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[whoeveryouare]

Started new thread by request.  Some background...

In the 9.0.160 thread, whoeveryouare wrote:

This post is huge because at first I thought I was just doing something stupid, and that it would need to be in its own thread.  I thought it was something other than a bug in MC9.  However, now I think it is probably the latter.

The short description of the problem: Album tags beginning with certain characters (left paren "(" at least) won't appear under the autoalbumartist=[<artistname>] filter, unless the files with those tags are the only ones that meet the autoalbumartist=[<artistname>] criteria.

The incredibly long-winded description of the problem:

The problem: I have two albums from one particular artist (Godsmack).  (OK, think of all the jokes you can come up with after hearing the terms "artist" and "Godsmack" mentioned in the same sentence, and we'll pretend we all had a hearty laugh over it.)

One of the albums is named and tagged "(Self Titled)", and the other "Awake".  The files from both albums appear correctly under

Media Library/
Audio/
Artist/Album

(That is, with the [media type]=[audio] filter applied)

...yet only the album named "Awake" appears under

Media Library/
Audio/
Artist/Album/
Godsmack

(That is, with the (autoalbumartist=[Godsmack]) ([media type]=[audio]) filter applied)

I won't list all the files here, but they are all similar to this, with only the name and track number varying:

Godsmack - (Self Titled) - 01 - Moon Baby.ape

Godsmack - Awake - 01 - Sick Of Life.ape

I know what you're thinking--IT'S THE "ALBUM ARTIST" FIELD!  But no--NONE of the files in question have anything at all under that field.  And again, all the "Godsmack..." files are correctly tagged.

If I retag one or more of the Album fields from (Self Titled) to x(Self Titled), or anything similar, the files that have been retagged will appear (while those that are still tagged as (Self Titled) still do not appear).

The same thing happens with some, but not all, other files which have (Self Titled) as the album name.  For example,

Alice In Chains - (Self Titled) - 05 - Head Creeps.ape

Alice In Chains - Dirt - 12 - Angry Chair.ape

...behaves just like the "Godsmack..." files, while

Ashanti - (Self Titled) - 10 - VooDoo.ape

...has no problem whatsoever.  The difference in this case, however, is that there are no other "Ashanti..." files, other than the (Self Titled) ones.

I know that MJ8 didn't have a problem with this, so...

Matt replied:

Hey there,

I'm still trying to get my head around this auto album artist bug.

Are the albums that aren't showing up getting lumped under (Multiple Artists) in the tree?

If so, it means MC thinks the album has assorted artists. (which is what auto album artist is for -- to decide that)

If this is happening, do you keep all your Godsmack in one folder, or does each Godsmack album get its own folder?

Thanks!

The albums that aren't showing up (i.e. those named and tagged with (Self Titled) in the album field) are indeed appearing under (Multiple Artists), but they aren't showing under their respective artist name.

I don't understand why MC9 would think the (Self Titled) tracks had assorted artist names.

All of my files are in a single directory.

[Matt]

The "auto album artist" works in this order:

1) use the user specified "Album Artist" if it exists (blank in your case)

2) use "(Multiple Artists)" if it's a mix CD

3) use the actual artist

In your case, MC's album analyzer thinks you've got a mix album.  The album analyzer depends (in some cases) on the idea that each album gets its own folder on the hard drive.

Solutions:

1) don't use auto album artist -- use just plain artist

OR

2) fill in the "Album Artist" field for the files MC gets wrong

OR

3) give each album its own folder

Hope that clears it up.  Thanks!

[whoeveryouare]

Thanks, but I'm still curious...  Clearly, MC9 thinks this is a mix CD.  But it's not a mix CD, so why does MC9 think it is?  The file names are:

Godsmack - (Self Titled) - 01 - Moon Baby.ape
Godsmack - (Self Titled) - 02 - Whatever.ape
Godsmack - (Self Titled) - 03 - Keep Away.ape
Godsmack - (Self Titled) - 04 - Time Bomb.ape
Godsmack - (Self Titled) - 05 - Bad Religion.ape
Godsmack - (Self Titled) - 06 - Immune.ape
Godsmack - (Self Titled) - 07 - Someone In London.ape
Godsmack - (Self Titled) - 08 - Get Up, Get Out!.ape
Godsmack - (Self Titled) - 09 - Now Or Never.ape
Godsmack - (Self Titled) - 10 - Stress.ape
Godsmack - (Self Titled) - 11 - Situation.ape
Godsmack - (Self Titled) - 12 - Voodoo.ape

For each file, the artist tag is "Godsmack", and the album tag is "(Self Titled)".  If I changed the album name to anything other than (Self Titled) (even x(Self Titled), as per the example I used before), MC9 would no longer think it was a mix CD.

Just beginning an album tag with a "(" qualifies a mix CD?

[Matt]

In one directory, you use the same album name for more than one artist.  That'll make MC flag the files as a "mix".

More advanced album analysis could catch this rare case, but we have to also consider speed.  It needs to be able to analyze 100,000+ files in a few tenths of a second.

Hopefully one of the 3 solutions I listed will work alright for you.

Thanks!

[whoeveryouare]

Ahhhhh!!!  Ye Olde Light Bulb goes off!  Thank you for taking the time to explain that.  It's one of those things that is painfully obvious once you have it explained to you.

My solution is a fourth one, an alternative to the three you outlined...  Instead of using "(Self Titled)", which I thought was appropriate at one time, I will simply give self-titled albums the same name as the lazy artists associated with them.  Such as:

Alice In Chains - Alice In Chains - 08 - God Am.ape

...instead of:

Alice In Chains - (Self Titled) - 08 - God Am.ape

The "Move / Copy Fields..." feature made this a VERY easy thing to do.

Thanks again, Matt.

(But I wonder why Nicolay said the "issue" would be corrected in the next build.)

[whoeveryouare]

Just found another, much more common, case where this would be an issue.  Plenty of albums, from totally unrelated artists, are titled "Greatest Hits".  With the MC9 default configuration, none of those albums will appear under their respective artist names.

Your workarounds will correct this, but it still seems suboptimal.  My guess is most users will wonder why their new "Greatest Hits" album doesn't show up where they think it should.

[loraan]

Personally, I'm a bit of a control freak (that's why I own MC, right?), so I manually set Album Artist in all my files. The main reason that I like this better than Auto-Album-Artist is that there are some cases where I want mix CDs to show up as "Multiple Artists" and other times where I want them to show up under the Album Artist's name. Rather than try to figure out auto-album-artist's underlying logic, I just did it all by hand.

But I hope that doesn't discourage the developers from continuing to put in great features like AAA! I love that it's there, I just happen not to want to use it.

[whoeveryouare]

That's a great approach for your personality, but I tend to like as few things to worry about as possible.  I like things simple.  If I encode a "Greatest Hits" CD, for example, I don't want to have to wonder each time why the new album doesn't appear under artist, and then have to screw around manually populating fields.

And adding hundreds of directories to the mix is ludicrous.  Modern file system technology (NTFS) lets me stuff an essentially-unlimited number of files (over 4 billion) in a single directory.  And I already organize with file names and tags.  For me, all these worries over directories and tags makes it get near the point when so-called "entertainment" (i.e. music listening) becomes a most-hated chore.

At the very least, ambiguous entries like "(Self Titled)" and "Greatest Hits" should be set by AAA to appear under "Multiple Artists" and whatever individual artist seems appropriate.

[Matt]

Sorry, album analyzer relies on directory.  Most users do this, and MC makes it easy.

Breaking this assumption causes as many new problems as it fixes in the analyzer.

You'll have to use one of the 3 solutions listed.  Keep in mind that automatic logic like this won't ever be perfect -- which is why you can override it or ignore it all together

Thanks for understanding.

[Phydeaux]

Hmmm... just my 2c worth:

Whenever I have a Greatest Hits CD, I name the album "[Artist]'s Greatest Hits" to avoid such confusion.

Also, having a manual override for album artist is great. Take Queen's Greatest Hits III where Artists are mainly Queen, but with some David Bowie and others thrown in (yes, I'm specific when tagging!), but the album is essentially still "Queen". Thus give the correct artists to the "Artist" field, but "Queen" to the album artist.

Hope that this makes someone else feel warm and fuzzy. Or something!

P.