator on ARTIST, separator ;

ARTIST then holds Juniper Vale and Mira Solberg as two values. Check that your player displays multiple artists as intended.

Use “ft.” or “with” in titles

Change the text in action 1, for example %title% (with $regexp(…)).

Guests that are already in brackets in the artist field

For Juniper Vale (feat. Mira Solberg), insert a Replace with regular expression action at the top of the group. Set Field to ARTIST, Regular expression to [()], and leave Replace matches with empty. This removes all round brackets from the artist field, so use it only on files where those brackets wrap the guest credit.

The complete group must run in this order; leave Case-sensitive comparison off for both replacement actions:

Order Action Field Pattern or format string Replacement
1 Replace with regular expression ARTIST [()] (empty)
2 Format value TITLE %title% (feat. $regexp(%artist%,'^.*?\s+(?:feat.?|ft.?|featuring)\s+',)) —
3 Replace with regular expression ARTIST \s+(feat.?|ft.?|featuring)\s+.*$ (empty)

Step 1 produces Juniper Vale feat. Mira Solberg. Step 2 then produces Paper Boats (feat. Mira Solberg), and step 3 leaves Juniper Vale in ARTIST. Putting bracket removal last cannot repair a closing bracket already copied into the title.