Skip to main content ↑ ↓

Notice

Please note that most of the software linked on this forum is likely to be safe to use. If you are unsure, feel free to ask in the relevant topics, or send a private message to an administrator or moderator. To help curb the problems of false positives, or in the event that you do find actual malware, you can contribute through the article linked here.
Topic: Preventing albums with different artists from splitting up in my library (Read 3906 times) previous topic - next topic
0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Preventing albums with different artists from splitting up in my library

Hello, I'm a pretty new foobar2000 user and I'm using the Eole theme. But I am having 2 issues with displaying my library.

Issue 1: Albums with Multiple Artists

Here is just one example of the MANY albums that I have that have multiple artists (The Music of Grand Theft Auto V is probably one of the worst offenders in my library as every song has a different artist, but this still happens with any album that has a song with multiple artists listed). They are all being displayed as distinct albums. How do I stop this from happening? I prefer to sort my albums in alphabetical order by Artist, but I don't want to have multiple different albums listed just because one album happened to have multiple artists attached to it.

Issue 2: Wrong Cover Art attached to some albums
For some reason, the cover art from one album is showing up where it shouldn't. I once had a similar issue with a different software, and it was because a file "cover.jpg" had errantly ended up in my library folder. I checked this, but it's not that. When I open the properties of any given song that is incorrectly displaying this Arctic Monkeys album art, the album art is correct in the Artwork tab. Right-clicking on the album or song and clicking "refresh image" is not working.

Here's an image that shows the incorrect cover art with the properties tab showing the correct artwork (this is also an example of the first issue where one album with a bunch of different artist is splitting itself up into an inconveniently large number of albums):


Any help with these two issues would be much appreciated. Thanks

Re: Preventing albums with different artists from splitting up in my library

Reply #1 –
Believe it or not, you're not the first person ever to have albums with multiple artists.

The crucial thing is that they must have a common Album artist tag. And the viewer must be configured to group by Album artist / album as well.

I'm not installing Eole but this demo with/without that tag illustrates the point....



No really sure about your album art. Are you sure you enabled Explorer to display system files which would show nasty little folder.jpg sometimes generated by windows media player/groove/other MS rubbish.

Re: Preventing albums with different artists from splitting up in my library

Reply #2 –
Properties tab showing correct artwork (and nothing more!) -> the file itself has the correct artwork.
Now the question is what you want fb2k to display.

Preferences -> Advanced, and type "art" into the search box on top. You will see a selection of "Embedded vs external". You can "Prefer larger", "Prefer external" or "Prefer embedded". From your question, I take it that you want to prefer embedded.

If you select that, it will first look for art embedded in the files, and if it doesn't find it - it will look for suitable pictures in the folder.
Which ones will it look for? That is not under "Advanced". Preferences -> Display, and you see search patterns for album art.


As for any such hidden files, you can search up those using a file management tool. I am using https://www.nirsoft.net/utils/search_my_files.html (it is a "portable", doesn't need to be installed - but if you use a lot of such tools, like I do, make a folder for them. Like C:\bin or C:\Portable or C:\Programs_Portable or ...).
If you want to look in a single folder, then either set up Windows explorer to view them, or use a more advanced file viewer. 7-zip's 7zfm is not very advanced, but I recommend it because so many users will anyway need 7-zip, so ... here: https://www.7-zip.org/

Re: Preventing albums with different artists from splitting up in my library

Reply #3 –
 
Quote from: marc2k3 on
Believe it or not, you're not the first person ever to have albums with multiple artists.

The crucial thing is that they must have a common Album artist tag. And the viewer must be configured to group by Album artist / album as well.

I'm not installing Eole but this demo with/without that tag illustrates the point....
No really sure about your album art. Are you sure you enabled Explorer to display system files which would show nasty little folder.jpg sometimes generated by windows media player/groove/other MS rubbish.

Thankfully, @Porcus 's guidance on the album art fixed my issue. However, no luck on sorting by album artist. All of the songs that I want to group together do in fact have a common album artist tag.

I tried this:


But no luck. My library remains as messy as before:


For example, all the songs inside of the "Star Funk" album do have the album artist tag as Scary Pockets:



I also realized that I have another issue. I need the library to also sort excluding the word "the" & "a". How do I do that?

Re: Preventing albums with different artists from splitting up in my library

Reply #4 –
Quote from: oldworldjames on
For example, all the songs inside of the "Star Funk" album do have the album artist tag as Scary Pockets:

The best way to fix it, is the artist name is actually Scary Pockets. In Properties window, you may want to cut/paste the existing multiple field artist tag into Performer which is correct tagging.

Otherwise there are different approaches; I handle grouping this way:
$if($strstr(%album artist%,Various Artists),$meta(album artist,0),%artist%)

So you could use Various Artists in %album artist%, e.g. Scary Pockets; Various Artists which should also fix your grouping issue.

Generally you'd just need %album artist% = Various Artists for compilations, but I use multiple fields for artist specific compilations that have different band names for different tracks, e.g.
%album% : You Can Get It if You Really Want: The Definitive Collection
%artist% : Desmond Dekker; Desmond Dekker & The Cherry Pies; Desmond Dekker & The Four Aces; Desmond Dekker & The Aces; Desmond Dekker & The Specials
 %album artist% = Desmond Dekker (1941-2006); Various Artists

That's also another way you could add special labeling to artists while still keeping the %artist% tag intact.



Re: Preventing albums with different artists from splitting up in my library

Reply #5 –
Quote from: mjm716 on
Quote from: oldworldjames on
For example, all the songs inside of the "Star Funk" album do have the album artist tag as Scary Pockets:

I don't understand what I need to do.

The best way to fix it, is the artist name is actually Scary Pockets. In Properties window, you may want to cut/paste the existing multiple field artist tag into Performer which is correct tagging.

Otherwise there are different approaches; I handle grouping this way:
$if($strstr(%album artist%,Various Artists),$meta(album artist,0),%artist%)

So you could use Various Artists in %album artist%, e.g. Scary Pockets; Various Artists which should also fix your grouping issue.

Generally you'd just need %album artist% = Various Artists for compilations, but I use multiple fields for artist specific compilations that have different band names for different tracks, e.g.
%album% : You Can Get It if You Really Want: The Definitive Collection
%artist% : Desmond Dekker; Desmond Dekker & The Cherry Pies; Desmond Dekker & The Four Aces; Desmond Dekker & The Aces; Desmond Dekker & The Specials
 %album artist% = Desmond Dekker (1941-2006); Various Artists

That's also another way you could add special labeling to artists while still keeping the %artist% tag intact.





I don't understand what I need to do. I tried to follow your instructions, and with the following two songs I moved what was in the artist tag into the performer tag and then updated the artist tag to match the album artist tag:




And this did not work. They are still showing up as separate albums. They are not separate albums.
All I want is ONE ALBUM, ONE SLOT on my Library Tab. On my android devices, Poweramp handles this just fine!!! Why can't foobar do the same?

Re: Preventing albums with different artists from splitting up in my library

Reply #6 –
I don't know that particular theme, nor that box - but with my fb2k straight out of the box with normal playlist view, it works just fine with the pre-configured "By artist/date/album" pattern. And setting up an %album artist% %album% pattern is also piece of cake.

Of course i have to set it to use the grouping, not just define it ... sure you have done that? The Eole theme is all Greek to me, sorry.

Re: Preventing albums with different artists from splitting up in my library

Reply #10 –
You might try creating a COMPILATION tag in the files you want grouped and set it to 1.

Re: Preventing albums with different artists from splitting up in my library

Reply #11 –
I wasn't aware that this issue could be an issue with eole rather than with foobar itself.
I'm coming from using Poweramp as my main music player, and I just wanted something that similarly is easy to use with a good layout.

Foobar's default skin is about as user friendly as the windows command prompt, is there anything I can do to fix this? Any recommendations for a different skin for my foobar?

Re: Preventing albums with different artists from splitting up in my library

Reply #14 –
This is all too much. All those skins are too ugly. I am just going to stick with MusicBee until eole is fixed.

Re: Preventing albums with different artists from splitting up in my library

Reply #15 –
I've now installed eole. Can't reproduce your problem. Check your settings: Should be Settings | Sort by | Don't sort
(Settings: see red circle in screenshot)
Better is: Settings | Sort by | Custom titleformat | %ALBUM ARTIST%|%ALBUM%|%DISCNUMBER%|%TRACKNUMBER%|%DATE%|%TITLE% and Set current sorting as default

Re: Preventing albums with different artists from splitting up in my library

Reply #16 –
Quote from: grimes on
I've now installed eole. Can't reproduce your problem. Check your settings: Should be Settings | Sort by | Don't sort
(Settings: see red circle in screenshot)
Better is: Settings | Sort by | Custom titleformat | %ALBUM ARTIST%|%ALBUM%|%DISCNUMBER%|%TRACKNUMBER%|%DATE%|%TITLE% and Set current sorting as default

This fixed it. Thank you so much.

Re: Preventing albums with different artists from splitting up in my library

Reply #17 –
Quote from: grimes on
I've now installed eole. Can't reproduce your problem. Check your settings: Should be Settings | Sort by | Don't sort
(Settings: see red circle in screenshot)
Better is: Settings | Sort by | Custom titleformat | %ALBUM ARTIST%|%ALBUM%|%DISCNUMBER%|%TRACKNUMBER%|%DATE%|%TITLE% and Set current sorting as default

Is it possible to make any modification to that syntax in order to sort ignoring "The"? For example, now at the top of my library is 4 Non Blondes, whereas it should be The 1975.

Re: Preventing albums with different artists from splitting up in my library

Reply #18 –
Try https://wiki.hydrogenaud.io/index.php?title=Foobar2000:Title_Formatting_Reference#.24stripprefix.28str.29 ?

IIRC you must expect some surprises, as fb2k uses Windows' built-in collation. If Windows tries to be smart and say "4 is < 1975 and should be sorted first", then fb2k will just accept that. And Windows collation depends on locale.

Anyway, if you want to sort Dylan, Bob under "D", you are better off using a tag like ALBUMARTISTSORTORDER.