Author Topic: AutoDJ after correcting Artist tag - Solved  (Read 1239 times)

avitar

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In my old music player (Itunes) I used unique names for some artists to simplify searches (America*/America : Queen*/Queen). Today I fixed my library to reflect the correct artist name.

When I use AutoDJ on these corrected songs it only lists songs from the seed artist. As an example, using AutoDJ on a song by America will result in a list that only contains songs by America. If I change to an artist that didn't need a correction, like the Eagles, I see a nice random list of similar songs as expected.

 I thought that maybe "rescan all files" would fix the problem but it didn't. How do I get AutoDJ to recognize the corrected tracks and develop a random playlist like it does for the other songs in my library?

I am extremely new to MB so I'm sure the answer is due to my lack of knowledge about the software.

Note: This shouldn't be a problem with no available songs to suggest. I have an extensive library. I am also only using this on very popular artists so I am sure that last.fm has ratings for them.


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I really regret not knowing about MB years ago. Working in Itunes for 10+ years wasn't fun. MB anticipates my needs even before I know them. Excellent work!
Last Edit: May 19, 2018, 07:31:21 PM by avitar

redwing

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Make sure you edited the right artist tag. Check the tags of those files with MB's tag editor and tag inspector (which can be launched from tag editor).

psychoadept

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It might help if you could post a screenshot of your auto dj settings.  I'm not sure how the artist value would affect auto dj selection unless you're using a filter of some kind.
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avitar

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@redwing - I edited a hundred  or so songs at the same time by using the tag editor to remove an asterisk. Picture #1 shows some of the America songs that were edited and the tag editor. Above them you will see some Alabama songs that have yet to be edited.

@psychoadept - I surmised that the AutoDJ would us the artist name in an API call to Last.FM in order to find similar artists. Does it work some other way? I posted a screen shot of the AutoDJ settings.

Thanks for the responses guys. I'll have to step away from the comp for two hours to run some saturday morning errands, but anything you can add to help fix the problem is appreciated. :)





Last Edit: May 19, 2018, 04:23:10 PM by avitar

Freddy Barker

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edit - hmm.. I don't see images. I will try posting those again as soon as I return from errands since I'm not familiar with the way to do that.

Details here: Posting_Screenshots

Freddy  ;)

psychoadept

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Your image tags look about right. Did you copy the BB code option at imgur?

Anyway, yes it's probably something about the last.fm setting that's causing the problem.

I suggest looking at some of the affected files using the tag inspector (from within tag editor) to see what happened with the underlying artist tag. It may be that only the display artist was affected by your edit, or something like that.
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avitar

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@Freddy - Thanks for the assist. I got the images posted. :)

@ psycjoadept - I took a look at the tag inspector and the artist (and all fields) are filled in. I'm speculating that the issue is that somehow this information wasn't changed in the MB database...


Last Edit: May 19, 2018, 05:05:31 PM by avitar

avitar

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After a lot of poking, prodding and looking around I found a solution. It isn't elegant but it works.

SOLUTION: MB stores files containing results of the API call to last.fm for similar artists in the C:\Users\**USER**\AppData\Local\MusicBee\InternalCache folder.  Each file is named using the following convention - **ARTISTNAME**.similar.dat

In my case, since artists were improperly named, these files were empty. Essentially MB went to last.fm to ask who was similar to America*. Last.fm would respond with an empty result because it didn't know who America with an * was.
 
When I deleted the * in the artist song tag, AutoDJ still wouldn't work. The reason is that MB didn't make a new request to last.fm for the revised artist name (America). To force MB to make a new request I deleted the existing America.similar.dat file.

The next time I played the song and started AutoDJ, MB looked for the America.similar.dat file. When MB saw the file was missing it made a new request to last.fm and saved the results. After that the AutoDJ worked fine giving a range of similar songs for the updated artist name.

So if you cannot make AutoDJ for a particular artist work you can force a requery of last.fm by deleting the **ARTISTNAME**.similar.dat file.

There is probably a way to force an update from the program rather than manually but I was unable to find it.