One of my favorite musical acts from last year is an indie Norwegian musician by the name of Magnet. Both his albums are diamonds in the industry rough, and he even taught me the proper way of handling accompanying song artists without creating multiple album artists like most do.

I loathe it when MP3s list additional album artists for songs that feature a second song artist. It clutters my already cluttered music library. For example, if I were a musician and did a song with Snoop Dogg under my alias of Smooth Harold, most song files would read the following as the second album artist: Smooth Harold featuring Snoop Dogg. You would then find two versions of Smooth Harold listed in your music library, one by itself and one with Snoop.

My “On Your Side” Magnet album handles the accompanying artist at the song, not artist level. Take Magnet’s excellent rendition of Bob Dylan’s venerable classic: Lay Lady Lay (with Gemma Hays). Gemma Hays sings the chorus on the track. When done like this, my music library stays cleaner and the accompanying artist still gets listed credit. A match made in heaven for a music nerd like me, and an approach I’ve started implementing on new songs added to my 6,000 song library. By the way, what music management software do you favor?