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: Compilation and Singles in playlists (Read 2463 times) previous topic - next topic
0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Compilation and Singles in playlists


Hi all

I'm trying to find a way to deal with a couple of things. Adding a compilation album to the fb2k database adds a lot of artists,  a lot of them with just the one song. The artist list then becomes very much larger, and artists with a dozen albums are mixed up with one-off artist/titles. I also have a directory of singles, much like a (very large, 1000 entries) compilation album.

I went and tagged the singles' Album metadata as 'Singles A-H' etc, now I'm regretting that, though not that many of them had actual Album info. I guess having all the albums on one playlist, all singles in another, and all compilation albums in another would work, but I'm not entirely sure how to create playlists like that.

Is misusing a tag like I did for the singles the best way? This is messing me up as I tend to search first for the artist when looking for an album I want, but search by title when looking for a single.

I'm using ColumnsUI (and having a lot of fun with it  so I have the NG playlist.

Compilation and Singles in playlists

Reply #1 –
For compilation albums (multiple artists) set the Album Artist tag to "Various Artists"

For singles treated as a compilation album (which is what you have done), treat as compilation albums and add the "Various Artists" Album Artist tag. Alternatively, set the Album Title tag to "<single name> - [CDS]", and set the Album Artist to the single artist.

Finally, you make sure your playlist is set up to use %album artist% in the artist display column, because that will use Album Artist if present, then use Artist Name if no Album Artist is present.

Compilation and Singles in playlists

Reply #2 –
Never mind. Someone beat me to the punch....

Compilation and Singles in playlists

Reply #3 –

Ah, Cool! Thanks (to both) that works great

I just tagged a compilation, that worked so I did some movie soundtracks too, all fine.

So, for the giant singles collection I could mark their Album Artist tag as "Various Artists" for all and then make the Album "Singles A-H" (for the applicable tracks), and so on, to avoid an 'Album' with 1000 tracks on it, right?

Compilation and Singles in playlists

Reply #4 –
If I understand correctly, and you mean that the total collection comprises 1000 tracks whereas your newly created sub-albums will be smaller, then yes.

Still, this is far from an optimal method. To go back to your first post:
Quote from: emueyes on
I went and tagged the singles' Album metadata as 'Singles A-H' etc, now I'm regretting that, though not that many of them had actual Album info. I guess having all the albums on one playlist, all singles in another, and all compilation albums in another would work, but I'm not entirely sure how to create playlists like that.

Is misusing a tag like I did for the singles the best way? This is messing me up as I tend to search first for the artist when looking for an album I want, but search by title when looking for a single.
You still have big albums! And you lose the actual title of the single, although I suppose that?s only really relevant for B-sides and suchlike. A better method could be to include information on the type of release in your files, perhaps as a new field called releasetype or whatever you might prefer. Then you could automatically filter your collection via the media library and/or autoplaylists. Then again, if you can now keep compilations and soundtracks separate, then singles might be the only misfit.

If the suggestion helps, what I do is to suffix the title with [single]: if you don’t want to add an entirely new tag, there might be a way to automatically filter based upon this – or even to move it to a prefix and just let alphanumerical order take care of everything for you. But I’m just thinking aloud now, really!

Compilation and Singles in playlists

Reply #5 –
Yes, all the singles are in a different directory altogether, always have been. I don't know what a large album is, I split them into roughly 120 - 170 titles per 'album' with the Single A-H tag method, but 170 tracks is, as you say, still a very big album. I was just guessing, I've no idea what fb3k regards as big, or as too big and slows down.

The singles all still have their title, and artist, I just overwrote the album. I see your point regarding just adding an extra tag, that's what I was asking about - am I better off doing that, rather than co-opting an existing tag for my own purposes.

I'm not terribly fond of altering filenames or adding extra data  to metatags.  I've spent a lot of time with Bulk Renamer, and mp3tag to get rid of all the "(03) - Joy Division - Closer" ... prefixes from names, 50 or so  characters that can be derived from the directory names, or from other meta-fields.

Either way, I have to add both my 'Albums' and my 'Singles' directories to the database. I imagine that fb2k won't have a problem with that many files.

I have another small problem; I have to keep 'look for art online; it seems, even though I already have album art for all the albums. It doesn't display the existing art if I don't.  Then when looking for artwork for singles, it can take as long as the song length.

Compilation and Singles in playlists

Reply #6 –
Quote from: emueyes on
So, for the giant singles collection I could mark their Album Artist tag as "Various Artists" for all and then make the Album "Singles A-H" (for the applicable tracks), and so on, to avoid an 'Album' with 1000 tracks on it, right?


By "singles", are you referring to actual CD singles, released by the artist? Or are you talking about an assortment of individual tracks by that artist? If it is the latter, what I would do is keep ALBUM ARTIST the same, but make the ALBUM something like "Miscellaneous Tracks".

Compilation and Singles in playlists

Reply #7 –
The 'singles' are tracks from various artists,  released as singles or EPs,  with some recorded stuff from radio (some 2JJJ from 1982 anyone?), and a few rather obscure foreign language titles.  I don't really add much to it these days, but it's a big cross section of music, mp3s upgraded to flacs in a collection that is ages old.  A very few of them are duplicated on released albums in the 'Albums' folder / playlist, most aren't though.  So they don't really have an 'album name' that makes sense, it'd just be the song title. (The term 'single' is somewhat bugging me, too. It's come to be a track that exists without being part of an album, but being related to other singles as performed by the same artist. )

I hope I'm making sense, I think sometimes I fall back to thinking of the boxfull of records in the corner and try to extend that to the much more flexible storage offered by proper library creation. It's actually the first time I've bothered doing this (you'd never guess) and I'm thinking of things I may want to do in the future, as well.

Using the VA artist/album scheme works great for the compilations and soundtracks I've now filed, and would for these singles, too, I think, but finding how to break the list into smaller pieces is a problem. Genre is almost never applied consistently, or at all, date of release would have large collections for a few years. Date of the file itself would be interesting, being kept from one system to the next, but I wouldn't actually be able to find anything.

Compilation and Singles in playlists

Reply #8 –
That is what I thought. These tracks are basically odds and ends, bits and pieces from wherever.

Again, if it were me, I would want these tracks sorted by ARTIST. I don’t know what your musical tastes are, but you would lump all the tracks by, say, Frank Sinatra into one custom “album”. You can give this custom “album” any title you want.

If this creates too many artists to sort though, then you can do a reversal. You can create a custom “artist” (say, “Miscellaneous Tracks”) and then create a custom “album” for each artist.

I hope that makes sense.
 

Compilation and Singles in playlists

Reply #9 –
Quote from: EagleScout1998 on
That is what I thought. These tracks are basically odds and ends, bits and pieces from wherever.


That's a terrible way to speak about my beloved and esoteric selection spanning decades of music  I would have been better served looking at the SQLite interface for this, but I had a quick play with a text editor.  It does seem that while most artists have about 4 titles, a couple have more like 12-15, and a lot have only one. There are 752 titles in 4G of space and only 307 unique artists*, so grouping them by artist would make sense for a lot of the titles, they'll become a new 'album' for that artist, with as you suggest, a 'leftover scraps' bin for the rest 

Good suggestions, that makes a lot of sense and offers a nice interface. I'll have a look at the existing artist tags, hopefully they'll be orderly and consistent (and existent).




* anything from China Crisis to Janes Addiction to Sarah Brightman to the Vapours to Sandie Shore to the Proclaimers. 'Classic' songs, I guess, but the other 150G is albums..