How do I consolidate albums?

[jkingsbury]

Hi, my albums are showing up with several entries and one song on each.....how do I consolidate them into one?

The instructions I have seen online are awfully complicated...

[frankz]

Holy Christmas with this question 5 times a week.  

Option 1.
a. Edit->Edit Preferences->Sorting/Grouping...files for each album are organized into their own folder.
b. Put each album in its own folder from within musicbee

Option 2.
a. Edit->Edit Preferences->Sorting/Grouping...the following fields define an album
b. Set the fields that define an album. Think about albums titled things like "Greatest Hits" and "Gold" when you do this (i.e. don't just use album name)
c. Make sure everything you want to be seen as one album shares the fields you set in step b in common.

[phred]

And option 3:

Not complicated at all. But first you should understand that MB is a music -manager- first. And then a music player. If your albums aren't tagged properly you'll get issues such as you're experiencing.

An album requires consistent tags. All the tags from each album, with the exception of the track title, should be the same. Artist, album artist, album title, and year should be the same. If the album is a compilation, with a number of different artists, make sure album artist is Various Artists, or something similar. When album artist is missing, MB assumes the artist is the album artist. Which would result in the tracks from one album looking like they're from a number of albums.

[jkingsbury]

Thanks folks - really useful   

[Dagwould]

I organised all my music into albums: one album per folder. I imported into MB, and the whole lot got scrambled. Tracks are in the wrong albums, albums combined into big albums, some tracks orphaned.

Its a mess.

Do I start again, or what?

Not only is it a mess in MB, but it has junked my folder structure on disk.

I feel like getting out of MB.

[Steven]

I organised all my music into albums: one album per folder. I imported into MB, and the whole lot got scrambled. Tracks are in the wrong albums, albums combined into big albums, some tracks orphaned.

MB would only move files when importing if you had already enabled Auto-Organise in the library preferences. When you enabled that setting you would have set the tags for MB to use and MB would have shown you the results for the existing files. When importing the new files the same auto-organise rules would be applied. So you will either need to edit the tags for the files so the files organise as you want or you will need to change the auto-organise rules

[The Incredible Boom Boom]

Once again, I propose multiple, all-capital letters warnings to prevent people from absentmindedly turning on the auto-organize feature.

[frankz]

Have you actually tried to turn it on? After you check this option, there's a giant orange exclamation mark that displays a dire warning when you hover it.

At some point, the persons undertaking these actions of their own free will become responsible for their own systems, don't they?

[The Incredible Boom Boom]

Have you actually tried to turn it on? After you check this option, there's a giant orange exclamation mark that displays a dire warning when you hover it.

Nope. Lol

With the amount of individuals who seem determined to screw their file structure up by not or half-reading what changing settings will do, the text in all-caps that Steven has to copy/paste at least once a week might deter the Challenged who are set on screwing things up. 🤷🏿

EDIT: I just clicked it and I see the warning symbol, but I can see how it's an easy miss for the Challenged. Also, for me, the dialog box that appears is worded a bit oddly, although the name of the setting alone is too scary for me to even consider going through with it. But, I can definitely see how easy the click-happy Challenged would go nuts checking the setting.

[frankz]

I don't know. I'm not all that smart, and the first time I clicked it to see what it meant and was faced with that complicated scary looking organize dialog, I backed out like the meme of Homer Simpson backing into the hedge.

[sveakul]

LOL!