diff --git a/pkgs/additional/sane-scripts/src/sane-tag-music b/pkgs/additional/sane-scripts/src/sane-tag-music
index b43dfd28e..fb56922b4 100755
--- a/pkgs/additional/sane-scripts/src/sane-tag-music
+++ b/pkgs/additional/sane-scripts/src/sane-tag-music
@@ -446,8 +446,9 @@ class Tags:
 
         if self.producer:
             producer = clean_fields_for_fs(self.producer)
-            formatted_album = clean_fields_for_fs([artist, album])
-            return os.path.join(producer, formatted_album, filename)
+            if artist != "Various.Artists":
+                album = clean_fields_for_fs([artist, album])
+            return os.path.join(producer, album, filename)
         else:
             return os.path.join(artist, album, filename)
 
@@ -490,10 +491,14 @@ class Tags:
             tags.title = [ new_title ]
 
         def parse_track(track: str) -> None:
-            track = os.path.splitext(track)[0]
-            track_parts = [p.strip() for p in track.split(' - ')]
+            basename = os.path.splitext(track)[0]
+            track_parts = [p.strip() for p in basename.split(' - ')]
             if len(track_parts) == 1:
-                parse_title(track)
+                parse_title(track_parts[0])
+                if len(track) > 2 and track[0] in "0123456789" and track[1] in "0123456789" and track[2] == "-":
+                    # parse this as a track i've already encoded.
+                    # this is necessary for files which don't support metadata, like lyric files.
+                    parse_track(track.replace("-", " - "))
             elif len(track_parts) == 2:
                 if tags.albumartist and loose_compare_str(track_parts[0], tags.albumartist[0]):
                     # `AlbumArtist - track`
@@ -893,7 +898,15 @@ class Gatherer:
         """
         for root in self.roots:
             _tags_seen, files = self.files_below(root)
-            yield from files
+            for file_, tags in files:
+                ftags = file_.tags_on_disk()
+                if ftags == Tags():
+                    ftags = Tags.from_path(file_.path_)
+                if ftags.is_artist_item(file_.ext):
+                    # we can't generalize *any* tags to an artist item (e.g. Justice/artist.png)
+                    yield file_, Tags()
+                else:
+                    yield file_, tags
 
     def files_below(self, root: str) -> tuple[Tags, list[tuple[MediaFile, Tags]]]:
         """