Duplicate Handling: Merging Play Counts and Ratings

[luebster]

Consider this scenario: I have years of ripped CDs, perhaps as 192k or 128k MP3s. Now, I'd like to re-rip those to a lossless format. I'd prefer to not lose the play counts on the tracks that will be replaced (or ratings, but those are somewhat easily corrected manually).

AFAIK, in the duplicate manager, there is not currently a way to transfer play count or rating from the deleted track to the kept track. Perhaps I'm doing it wrong, but it seems that such an option would be helpful when re-ripping or acquiring dupes via a full studio album/EP/compilation.

[Zak]

Right-click > Send To > Folder (Replace)

Unfortunately it only works on one track at a time.

[luebster]

@Zak, I gave your suggestion a go and while it certainly works, it's a rather cumbersome workaround. I definitely appreciate you offering a workaround and I thank you.

Here's how I envision such a play count/rating merge working:

In the duplicates manager dialog, if "delete" is selected in duplicates handling, offer two checkboxes: one for merge play counts and one for merge ratings.

If merge play counts is selected, simply sum the play counts of all the tracks to be deleted and the track to be kept. Update the track to be kept with the sum.

If merge ratings is selected, either average all ratings (only if rating != null, of course) and round to nearest half rating (or whole number if user turned off half ratings) or simply take the max rating and apply that to the kept track.

[Zak]

I get the impression the Duplicates Manager is intended more for finding duplicates in a disorganised library. For deliberately "upgrading" to a better quality rip it would be easier if the Replace feature allowed selecting multiple files (i.e. an album) at a time.

[luebster]

I see your point. However, even with a disorganized library, one would likely appreciate the feature as part of the duplicates manager. If I have duplicate tracks that I'm trying to clean up, with each track having been rated and played independently (maybe one has 20 plays and the other 50), I'd prefer to preserve the cumulative play count.

While I agree that some upgraded form of the Replace feature would work in my specific situation (adding a higher-quality version of an existing album), I maintain that adding an option to merge play counts would benefit users.

In an ideal world, the CD rip dialog or Auto-Tag by Album dialog would detect duplicates and ask to replace at that time, but that seems like a bigger ask than my initial request.