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Support => Questions => Topic started by: phred on August 14, 2014, 03:29:43 PM
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I'm cleaning up a lot of my 'greatest hits' collections and want to tag each individual album as a compilation. If I were to select multiple albums while in Artwork view, and then tagged them all at once with the compilation tag, would MB consider all those albums as one compilation? Or would it treat each individual album as a compilation of the tracks on that album?
Thanks.
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Tagging them all as a compilation at the same time won't link them together, no. MB will still use your album criteria to determine grouping.
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> then tagged them all at once with the compilation tag
What do you mean by that?
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Tagging them all as a compilation at the same time won't link them together, no. MB will still use your album criteria to determine grouping.
Excellent!! That will save a lot of time cleaning up some 200+ albums. Thanks
> then tagged them all at once with the compilation tag
What do you mean by that?
In the tag editing window there's a tab for Settings. One option is to mark the tracks as a compilation (collection) that keeps the tracks together. From my testing, I can now take a 'greatest hits' album released in 2001 and tag each track with it's actual release date (as opposed to the album release date) and still have all the tracks still showing as one album.
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It says iTunes compilation? Is that correct one?
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I'm not sure the 'iTunes compilation' tag will allow you to do that, phred.
All I think it does is display the album artist as 'Various Artist' *if* the album artist is already blank.
Something like that, anyway. I don't think it will affect the issue with the year tag.
Tell me if I'm wrong, won't you? That would be quite an interesting workaround.
BTW, redwing posted a recent wish which is related to what you're trying to do:
http://getmusicbee.com/forum/index.php?topic=13558.0
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It says iTunes compilation? Is that correct one?
Yes, that's correct.
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I'm not sure the 'iTunes compilation' tag will allow you to do that, phred.
Oh?
All I think it does is display the album artist as 'Various Artist' *if* the album artist is already blank.
Something like that, anyway. I don't think it will affect the issue with the year tag.
Tell me if I'm wrong, won't you? That would be quite an interesting workaround.
Well, for the most of what I'm working on, I have the album artist set. Very few of the albums I'm working on are of the 'various artist' type, since most are either a Greatest Hits collection, or miscellaneous tracks I have collected from one particular group/artist and aren't complete albums. I have taken to tagging the latter with album title of "So and So's Various Tracks." But with each track having a different (for the most part) release year, I haven't done any year tags on these. Mainly because when sorted by Album Artist/Year, MB would show each year as a separate album despite the fact they are all from one album. I've tested two albums - tagging each as a compilation, and then tagging each track within the album with its individual release year, and the artwork view shows only one album.
BTW, redwing posted a recent wish which is related to what you're trying to do:
http://getmusicbee.com/forum/index.php?topic=13558.0
Yes, it was seeing this that got me to thinking that if I tagged each greatest hits album as a compilation, I could then proceed with tagging each track with its correct year.
But before I go ahead with changing 200+ albums, I'll wait and see what others here think. It would be a real pain to have to correct them if I'm not thinking this through correctly.
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The only function of the iTunes compilation tag in MusicBee requires that the "detect iTunes Comilation and treat as Album Artist" box is ticked in Sorting/Grouping Preferences AND that there is no Album Artist entered.
For tracks with an existing album artist, the iTunes compilation tag does nothing. If there is no album artist and the box in Sorting/Grouping is checked, then you can tell MB what you want the defacto Album Artist to be for those tracks.
I use this feature, leaving all compilation Album Artists blank rather than setting them to Various Artists, and use the compilation flag to treat the Album Artist as "Compilation". I can even then use the "Compilation" album artist in virtual tags and naming templates
For what you're describing, phred, all you need to do is make sure that Year is not part of your Album grouping.
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> I've tested two albums - tagging each as a compilation, and then tagging each track within
> the album with its individual release year, and the artwork view shows only one album.
I think you could probably get one particular view to work. But if an albums 'year' field contains different years for all the tracks, then I think some views are going to break when you switch between them, especially if you like listing albums in chronological order.
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especially if you like listing albums in chronological order.
This is true. Album grouping only matters if you sort by album. If you sort by year, it's not going to matter as much.
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especially if you like listing albums in chronological order.
This is true. Album grouping only matters if you sort by album. If you sort by year, it's not going to matter as much.
I really only use two layouts in the Main Player - Artwork, and Tracks. Rarely do I use Albums and Tracks. Artwork layout is grouped by Albums and sorted by Album Artist/Year. With those settings, if I tagged seven tracks in the album Rolling Stones Various Tracks with seven different years, what is the expected result? Would I have seven 'albums' showing in Artwork layout? Each with it's own year? Or would it be one album? My earlier test today showed it as one album. And that's what I'm trying to achieve.
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It depends on your grouping setting (Preferences> Sorting/Grouping). What's your current grouping setting?
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It depends on your grouping setting (Preferences> Sorting/Grouping). What's your current grouping setting?
The following fields define an album:
1- Album Artist
2- Album Name
Also, detect iTunes compilations and treat as Album Artist: Various Artists is checked (ticked.)
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Then, they will be grouped into one album as long as they have the same album artist and album name.
But you said
for the most of what I'm working on, I have the album artist set.
Then you don't need iTunes compilation tag. It has no effect on grouping.
Each track's year value has no effect on your album grouping as well because you don't have the criterion in your grouping setting.
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But you said
for the most of what I'm working on, I have the album artist set.
Then you don't need iTunes compilation tag. It has no effect on grouping.
Each track's year value has no effect on your album grouping as well because you don't have the criterion in your grouping setting.
Thanks redwing (and Anti and scampbll.) You took away the easy part of my project. Instead of selecting 200+ 'greatest hits' albums and tagging them as compilations, I now have to find the release year for 760 tracks. Well, my wife will be happy that I'm upstairs "working" and not bothering her. :)
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No problem!
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I think I now know why your were concerned about year tag value in relation to album grouping.
In Artwork view, MB splits the same album into two, if some tracks have year tag value while others don't have the tag. This happens when grouped by album with album artist/year/album sort and when grouped by album artist with either way of year sort. The same thing happens in Album & Tracks view as well with album artist/year/album sort.
I think this is another example of inconsistency regarding compilation album sort issue that I reported in my wishlist post:
http://getmusicbee.com/forum/index.php?topic=13558.0
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I think I now know why your were concerned about year tag value in relation to album grouping.
In Artwork view, MB splits the same album into two, if some tracks have year tag value while others don't have the tag. This happens when grouped by album with album artist/year/album sort and when grouped by album artist with either way of year sort. The same thing happens in Album & Tracks view as well with album artist/year/album sort.
I think this is another example of inconsistency regarding compilation album sort issue that I reported in my wishlist post:
http://getmusicbee.com/forum/index.php?topic=13558.0
Exactly why I posted the compilation thread today. I just added to your post and hopefully Steven will find some time to how difficult it would be to implement this.