Music shows multiple entries for same Album (1 Viewer)

[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.

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

As I said earlier "There's also all my singles, which don't have Album or AlbumArtist filled (and why would they?) which results in MP showing an untold number of blank folders at the start of the list, each of which has numerous blank subfolders, each of which then contains all the singles."

I've since tagged some of the tracks with "Single" for the Album and AlbumArtist (which isn't ideal as this ends up in the middle of the list of Albums and it would be better IMO to have a Singles folder at the top or bottom of the list) but I'm still seeing numerous blank folders. It seems these are my WAV files, which I can't tag in MP3Tag but Windows Explorer shows the Album and AlbumArtist to be blank. I'll have to install MPTagThat and double-check that though.

On the point in general, I know this is an ALBUM view, but that's no reason to be pedantic about it to the point where you make life harder for the users. Imagine a user who has mostly Albums but some singles, and wants to spend most of his time in the Albums view, but still be able to easily access his singles when he wants. If MP groups all tracks with no Album data under a single folder automatically, that makes life easy for him and only produces one extra folder that's easy enough for you to ignore if you wish. If we take your approach and say there must not be anything but actual albums shown in Album view, the only benefit to you is that one folder disappears but the other user now has to open the context menu, go to Views and select a different one, etc every time he wants to access his singles, and do this all again to switch back to Album view when he wants to go back to his Albums.

As for "Why should MP be responsible for grouping the tracks for you", well because it's a darn sight easier for it to group all tracks with no Album data into a single folder than it is for every user to have to go through their collections tagging all their singles with dummy data, and because MP's meant to be a way for people to easily access their media, not a tool to discipline people into tagging their files according to some set of rules.

 

[elliottmc]

As for "Why should MP be responsible for grouping the tracks for you", well because it's a darn sight easier for it to group all tracks with no Album data into a single folder than it is for every user to have to go through their collections tagging all their singles with dummy data, and because MP's meant to be a way for people to easily access their media, not a tool to discipline people into tagging their files according to some set of rules.

Well, as I reported after taking the time to test, it seems to do exactly what you want with my mp3 files.

I don't know anything about tagging wav files, and I made one small change to the albums view by removing the a-z filter.

I don't know what else to suggest. It all works as you want here. If you think there is a bug, I suggest you open a new thread and post logs and possibly post your music database so that someone who understands it better can take a look. I still think this is down to tagging.

Presumably you are able to test with just mp3 files and see if it works. Then add the wav files and see if they are the problem.

Mark

 

[doveman]

As for "Why should MP be responsible for grouping the tracks for you", well because it's a darn sight easier for it to group all tracks with no Album data into a single folder than it is for every user to have to go through their collections tagging all their singles with dummy data, and because MP's meant to be a way for people to easily access their media, not a tool to discipline people into tagging their files according to some set of rules.

Well, as I reported after taking the time to test, it seems to do exactly what you want with my mp3 files.

I don't know anything about tagging wav files, and I made one small change to the albums view by removing the a-z filter.

I don't know what else to suggest. It all works as you want here. If you think there is a bug, I suggest you open a new thread and post logs and possibly post your music database so that someone who understands it better can take a look. I still think this is down to tagging.

Presumably you are able to test with just mp3 files and see if it works. Then add the wav files and see if they are the problem.

Mark

Well I've just reset all the Album data for all my singles to blank and it does indeed group them all together which is great and I didn't need to waste my time tagging all my singles as others advised me to.

There still seems to be a couple of issues with mp3 files though, as all my singles with blank Album and "Single" as AlbumArtist appear together except for one track Saint Etienne - Only Love Can Break Your Heart, which creates it's own folder, so there's one blank-titled folder in the main list and in that two sub-folders, one with this track only and the other with all the other tracks tagged Album - blank, AlbumArtist - "Single". EDIT: It seems this was caused by this track having a discnumber tag.

Also, if all the singles are tagged with blank Album but have differing AlbumArtist data, this results in multiple folders being created. I think it would be much better if MP just looked at the Album field and if it's blank, put those files in one folder and stopped examining the other fields, such as AlbumArtist and discnumber, as then users would only have to make sure their singles had blank Album data and wouldn't have to spend time clearing other fields as well.

MP needs to deal with all files it supports, such as wav, properly and not just mp3. You say you know nothing about tagging wav files (and presumably you haven't got/tested with any) yet you proclaim it all works as I want on your system and that you still think the problem is down to tagging.

I've just checked my wav files in MPTagThat and they all have the Album and AlbumArtist fields blank, yet MP still creates numerous blank folders, each with numerous blank-titled sub-folders, each with all the tracks in. I tested with just four wav files in the database, and that gives me four blank-titled folders, each with four identical (i.e. with the same icon as the parent folders) blank-titled folders, each of which has all four tracks in. If I have mp3 tracks with blank Album data, they all appear under these four folders as well. If I tag the wavs with Album and AlbumArtist data, they do appear under a separate folder.

MP also seems to pick up mp3s when I move them to my scanned folder, but not wavs, which I had to do a manual scan from MP config to get added. It also behaves strangely if I tag the Album but leave the AlbumArtist blank, which results in the Album We Rock Hard listing five times, each with another five folders inside, each of which contains all 15 tracks. This seems to be accounted for by the fact that there's a total of five variations of Artist for the tracks, but I don't think MP should be looking at this field and if the Album is x and the AlbumArtist is blank, it should only make one folder x.

On a separate point, I think it would also improve Album view if it a) showed the Album Artist (so instead of just showing Streetsoul it would show Streetsoul (Guru)) as there's no indication who an album's by at the moment and it would also help to show the number of tracks on each album, so the user could easily see if it was a full album or just a couple of tracks from an album that they wanted to keep listed together.

 

[elliottmc]

I've just checked my wav files in MPTagThat and they all have the Album and AlbumArtist fields blank, yet MP still creates numerous blank folders, each with numerous blank-titled sub-folders, each with all the tracks in. I tested with just four wav files in the database, and that gives me four blank-titled folders, each with four identical (i.e. with the same icon as the parent folders) blank-titled folders, each of which has all four tracks in. If I have mp3 tracks with blank Album data, they all appear under these four folders as well. If I tag the wavs with Album and AlbumArtist data, they do appear under a separate folder.

This sounds like a bug then.

Please start a new thread for this, describe the issue clearly and provide logs. Then if someone can reproduce it, we might be able to fix it. This thread is getting too cluttered for anyone to go digging.

The same applies to any other individual issues that you think are bugs.

Best wishes,

Mark