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[wrestedup]

How do I, or is it possible to, have one track (song) be part of more than one album?

For example, these 5 albums in my library all contain the same recording of the hit song "Always Do What Mama Says":

• Our First Good Album
• The Second Best Of The Do-Gooders
• The Do-Gooders' Anthology
• The '60s Collection Of Good Songs
• Goody Two-shoes Plays Accordion

Consequently, there are 5 copies of the recording in different places on the disk:

• C:\Music\Do-Gooders, The\Our First Good Album\Always Do What Mama Says
• C:\Music\Do-Gooders, The\The Second Best Of The Do-Gooders\Always Do What Mama Says
• C:\Music\Do-Gooders, The\The Do-Gooders' Anthology\Always Do What Mama Says
• C:\Music\Do-Gooders, The\The '60s Collection Of Good Songs\Always Do What Mama Says
• C:\Music\Do-Gooders, The\Goody Two-shoes Plays Accordion\Always Do What Mama Says

If there's a way to have just one copy of the song on the disk, and have it be part of all five albums in the Media Center library, I have not found it.  Nor have I been able to find any reference to the subject in any of the forums here (at least not with the many search strings I've tried).

Am I missing something, or is this simply not a function allowed by the process of using file tags in the library?

Thanks for any help!

[Phil Lee]

Albums are constructed using the Album tag. This will be different for the five copies you have. What you are asking for is a "virtual album". This is a feature that has been requested in the past. Currently the only way to create a virtual album is by constructing a playlist.

[jleerigby]

This would surely be a great candidate for v10 and would further set MC apart from the rest.  I don't know of any program that can cope with this much-requested feature.

[_K_C_]

Seconded.  Virtual albums would be an excellent feature.  

A playlist isn't far from being an album object, save that it can't be integrated into view schemes.  

Perhaps one way to look at this would be to allow smart/play lists to have properties of their own (genre, artist etc).  The name of the playlist becomes the name of the Virtual Album.

[Doof]

This would require that each file be able to store multiple album names, track #s, dates, genres (maybe), and whatever other information that people add... like Album Review or any other user-defined fields.

Has anybody tried importing the multiple copies of the file, and then just editing the filename entry in MC's db to point to just one copy? That might work, although you'd have to be sure not to store file info inside the file's tag.

[Phil Lee]

This data doesn't need to be stored in the file. It could equally as well be stored within the MC database.

[_K_C_]

This would require that each file be able to store multiple album names, track #s, dates, genres (maybe), and whatever other information that people add... like Album Review or any other user-defined fields.

If you're looking at the file as having properties associated with it, then yes you're right.

But if you start by looking at the "virtual album" then  isn't it a little easier?  Playlists already have a name [=virtual album name] and a list of tracks in order [=virtual album track number].  If you give the playlist a genre and artist property, then the playlist has enough information to be included in a view appearing like an album alongside everything else.

OK, this way isn't perfect - the virtual album wouldn't be identical to a real album.  But is that a problem?  It would be good enough for my personal "best of" albums  

[rocketsauce]

You can also create a semicolon delimited field to use for album titles and use it in your view schemes instead of the regular album field. I put the album title of the CD I ripped from in the regular album field and then in the custom field I put both that title as well as any "virtual" titles. You won't be able to specify different track numbers for your virtual albums without messing up sequencing for the original album, but that doesn't really bother me.

Rob