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Topic: Foobar merges two albums that have the same artist / title, but a different date (Read 1536 times) previous topic - next topic
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Foobar merges two albums that have the same artist / title, but a different date

This is niche, but it bugs me. I've got a 2 albums with the same band and album name, but with a different date. They're live recordings. I have foobar set to sort albums by date.

These two songs end up next to each other on a single album instead of separated by their date:

Pink Floyd - 1970-07-16 - Paris Cinema, London, England - Disc 01 - 01 - Intro
Pink Floyd - 1971-09-30 - Paris Cinema, London, England - Disc 01 - 01 - Intro

Is there a way to make this not happen, outside of renaming the albums so that the date is attached to them (I'm not going to do that)?
~ Erich w/ an h

Re: Foobar merges two albums that have the same artist / title, but a different date

Reply #1 –
Someone on Reddit offered a solution, just put a blank space at the end of one of the albums. That works, though it's kind of an ugly hack. I'm grateful for it though, since at least it works.
~ Erich w/ an h

Re: Foobar merges two albums that have the same artist / title, but a different date

Reply #2 –
A similar but “less ugly” hack is to use a different space character within the name. A regular keyboard space bar creates U+0020, use the character map to instead insert U+00A0, you usually can’t tell them apart but they get sorted separately by most devices.
U+0020. SP. Space (SP)
U+00A0. NBSP. No-Break Space (NBSP)

I did the same for two separate Queen Greatest Hits albums from 1992 and 1994.

Re: Foobar merges two albums that have the same artist / title, but a different date

Reply #3 –
Sorry, just noticed foobar2000 mobile!

Re: Foobar merges two albums that have the same artist / title, but a different date

Reply #4 –
Quote from: MotleyG on
A similar but “less ugly” hack is to use a different space character within the name. A regular keyboard space bar creates U+0020, use the character map to instead insert U+00A0, you usually can’t tell them apart but they get sorted separately by most devices.
U+0020. SP. Space (SP)
U+00A0. NBSP. No-Break Space (NBSP)

I did the same for two separate Queen Greatest Hits albums from 1992 and 1994.

Thanks, I'll keep that in mind when it comes up again. And yeah, another one for me was multiple singles. For that I just appended the album with (UK CD1) etc.

Quote from: SimBun on
Sorry, just noticed foobar2000 mobile!

The only thing more finicky than FB2K Mac is FB2K Mobile 8^p
~ Erich w/ an h

Re: Foobar merges two albums that have the same artist / title, but a different date

Reply #5 –
I think this is worth handling because it leads to strange behavior in fairly common cases: For example, many artists have released a self-titled EP, and then a full-length album (non-redundant, different tracks) that is also self-titled years later.

Re: Foobar merges two albums that have the same artist / title, but a different date

Reply #6 –
Quote from: janeprentiss666 on
I think this is worth handling because it leads to strange behavior in fairly common cases: For example, many artists have released a self-titled EP, and then a full-length album (non-redundant, different tracks) that is also self-titled years later.

Or, in another case in my library, the title track of an album is also a single.
~ Erich w/ an h
 

Re: Foobar merges two albums that have the same artist / title, but a different date

Reply #7 –
Quote from: janeprentiss666 on
I think this is worth handling because it leads to strange behavior in fairly common cases: For example, many artists have released a self-titled EP, and then a full-length album (non-redundant, different tracks) that is also self-titled years later.
Quote from: Erichwanh on
Quote from: janeprentiss666 on
I think this is worth handling because it leads to strange behavior in fairly common cases: For example, many artists have released a self-titled EP, and then a full-length album (non-redundant, different tracks) that is also self-titled years later.

Or, in another case in my library, the title track of an album is also a single.
Typically albums are distinguished from similarly titled EPs and singles with a simple prefix like [EP] or [Single]. Especially for the singles, the year will likely be the same anyhow. So that wouldn’t help to separate them I’m the player. The other option as mentioned above is to use something like an alternative Unicode space character, or some other distinguishable key in the album name instead.