[SOLVED] Album grouping uses the year tag to split one album into multiple ones

[nuBee]

I like to tag each track using the original release year. Then (for example) in best-of albums each track still shows the correct year instead of the year the compilation has been released.

Unfortunately, MusicBee does not like this very much. I set grouping to "the following fields define an album": "Album Artist", "Album Name". But MusicBee splits the album into several ones, by using the year tags  

I'd expect it to ignore the year tag, unless I explicitly add it to the fields defining an album.

What's worse: even if I set the grouping option to "files for each album are organized in their own folders" it still creates multiple album entries based on the year tag.

v3.5.8447

[hiccup]

It seems unlikely to me that this is indeed a bug.
Something like this would have been reported before.

Are you sure you have the Album Artist tagged properly and identical for all the tracks of the compilation album?

[MotleyG]

Perhaps you can consider using the correct year tag for the album as released, but then use the ORIGYEAR field to indicate all of the individual track release dates?

[nuBee]

Are you sure you have the Album Artist tagged properly and identical for all the tracks of the compilation album?

Yes, double-checked. All tracks have the correct MusicBrainz IDs for tracks, album, artist and album artist as well.

Perhaps you can consider using the correct year tag for the album as released, but then use the ORIGYEAR field to indicate all of the individual track release dates?

Would fix the problem with the album list in MusicBee. But then the <Year (yyyy)> display in my now playing information panel would show the wrong year.

And it won't work with other players not supporting ORIGYEAR at all, e.g. on Android or portable music players.

[nuBee]

Now I found a clue! This seems to be a display issue only. I just noticed the Sort order of my Albums / Artists views was set to "Album Artist / Year / Album". When I change that to "Album Artist / Album" the duplicated entries disappear and everything looks like it should look!

Sorry, my bad. It's not a bug, it's a feature. But it just looked wrong to me :-)

[hiccup]

Great!
Some sorting issue would indeed have been my next guess.
Both 'sorting' and 'grouping' (and the combination of them) are not always easy to grasp and control, and foresee and be confident about the results.
It has often been trial and error for me too.

[Zak]

I like to tag each track using the original release year. Then (for example) in best-of albums each track still shows the correct year instead of the year the compilation has been released.

Unfortunately, MusicBee does not like this very much.

It's true that when you start doing "interesting" things with common tags like Year or Artist you can confuse MusicBee pretty quickly.
Thankfully, with a bit of practice you can create views with virtual tags to achieve some good results.
(Noting that doing so may affect the user experience in other music players or apps)

Here I've got a compilation album that shows the date it was released:



But each track also knows which album it appeared on and when it was originally released:



This relies on a custom Media Type tag, so in views showing compilation albums it will show the album date instead of the track date.

Perhaps you can consider using the correct year tag for the album as released, but then use the ORIGYEAR field to indicate all of the individual track release dates?

The reason I decided against doing it this way (which is sort of the reverse of what I am doing) is that MusicBee won't use that original year value in searches, or the Column Browser, or the Jump Bar etc..
So in my example, if I select 1970s as the decade in the Column Browser, The Jean Genie won't be included in the results because MusicBee considers it be a 2005 release.

Besides that, I just think it's kinda neat to be able to see the original album information for compilation tracks, singles, soundtracks etc.  

Historical side note
The Original Year tag in the now ancient ID3 specs was intended for covers of previous material, so I don't think it would be desirable to have it included in search results etc. because it wouldn't match the intended usage.

The 'Original release year' frame is intended for the year when the
original recording, if for example the music in the file should be a
cover of a previously released song, was released.

[Kane]

Now I found a clue! This seems to be a display issue only. I just noticed the Sort order of my Albums / Artists views was set to "Album Artist / Year / Album". When I change that to "Album Artist / Album" the duplicated entries disappear and everything looks like it should look!

Sorry, my bad. It's not a bug, it's a feature. But it just looked wrong to me :-)

this doesn't work for me.

[Mayibongwe]

this doesn't work for me.

Then you gotta describe the sorting options you are using.
Are you experiencing the same problem detailed in the start post? What are your sorting/grouping tags in the preferences set to?

Edit:
Just realized this is currently being discussed here: https://getmusicbee.com/forum/index.php?topic=42200.msg230196#msg230196
And karbock asked you 3 questions - you only replied to 1, why's that?
No need to reply to this post of mine here. Keep it all there.