Why don't any tracks show up in my auto-playlists sorted by year or decade?

[Tracks4life]

Hi, I don't know if this is a bug or not, but I've made other auto playlists just fine with no problem, but when I try to make one by year or decade, nothing shows up even though my tracks have the year filled in. Any help would be appreciated.

[phred]

Please post a screenshot of your auto-playlist rule(s)
http://musicbee.wikia.com/wiki/Posting_Screenshots

[Tracks4life]

It doesn't matter if I make the middle part of the rule "in range" or "is" or "is not, etc. The results are still the same. No tracks shows up in the playlist.

[Steven]

if you click the "Remove Files", make sure thats empty
Also the year tag values need to be dates that MB can parse. So post a screenshot of one file displayed in the tag editor

[Tracks4life]

Remove files was empty when I checked it.

[phred]

In your auto-playlist rules, try using 'Year (yyyy)' instead of 'Year'. I seem to recall having an issue a while back when I set up my 'decades' auto-playlists. Also you might match 'all' instead of 'any'. Yes, I know you (and I) only have one rule to match, but 'all' works for me.

[Tracks4life]

In your auto-playlist rules, try using 'Year (yyyy)' instead of 'Year'. I seem to recall having an issue a while back when I set up my 'decades' auto-playlists. Also you might match 'all' instead of 'any'. Yes, I know you (and I) only have one rule to match, but 'all' works for me.

Still doesn't work :/

I've tried all the combinations involving "decade", "year" and "year (yyyy)". "any" or "all" doesn't change anything.

[Tracks4life]

So, I just tried making a rule: "any value", "is", "2010" and it showed all my songs that have a year value of 2010. So that's weird. I mean, I could make auto playlists like this, but some track titles have year values in them, like Smashing Pumpkin's 1979, so that's not going to work for me. I suppose I could make a rule though on top of it to exclude artists who didn't make music during the years I am filtering....

Or I could just make a custom tag for each decade.

[Tracks4life]

So MB is not even registering YYYY format now, I have no idea what is going on :<

[phred]

I'm really out of ideas as to why it's not working for you, but I'll take one last oddball guess...
Check the data in your year tags. Is it possible there's a space character(s) after or before the four digit year?

[Tracks4life]

I'm really out of ideas as to why it's not working for you, but I'll take one last oddball guess...
Check the data in your year tags. Is it possible there's a space character(s) after or before the four digit year?

I just figured that out after you posted this lol. I can't believe I missed that little detail. MB is automatically putting a space there by default for some odd reason, so I have to backspace every single time I edit the year tag for the first time.

[phred]

Great minds think alike. But something is still not right as MB doesn't add a space to my years. Nor has anyone else mentioned this before. Perhaps try updating to the latest 3.1 patch before you manually edit all those years.

[Tracks4life]

Great minds think alike. But something is still not right as MB doesn't add a space to my years. Nor has anyone else mentioned this before. Perhaps try updating to the latest 3.1 patch before you manually edit all those years.

No, I don't think it's musicbee. It's the program I use to download music, it tries to autofill information and sucks at doing so.

[theta_wave]

No, I don't think it's musicbee. It's the program I use to download music, it tries to autofill information and sucks at doing so.

If your <Year> format is " 2017", a simple search and replace (via regex) (Musicbee button > Tools > Tagging Tools > Search and Replace) should fix it.

You should try it out first on one song.

1) Highlight the song that has that particular <Year> format
2) Select <Year>
3) the following regex: ^\s
4) Replace is blank
4) Select regex match
5) Hit preview and save changes if you like it

Whoops, Search and Replace doesn't have <Year>.  Well, there's two approaches in handling this: Advanced Search and Repair offered by Additional Tagging Tools or MP3Tag.  In both cases, try it out on one song first before editing the rest.

I. Advanced Search and Repair

1) Create a new preset under Additional Tagging Tools (Musicbee button > Tools > Additional Tagging Tools > Advanced Search and Replace > Advanced Search and Replace > Create): http://musicbee.wikia.com/wiki/Additional_Tagging_and_Reporting_Tools#How_to_install_and_use
2) See config picture:

3) Hit OK, preview and apply if the preview looks right

II. MP3Tag

1) In Musicbee, highlight all of the songs that have leading spaces in <Year> (or your entire library), export it to an external playlist (right click > Add to playlist > External Playlist)
2) Open said external playlist with mp3tag
3) Use the quick action (replace using regular expression)
4) The field should be YEAR, the regular expression should be ^\s and the replace match field should be left blank.  
5) Hit OK to start the replacement.  
6) Again, do it to one song first to see if it works.
7) After editing, you may have to rescan your library if you don't have Musicbee automonitoring your folders for changes.

In all, both approaches should remove the leading space from <Year> while leaving those without leading spaces untouched.

Regex explanation for ^\s:

^ = start of the line
\s = space