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Compilation albums appear with multiple thumbnails in Albums gallery

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robland:
My understanding is that compilation albums with tracks by different artists (like soundtracks) need to have Album Artist set to (Multiple Artists) in order for the tracks to be grouped together.

This works for the Music Library tree view -- the tracks are grouped as a single album.

But in the Albums thumbnail gallery, each track appears as a separate thumbnail (see attached img).

How do I fix this?

Side note -- I can't believe how non-intuitive jriver is about this. Isn't this a VERY common scenario? I searched the support site, which is how I learned about how to use Album Artist, but should I really need to create a support topic to figure this out??

MikeO:
I am not sure about [Album Artist] = "Multiple Artists" but "Various Artists" certainly works

Worth a try !

Mike

RoderickGI:
I thought the Wiki Article was pretty clear.

But first, if you have made changes to tags, specifically the [Album Artist] tag, to make this work, and the thumbnails views isn't working, but when you drill down into the tree on the left beneath the "Album" item and it is working, then either refresh the view (refresh symbol at top right of the thumbnail view, or F5), or go to another view and come back to the Audio>Albums view to see the updated information.

If that still doesn't work, and it should if the "Music Library tree view" works, then;

1. Is the [Album] tag identical for each and every track?

2. Have you set the [Album Artist] tag to (Multiple Artists)?
Note, as per the Wiki, (Multiple Artists) is the default, but you could use (Various Artists), or "Buffoons making noise". It wouldn't matter, as long as [Album Artist] tags are all the same for each track.
Also, if all audio files for an Album are in the one directory by themselves (no other audio files in there), and they all have the same value in the [Album] tag, then MC will automatically set the [Album Artist (auto)] tag to (Multiple Artists) automatically. If your collection doesn't meet that criteria, just change the [Album Artist] tag to (Multiple Artists) manually, and all tracks will be grouped together as you want.

3. Has the [Album Artist (auto)] tag changed to match the [Album Artist] tag you just entered? It should have.

I used to see some issues where if the [Year] assigned to the tracks was different, there tracks wouldn't combine into one Album. But that doesn't happen now, so It was probably user error!


So it is actually very intuitive, if you have thought through the issues that can be seen in a collection, and how to handle them. As you only registered on the forum today Robland, I assume you are new to MC. Please give it a little time to familiarise yourself with how it works, and you will find it is a very powerful application. However, it doesn't work like other applications exactly, so there is a learning curve.


Enjoy!

robland:
I appreciate the response, thanks for the help.

It seems that #3 was not happening. I manually entered "(Multiple Artists)" for Album Artist for each compilation, but Album Artist Auto did not get populated. Once I manually entered "(Multiple Artists)" for Album Artist Auto, the thumbnails were correctly merged.

Also, the wiki topic seems to indicate that MC should *automatically* detect compilations and set Album Artist Auto for me -- but this was not happening:

"Album Artist (Auto) is just an easy way to use Album Artist. MC looks at the list of Artists for all the tracks in an Album. If they're all the same, like Metallica, then Album Artist (Auto) is automatically set to Metallica. If all the tracks are different, like on a soundtrack CD, then Album Artist (Auto) is automatically set to "(Multiple Artists)"."

I disagree that this design is "very intuitive." To me, "intuitive" means I would have a field named simply Compilation which would accept Yes/No values. Having one field named Album Artist and another named Album Artist (auto) is just plain weird.

RoderickGI:
Well I disagree. If you just had a flag for "Compilation", you would still need a way to group the tracks that belonged to the compilation together, and that would be, effectively, the Album name plus Album Artist, because Album names often are not unique. How many albums called "Love" or some variation of it have you seen? I've seen lots of duplicate album names, that cam only be differentiated using a combination of the Album and Artist names, or for compilations, Album Artist.

If [Album Artist (auto)] was working properly in your system, it would have been intuitive. Something is broken.

The only reason I can think of that [Album Artist (auto)] wouldn't work is that something was already in that tag, maybe even if it was a blank space or a non-displayable character or something. As you appear to just be starting with MC, and no doubt most of your tagging has been done outside MC, it could be that your previous software put something in that tag, or MC tried to place existing tags as best it could in the library when it imported your music, and put it in that tag.

The "fix" would be to clear any values in the [Album Artist (auto)] tag;
1. Backup your MC library, using the built in function, but running it manually. (Note: You should test the following on a small number of files first, to check how it works and make sure it does what you want.)

2. Select all your music files, sort them by [Album Artist (auto)] and check if there is anything important in there. The sort them by [Album Artist] tag to check if anything in there is important.

3. Anything in the [Album Artist (auto)] tag should also already be in the [Album Artist] tag.  If you delete what is in the [Album Artist (auto)] tag I believe that the contents of the [Album Artist] tag will also be deleted. So if you want or need to keep what is in either of those tags, you need to save them first. One way to save them is;
3a. Create a new temporary field in MC using "Tools>Options>Library & Folders>Manage Library Fields..." I'll call it [SavedTag]. (f you want to save values from both the [Album Artist (auto)] and [Album Artist] tags, you will need two new fields.)
3b. In the View you were using, right click on the header and add the [SavedTag] to the view so that it is visible.
3c. Select all your files again, right click on the [SavedTag] field and rename. Enter "=[Album Artist (auto)]" into the field,without the quotes. That will copy the contents [Album Artist (auto)] into [SavedTag].

4. Back in the view you were using, with all files selected, Right click on the [Album Artist (auto)] tag, select Rename, and delete the contents of that tag for all files.

5. Copy any data saved in the [SavedTag] tag back to [Album Artist] tag, only for the files you want to copy back, by selecting those files and putting "=[SavedTag]" into the [Album Artist] tag. The [Album Artist (auto)] tag will then be automatically updated.

6. Cleanup: Delete the [SavedTag] from your Vew, and then delete it from the Library.


That should get you back to a functioning [Album Artist (auto)] tag. However if you have already fixed all your compilation albums, maybe you don't need to do that.

Yes, MC will set the [Album Artist (auto)] tag to (Multiple Artists) automatically, if all the criteria are met. They are specified in the Wiki;


--- Quote ---In order for (Multiple Artists) to appear automatically, the album must be in its own exclusive directory (i.e., if there are files from more than one album in a directory, the program will not label it as Multiple Artist).

Here is the logic. A track is a mix if all the files with the same [Album] value in the same directory:
Have more than one [Artist] value among them
Have no other [Album] values used by any other file in the same directory
Are Audio and have a non-empty [Album] value
--- End quote ---

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