Just make sure that the album artist field is setup correctly, then MP can pickup each album/album artist combination as a unique album, no matter where the file is located.
That's what I have to look at. Some were badly ripped, and even when they have the same album name and in same folder, are showing up as separate albums.
I think I am going to blow the database away, and look at them with the other tool I saw in the music section, importing albums as I get them cleaned up.
I know - I have sorted my whole collection in the last months (some spare time here & there) and still things like genres are a mess, but at least artist, album artist, album, track & cover are good now.
Question, since you have done it.. best recommendation..
I have a lot of stuff, which is 'various artist' compellations, soundtracks, etc.
Album is straight forward. Artist for the song is straight forward.. but what about album artist then? Put in something like soundtrack? or VA?
I use "Various Artists" for all compilation albums, which is often the "standard". I used iTunes to do this, I could take all Compilation flagged tracks, all VA, Various, Various Artist or others into Various Artists
My Genres are not 100% correct yet, it is a lot of work as well ;-)
+1 for 'Various Artists' as the Album Artist, it really boils down to what you want that particular album to be listed under when you browse by album artist. You could even use 'Soundtrack' or 'Compilation Album' if you wanted it listed under this heading.
I have since blown away the DB, and started fresh. Sort of going one folder of albums at a time, making sure its clean before moving on.
Some.. are better than others.
I did find some odities though.... is the database in MP solely based on the ID3 tags? or something else (like going out to the net as well)?
I had some stuff that was like a live version, so NO real 'album' for it. Would add an image on the ID3 tag, etc.. when loading it into the database... kept comming up with this Nelly Fertado image as the album cover
Once i made an 'album' for it, it pulled up the correct image from the ID3 tag.
MP stops responding if opening the music section directly in album view, but it works set to share view in config and then switching to album view :s
My music is tagged correctly using MP3Tag and I've tried a rescan of the database. Any ideas? My music directory hasn't significantly changed since a previous working MP install!