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[JoanRivers]

Im finding the process of introducing some albums I downloaded to JRiver to be a problem.
The album is downloaded as an entity but JRiver is breaking it up into various groups by
composer (of which there are about a handful).

I managed to sort that out with a previous album that I downloaded but have forgotten how
I did that only a few days ago.

Currently I have one album broken up into two "Unknown album" with two lots of composers
by JRiver.

I'm not even sure of the process of Extracting the album from the Zip File. When I try putting
the album into a Music folder or Music Playlists folder on Windows, I couldn't find it on JRiver.
When I did import the album, it looks like I had duplicate entries for some tracks, possibly as a
result of me Extracting the album twice to different locations in order to be able to find it with
JRiver.

In the Unassigned Albums part of JRiver, I can't see an option to give both albums a name, so that
they re-unite into one album. > Just found how to do that...right clicking the mouse button on the
"Unassigned albums" link there. I was looking at the rows on top of that section and nothing relevant
popped up. This is frustrating. ##

Tips on avoiding these hassles appreciated...from process of Extracting files, putting them somewhere
that JRiver can find them and also not having JRiver break up the album into "Unknown albums" etc.

Why isn't the downloaded album's name not picked up JRiver?

## N.B. No, I now have TWO albums with the same name for the one album that I downloaded! FFS!
How do I turn those two albums into one album?

%% Under "Albums" there are "3" according to MC, which is right, BUT, when you look in that part of MC
there FIVE lots of songs...organised according to composers. Also, one album - the one I'm having trouble
with - there is an unnumbered song...the original file was numbered. FFS! I want to clean this up without all
this pfaffing about. > Actually, the unnumbered song is appearing out of sequence...the source file has the right
number on it, but the file on MC is the only one which isn't numbered. How do I fix that? How do I stop this
happening in future?

Any way to transfer the cleaned up album on JRiver to other media players without all the hassle it took
to make it good on JRiver?

[JimH]

Your Album Artist tags probably need to be edited. 

[blgentry]

I'm not even sure of the process of Extracting the album from the Zip File. When I try putting
the album into a Music folder or Music Playlists folder on Windows, I couldn't find it on JRiver.
When I did import the album, it looks like I had duplicate entries for some tracks, possibly as a
result of me Extracting the album twice to different locations in order to be able to find it with
JRiver.

You've got two separate issues.  This first one is that you aren't clear on where your media files are located and how many copies you have.  Get that solved first and your life will be WAY easier.

1.  Set up auto import in JRiver.  It's really easy.  You just decide where you are going to put your music that you want JRiver to see and then tell JRiver to always look there.  Every few minutes JRiver will look in the place or places you told it and automatically get (import) all the new music files you put there.  I suggest one (or two or three) top level directories.  Something like C:\Music\FLAC or C:\Music\MP3.  Something that makes logical sense to you that you can maintain.  To set up Auto Import, got to File -> Library -> Import -> Set Up Auto Import.  Add one top level directory for now and test it out.
2.  You need to know how you want to organized *under* those folders.  The common way is to have one folder for each Artist, and under that one folder for each Album.  So something like C:\Music\FLAC\Dire Straits\Brothers In Arms .
3.  Now when you get new music, you'll unzip it somewhere temporary.  Then make an Artist directory and under that an album directory.  For example, you might make a "Daft Punk" directory under C:\Music\FLAC.  Then under that you might make "Random Access Memories".  Then put the files for that album in the Random Access Memories directory.  All the while, JRiver will monitor this directory and import the music.
4.  You need to clean up the multiple copies you have now.  One way to do this is to go to Audio -> Files and find the albums you are talking about.  Then look at the column in the far right that shows the file location.  You can even sort by this column (click on it) to group the files together and this will help you find all the files from the album together.  Or use the Search box at the upper right to help narrow down the results.

Part 2 is correcting your album tags.  The big key for you would seem to be that you have one or more albums that have more than one artist or composer on them.  This is what the "Album Artist" field is for. For compilation albums, you want to fill out the Album Artist field.  To do this, highlight one or more songs, then go to Tagging.  You can right click and select "Tag" to do this.  From the Tagging pane on the left, you can then edit fields.  Look for Album Artist.  If you change it to "Various", or (Multiple Artists), that will group them all together *if* the Album field is the same for all of them.  Which it should be since they are all on the same album!

This process is really very easy (changing the Album Artist for compilations) and you'll learn to do it quickly and easily whenever you have an album like this. 

That should get you started.  Let us know how you do.

Brian.

[JoanRivers]

When I downloaded these albums - they were the soundtrack to a game, so maybe they are uncommon titles, which is why MC is making a mess of organising them? - they were easy to find...from memory, you just click "Open file location" or something like that. The file would contain all the tracks plus a few other files, I think, like Artwork, etc. Since I'm new to PC, I'm still not sufficiently knowledgeable on specifying download locations etc. E.g Recently I created a Folder called "Games". Yet to see if I am successful at pointing game downloads to this location.

I can see in my PC menu that I do have music content in my This PC > Music folder. It seems that most of my downloads are in This PC > Downloads, where they are held as Zip files.  Since there is a lot of content on my Download section (mostly no music, obviously), can I follow your advice in this case re Auto Import?

On my This PC > Music folder, I have one album. There is a yellow folder for "iTunes" (which I've never really used) and another yellow folder directly under that (not a sub-folder), "Playlists" which has all the tracks plus files like Cover.jpg and credits.txt (it's a game soundtrack). Not sure if this is the best place to point downloads too. You're saying I should create more sub-folders here? Not even sure about moving the soundtracks from Downloads to Music. Wouldn't want to double up my albums.

I think I have 3 soundtracks from the one game downloaded to my PC (they're all WAV files)...there is cross-over of artist on all three...some tracks by one artist, some tracks by two, and that seems to be playing havoc with MC as far as sorting things out goes. MC is listing me as having 3 albums, but when you go to look at those three albums, that's where they are subdivided by artist so that there are more than 3 lots of albums, so to speak.  Can that be rectified without following your advice for future downloads?

Looking at MC's menu, I don't see "Audio > Files"...ok, now I do. I see a long list of tracks there. Maybe all three albums' tracks on there. Perhaps even in the right order. Are you saying that I have to do something to get these grouped together under the right album? What? The Album column seems to be fine re the name of the album, but the Artist column has that mixture of artists. Is there a quick way to sort them out? I.e. I don't want to have to individually edit the Artist data for dozens of tracks!

Anyway, I won't muck around any more on this until you get back to me re Part 2...like I said, I have three albums, all for the same game (not the same album though...music for various DLC form their own distinct album). Will your advice for Part 2 be affected due to all three albums being for the same game?

It's frustrating that I have to pfaff about to get all this done...would have been nice if MC took care of all this for me!...or at least just import the three albums as entitities, as per my initial download them of them as such.

You've got two separate issues.  This first one is that you aren't clear on where your media files are located and how many copies you have.  Get that solved first and your life will be WAY easier.
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Part 2 is correcting your album tags.  The big key for you would seem to be that you have one or more albums that have more than one artist or composer on them.  This is what the "Album Artist" field is for. For compilation albums, you want to fill out the Album Artist field.  To do this, highlight one or more songs, then go to Tagging.  You can right click and select "Tag" to do this.  From the Tagging pane on the left, you can then edit fields.  Look for Album Artist.  If you change it to "Various", or (Multiple Artists), that will group them all together *if* the Album field is the same for all of them.  Which it should be since they are all on the same album!

This process is really very easy (changing the Album Artist for compilations) and you'll learn to do it quickly and easily whenever you have an album like this.  

That should get you started.  Let us know how you do.

Brian.