Absolute beginner - installed, now completely confused!

[Jaybee]

Hi - I've just installed Musicbee because a friend has it on her computer and I liked the way it showed all the album covers and info about the artists.

After installing it on mine it seems to have taken loads of tracks out of compilation albums, mixed them all together and listed them in the left column, and then there's an even more random list of tracks in the middle window...

Also it seems to think every individual artist on a compilation album with a single track should be seperately listed and that their one track should be described as an album!

My music is all in one folder (Libraries/username/MyMusic/MP3s) and is simply organised into folders for artists, subfolders for their albums and seperate folders for compilations, and I don't want Musicbee to move it around or copy it anywhere, just to show it in a nice neat list of artists and album names, not all pulled apart and mixed up.

Is there any way of making it lay things out neatly, and especially make it understand that tracks in compilation albums should be kept together in the album they're in, like maybe just using the names of the folders they're in?

Up till now I've used VLC and dragged and dropped files onto it, and this worked really easily but I do like the way Musicbee gets all the artist info, so if anyone can help me make it work it'd be really cool!

(BTW I have looked through the FAQs and other posts, but to be honest couldn't understand how to use any of the answers to sort this out    )

[CritterMan]

Start with this:
Ctrl+o > Sorting/Grouping > select: files for each album are organized in their own folder

Then check out the link below. It's a bit old, but it will get you started.
https://musicbee.fandom.com/wiki/The_Anatomy_of_MusicBee

[psychoadept]

Hi, welcome to the forum!

Critterman's suggestion will help if your files are organized with one album per folder, but I also recommend you go back to the FAQ and spend some time with the entry for "Why are tracks from the same album shown separately in my library?"

In particular, it sounds like you may be using artist when you want album artist in these different locations. The left column is probably the thumbnail browser, and yes, if set to Artist, that will show every single track artist in your collection.

Also be sure you get familiar with how sort by and group by affect the way your library is displayed. Maybe try out some different view options from the menu at the top left of the main panel, too.

[f1apjack]

Hey, i'm another new user who is also having these basic problems. I'll make sure to read all the FAQ but I'm just getting in touch with OP so we can share in the confusion together and hopefull share any solutions that we come across.



EDIT: The problem I'm having is with compilation albums, they are causing the left hand side organised by album artist to be pretty messy. Sorting by album doesn't fix it either!

[psychoadept]

Welcome to the forum, f1apjack!

Do your compilations have a consistent album artist, like "Various Artists"?

[f1apjack]

The album doesn't have a consistant artist, so I changed that and now it's much better. Thanks for the tip! Just feel a bit bad for the artists as I've just 'wiped them out' haha

[psychoadept]

The album doesn't have a consistant artist, so I changed that and now it's much better. Thanks for the tip! Just feel a bit bad for the artists as I've just 'wiped them out' haha

Is it artist or album artist that you changed?

[jasongnome]

Problems like this are nearly always to do with bad tags. MusicBee is excellent at working with tags, but it's only as good as the tags themselves!

There are two tags you need to look at:

Artist: This is the artist for that track
Album Artist: This is the main artist you want the album sorted as.

For many albums they are the same, but for a compilation you want Various Artists as the Album Artist tag and the artist that did the track on the Artist tag.

MusicBee has the facility to be very flexible with the Artist tag to make organising better. If an artist goes by two similar names, you can still link them by using this feature, you can also have multiple artists in the field. When in edit mode (right click the track and click edit) you can click on the dots at the side of the artist tag. A new menu will open up. The top field is where you enter the artist as you want it to be shown, and the lower fields are where you can actually put the artists you want the program to know are actually on the track. This enables theatre modes to show the correct images etc etc.

Eg. A track by Eminem featuring Dr. Dre, you might want that in the top field, but then have "Eminem" and "Dr. Dre" in the other fields. The pictures will then cycle between the artists in Aritst Images mode.

You can also do this with bands that keep slightly changing their name. For example Fuzzbox called themselves We've Got A Fuzzbox & We're Gonna Use It!!! early in their career. In the top field I have whatever they're calling themselves on that particular album, in the lower field I have Fuzzbox. That way MusicBee sorts them as one artist, but it displays the correct name for the era.