Handling Albums with same name

2017-06-19 03:11:59

Hi,
When albums have the exact same title, they get bunched together in the playlist view, and the Album view in my facets window is blank.

Any suggestions on the best way to handle this?

Here is my setup:
https://www.screencast.com/t/v62XS60TGiQ3

Thanks!

Re: Handling Albums with same name

Reply #1 – 2017-06-19 04:16:20

I have plenty of albums with the same name, which is a given when having large music collections. At first it started with "greatest hits' compilation to which I just added the artist name to the album name so it looks like this: Queen - Queen Greatest Hits. But that's not the official name of the album and neither it is for most other greatest hits compilations. To circumvent this problem I use a different tag value named %albumname%. The tag %album% retains the real name. Both tags are in 99% of the cases the same but both have different functions.
%album%:
-official album name
-album scrobble name (for last.fm)
-album display chart name (I generate my own charts in foobar2000)
-album playlist display name

%albumname%;
-album playlist sort and group name
-album cover name (allows for different covers for same album if you have all your cover centralized like I do)
-album identifier (again for chart purposed this is to differentiate in the charts so it doesn't get grouped with same name albums)

I'v heard the suggestion of someone here who'd use musicbrainz_albumID but that would presume an ID for every existing album in your collection, which isn't the case mostly, and you need to look up the ID for all albums either manually of via a script.

Re: Handling Albums with same name

Reply #2 – 2017-06-19 05:44:13

Thanks for the reply.
If I understand correctly, I would need to create a new tag field %albumname%, then enter the adjusted titles for the same name albums in that field, right?

If my playlist was then set to display %albumname%, I would then need all my library to be set up with this additional tag field, right? How do you manage that, especially with new music being added?

Thanks

Re: Handling Albums with same name

Reply #3 – 2017-06-19 06:15:51

That is correct. I'm not saying you need to do like I do. It's just the way I do it that suits my need. Perhaps other people will have totally different ideas and would find my method too much a hassle.

It does need some tweaking in how you sort and display your files and this also depends a bit on how you want to approach this. Do you want to use %albumname% only for those albums where it is necessary or do you want to have this applied to the entire library.  The first method would then for example need a sorting/group pattern that needs to prioritize %albumame% over %album% like for example

%artist% $if(%albumname%,%albumname%,%album%) %title%

for display purpose in any viewer you use just use %album%. Simply look at it as %album% for "view" purposes and %albumname% for "do" purposes (search, sort, group, filter,...)

One way I would notice for example when adding a new album with a name that's already in use is via the album cover display. Since for example %albumname% is used as cover name as well and mostly those albumnames are the same as album whenever I use an %albumbame% that is already in use an album cover would show (the wrong cover for the new album) for the newly added album thus indicating there already exists an album of that name and prompting me to use a different albumname.
A different way is by using the autocomplete feature for tags. This would autocomplete a tag field ,when the same name is tagged. This too would indicate to me if an album already has an existing name (this doesn't help of course if you want to do some batch processing when adding multiple albums at once).

Btw, you can quickly and easily transfer %album% tag values with foobar's automatically fill values feature.

Re: Handling Albums with same name

Reply #4 – 2017-06-19 08:01:26

I use the actual date of the release (rather than the original record's release date) and, if I know it, the publisher/label number to divide albums.

Eg: I have a couple David Bowie albums, both re-issues of a single album released in 1977. One is from 1984 the other 1991. I keep the original release date in a separate tag and use the actual date of the re-issue for the Date tag.

Edit: didn't notice you're using an album-only/all artists view. In which case you could just additionally divide by artist/albumartist as a custom column in Facets.

Re: Handling Albums with same name

Reply #5 – 2017-06-20 09:59:20

OP:
I sort by artist[note1], then by year, then by album[note2] then by track.  That is done by clicking the columns in reverse order (track, then album, then year[note2], then artist). But I also have a folder naming scheme that matches, so sorting by path does the same thing, effectively (and that is how fb2k sorts incoming).

note1: Well really I made a custom column for album artist sort if present, blah blah blah.
note2: Regarding reissues: Some include release info, so that the album tag would e.g. be Dark Side of the Moon [2003 30th anniversary] (in which case I would tweak the behaviour of Quicksearch for same). Or you can create a separate tag for album version.

Re: Handling Albums with same name

Reply #6 – 2017-06-21 09:23:04

I used a bit from all your suggestions. I'm all set with the playlist and album art. Cheers!