Music shows multiple entries for same Album (2 Viewers)

[doveman]

Use the album artist field. MP defines album + album artist to be unique. For samplers set album artist to various artists. This is generally accepted practice when tagging mp3 files.

Well frankly that just seems daft to me. If I'm sorting by Album, why should Album Artist, which is not referred to in the view setup, be part of the equation. If AlbumArtist is blank, then album1 + blank should be unique and separate from album2 + blank should it not?

I can understand setting compilations to Various, but there's still the issue of all my singles with no Album or AlbumArtist info creating an untold number of unnamed folders.

Some singles might be ripped from an Album, where I only want one or two tracks but it's still nice to have a record of which Album they came from. I guess I could store it in the Comments field for those though.

It seems to make more sense just to use the Shares view, which will properly show my Albums in folders and the singles listed below them without me having to spend forever adding information to the tags.

My view based on your description is that there is no actual bug.

At least I will set the thread to 'Confirm' since it should never be set to 'Bug' until a bug has been confirmed.

All we have now is that MP doesn't behave the way you expected it to.

Mark

Yes, I expected it to behave differently because it's completely illogical at the moment as far as I can tell. Maybe it's intended to be illogical, and therefore not technically a bug, but I'd ask you to consider whether it can be made more logical and intuitive.

Are you aware the forum software itself has a bug and it's not possible to set it to Confirm when starting a new thread (or it hasn't been for myself and several others recently anyway)?

There's also all my singles, which don't have Album or AlbumArtist filled (and why would they?)

Album (and AlbumArtist) need to be filled in for singles. Otherwise it wont be possible to handle those correctly.

I'd say that was a bug then, as it means it's impossible to use the Album view if I also have singles, and if I fill in something for each single it's going to create a separate entry in the Album view for every one.

 

[jameson_uk]

I'd say that was a bug then, as it means it's impossible to use the Album view if I also have singles, and if I fill in something for each single it's going to create a separate entry in the Album view for every one.

No Bug. Album view has a folder for each album. If you rip a single track from an album then that still has an album it came from and in this view will appear in a folder with a single track under it. The album artist thing is standard that is used across most players. The album name is "Greatest Hits" not "Greatest Hits of Elton John".

If you want to list tracks by an artist then use the artist view; if you want by genre then use the genre view.

 

[doveman]

I'd say that was a bug then, as it means it's impossible to use the Album view if I also have singles, and if I fill in something for each single it's going to create a separate entry in the Album view for every one.

No Bug. Album view has a folder for each album. If you rip a single track from an album then that still has an album it came from and in this view will appear in a folder with a single track under it. The album artist thing is standard that is used across most players. The album name is "Greatest Hits" not "Greatest Hits of Elton John".

If you want to list tracks by an artist then use the artist view; if you want by genre then use the genre view.

I understand this is the intended behaviour. It just doesn't work very well with a mixture of Albums and Singles. It should be possible to use the Album view to browse by Album without the hundreds of singles getting in the way, perhaps by grouping all tracks with no album data under one folder titled "Singles" or something.

I don't want each single ripped from an Album having it's own Album folder (which is why I'd leave the Album field blank) as then you end up thinking you have that Album available until you go into the folder and see there's only one track and it's extremely annoying having loads of such folders mixed up with proper Albums.

 

[elliottmc]

I'd say that was a bug then, as it means it's impossible to use the Album view if I also have singles, and if I fill in something for each single it's going to create a separate entry in the Album view for every one.

No Bug. Album view has a folder for each album. If you rip a single track from an album then that still has an album it came from and in this view will appear in a folder with a single track under it. The album artist thing is standard that is used across most players. The album name is "Greatest Hits" not "Greatest Hits of Elton John".

If you want to list tracks by an artist then use the artist view; if you want by genre then use the genre view.

I understand this is the intended behaviour. It just doesn't work very well with a mixture of Albums and Singles. It should be possible to use the Album view to browse by Album without the hundreds of singles getting in the way, perhaps by grouping all tracks with no album data under one folder titled "Singles" or something.

If you want all tracks with no album data to appear in album view under a folder titled 'singles' then tag them as album 'Singles'. Add 'Various artists' as the album artist and check the 'compilation' flag and everything will be as you want it.

The problem with all of this is that you have your idea of how this should behave, and other people have their ideas. MP is not psychic.

It's easy enough to tag things to give you what you want.

Best wishes,

Mark

 

[doveman]

No Bug. Album view has a folder for each album. If you rip a single track from an album then that still has an album it came from and in this view will appear in a folder with a single track under it. The album artist thing is standard that is used across most players. The album name is "Greatest Hits" not "Greatest Hits of Elton John".

If you want to list tracks by an artist then use the artist view; if you want by genre then use the genre view.

I understand this is the intended behaviour. It just doesn't work very well with a mixture of Albums and Singles. It should be possible to use the Album view to browse by Album without the hundreds of singles getting in the way, perhaps by grouping all tracks with no album data under one folder titled "Singles" or something.

If you want all tracks with no album data to appear in album view under a folder titled 'singles' then tag them as album 'Singles'. Add 'Various artists' as the album artist and check the 'compilation' flag and everything will be as you want it.

The problem with all of this is that you have your idea of how this should behave, and other people have their ideas. MP is not psychic.

It's easy enough to tag things to give you what you want.

Best wishes,

Mark

It's true I could go through my collection and do that, but I'm not sure it's worth the effort when I can achieve the same thing by having e.g. Genre folders with Album folders in that and the singles "loose" in the Genre folder, as I do already, and just use Shares view. I don't think MP3tag has the 'compilation' flag either, and I find MPTagThat a lot slower and more incovenient for most tagging tasks. I don't understand what benefit that flag confers if the singles are all tagged "Singles" and "Various Artists" anyway.

Of course I don't expect MP to be psychic! If it suits everyone else better to have it work as it currently does and for the user to have to tag all their singles as you suggest, then fine. It just doesn't make any sense for me to have to do that when I can achieve the same thing by just using Shares view instead of Album, so I don't really understand why anyone else would prefer to go to the effort of tagging all their singles.

 

[elliottmc]

I understand this is the intended behaviour. It just doesn't work very well with a mixture of Albums and Singles. It should be possible to use the Album view to browse by Album without the hundreds of singles getting in the way, perhaps by grouping all tracks with no album data under one folder titled "Singles" or something.

If you want all tracks with no album data to appear in album view under a folder titled 'singles' then tag them as album 'Singles'. Add 'Various artists' as the album artist and check the 'compilation' flag and everything will be as you want it.

The problem with all of this is that you have your idea of how this should behave, and other people have their ideas. MP is not psychic.

It's easy enough to tag things to give you what you want.

Best wishes,

Mark

It's true I could go through my collection and do that, but I'm not sure it's worth the effort when I can achieve the same thing by having e.g. Genre folders with Album folders in that and the singles "loose" in the Genre folder, as I do already, and just use Shares view. I don't think MP3tag has the 'compilation' flag either, and I find MPTagThat a lot slower and more incovenient for most tagging tasks. I don't understand what benefit that flag confers if the singles are all tagged "Singles" and "Various Artists" anyway.

Of course I don't expect MP to be psychic! If it suits everyone else better to have it work as it currently does and for the user to have to tag all their singles as you suggest, then fine. It just doesn't make any sense for me to have to do that when I can achieve the same thing by just using Shares view instead of Album, so I don't really understand why anyone else would prefer to go to the effort of tagging all their singles.

Then I really don't know what you want. If shares view works best for you, use that.

As jameson_uk says, if you have one track from an album, MP will list the album. How would MP know whether this is an album with only one track, or what you define as a single?

If there is absolutely nothing in the album or albumartist mp3 tag, and the song shows up in album view, then that could well be a bug. Is this the case?

Mark

 

[doveman]

Then I really don't know what you want. If shares view works best for you, use that.

As jameson_uk says, if you have one track from an album, MP will list the album. How would MP know whether this is an album with only one track, or what you define as a single?

If there is absolutely nothing in the album or albumartist mp3 tag, and the song shows up in album view, then that could well be a bug. Is this the case?

Mark

I'm pretty sure that is the case, which is the problem. If MP could just group everything with no Album data into a single folder automatically, that would solve the problem I think. I'll double-check this for you though as I haven't touched the Music section in a week or so.

I know that if one track has Album data MP will list it as an Album, which I pointed out to jameson_uk to explain why I didn't want to go and fill in the Album and AlbumArtist data (as he advised) for all my single tracks (whether ripped from an Album or not).

The point I was trying to make is why have a view (Album) that requires so much effort tagging singles, that it's easier to just use the Shares view to achieve the same thing. Maybe there's some benefit to Albums view I'm overlooking, but if not I don't see the sense in advising people to waste their time tagging their singles to use it, when they could just use the Shares view, although if it could be fixed so that singles are auto-grouped into one folder then it would save the user having to get their folder structure correct as is required for Shares view.

 

[elliottmc]

Then I really don't know what you want. If shares view works best for you, use that.

As jameson_uk says, if you have one track from an album, MP will list the album. How would MP know whether this is an album with only one track, or what you define as a single?

If there is absolutely nothing in the album or albumartist mp3 tag, and the song shows up in album view, then that could well be a bug. Is this the case?

Mark

I'm pretty sure that is the case, which is the problem. If MP could just group everything with no Album data into a single folder automatically, that would solve the problem I think. I'll double-check this for you though as I haven't touched the Music section in a week or so.

I know that if one track has Album data MP will list it as an Album, which I pointed out to jameson_uk to explain why I didn't want to go and fill in the Album and AlbumArtist data (as he advised) for all my single tracks (whether ripped from an Album or not).

The point I was trying to make is why have a view (Album) that requires so much effort tagging singles,

Because MP doesn't know whether a track is a single or an album unless it is correctly tagged.

that it's easier to just use the Shares view to achieve the same thing. Maybe there's some benefit to Albums view I'm overlooking, but if not I don't see the sense in advising people to waste their time tagging their singles to use it, when they could just use the Shares view, although if it could be fixed so that singles are auto-grouped into one folder then it would save the user having to get their folder structure correct as is required for Shares view.

Okay, the only possible bug I can see is if a track with no album or albumartist tag is shown in album view. If you could check if this happens it would be great. I will also try to find time to check.

Mark

 

[doveman]

Because MP doesn't know whether a track is a single or an album unless it is correctly tagged.

But it could be made to treat all tracks with blank Album data as singles, and automatically group them all in a Singles folder when in Album view.

Okay, the only possible bug I can see is if a track with no album or albumartist tag is shown in album view. If you could check if this happens it would be great. I will also try to find time to check.

Will do. Although I don't actually have a problem with such tracks appearing in Album view, I just would like MP to auto-group them in a single folder. It would be somewhat of a pain if they were completely hidden in Album view, as then the user would have to change view to access them, when in some cases it might have been quicker and easier for them to just go to a Singles folder in Album view.

 

[elliottmc]

Because MP doesn't know whether a track is a single or an album unless it is correctly tagged.

But it could be made to treat all tracks with blank Album data as singles, and automatically group them all in a Singles folder when in Album view.

Okay, the only possible bug I can see is if a track with no album or albumartist tag is shown in album view. If you could check if this happens it would be great. I will also try to find time to check.

Will do. Although I don't actually have a problem with such tracks appearing in Album view, I just would like MP to auto-group them in a single folder. It would be somewhat of a pain if they were completely hidden in Album view, as then the user would have to change view to access them, when in some cases it might have been quicker and easier for them to just go to a Singles folder in Album view.

It's ALBUM view (sorry for shouting). Why should MP be responsible for grouping the tracks for you in a view that was designed to use tag data not in your files. If you want them grouped as an album, tag them as an album. Sorry, but it's not rocket science.

With regard to tracks with no album tag showing in album view, I have now tested this, and I do see an album at the top of my list with no title, and this contains all of the track with no album tag. Effectively, they are grouped into one album, which is exactly what you are wanting.

Personally I think the addition of this dummy album is a bug, but it is not high enough priority to need fixing.

Perhaps I am being really stupid here. If you have 20 tracks with no album data, and you go to album view, how do they appear? Do they appear at all? Do they appear in 20 different albums? For me, I have ensured that they are not tagged with album or albumartist data, and they are grouped as you seem to want.

Mark