MusicBee merging different albums with the same title? How to avoid?

[granmacco]

Hi!

First of all, I'm sorry if this has been asked previosuly. I've used my best google-fu to try and find it, but I got nowhere. So... here we go.

I switched a while ago from Itunes from MuisicBee, and it's pretty darn good. But there is a behaviour that I'd like to change.

First of all, when I'm on the Music view, I have selected the "Album Covers" view. For ordering, I order by Album (well, actually, a Virtual tag for album that removes things like hyphens, dashes and characters like that so -Revenge- is sorted along albums such as Revolution, and not albums such as -1. But that's not the problem in question), and I've found that MusicBee merges albums as long as they have the same title.

Well, of course! After all, I JUST sort by Album so if I have two albums called Life, they will be merged.

So I tried going to Sort by -> Define Custom Sorting... and created these orders:

MyVirtualAlbumNameTag / Artist
MyVirtualAlbumNameTag / Album Artist
MyVirtualAlbumNameTag / Album Artist / Artist

My idea was, well. If the ordering is being made the same as in a SQL Language, when two albums have the same title, then it should order the albums by artist. But... that's not the case. The two albums are still merged. Of course, both albums have different artists and different album artists between them, so... where am I going wrong?


(Here you can see the both "Life" albums, one by Fujifabric, another by Rude-alpha, merged under the same album entry. Also you can see the custom ordering)

I also tried modifying MyVirtualAlbumNameTag so it contains the album artist, so it generates a different string to sort by... but it still merges them.

So, any ideas? I may look like something minor, but when you have a couple "Greatest Hits" album... things go weird pretty fast, hahaha

Thank you very much!

[Zak]

I don't think changing the sorting options will make a difference, because MusicBee will have already grouped the tracks before it sorts them.

Have a look at Edit > Edit Preferences > Sorting/Grouping.

There you can specify which tag values, if different, indicate that tracks belong to a different album.
It sounds like you need to add Album Artist as one of the fields.
(Album Name must be included)

[vincent kars]

so -Revenge- is sorted along albums such as Revolution

Have a look here: https://getmusicbee.com/forum/index.php?topic=34047.0

[granmacco]

I don't think changing the sorting options will make a difference, because MusicBee will have already grouped the tracks before it sorts them.

Oooh, so that's why it looked like no matter what I'd try, the grouping would stay the same.

Have a look at Edit > Edit Preferences > Sorting/Grouping.

There you can specify which tag values, if different, indicate that tracks belong to a different album.
It sounds like you need to add Album Artist as one of the fields.
(Album Name must be included)

You're right, the grouping section is almost empty. An Album was only denoted by it's name... when I select Album Artist too, or select the "every album is contained in a different folder" it now splits them accordingly . Thank you very much!!. Although I think maybe I cleared that option in the beginning? Because some albums tagged as compilations by Itunes had different album artists and that option led it to split a given album into multiple entries? I can't remember...

so -Revenge- is sorted along albums such as Revolution

Have a look here: https://getmusicbee.com/forum/index.php?topic=34047.0

Maybe I wasn't clear enough, I have that problem already solved. I was just explaining why my screenshot would contains something as "my virtual tag" to avoid replies about "huh, probably your tag is broken!".

Btw, I think my solution is a little bit better than the one in that topic. I actually have two tags for this:

VirtualSortAlbum2: $RxReplace(<Sort Album>,"^(\"|#|\(|\*|\.| |~|¡|¿|\+|÷|\$|')+(.*)(\"|\)|!|\?)?(.*$)?","$2$4")
VirtualSortAlbum3: $RxReplace(<VirtualSortAlbum2>,"^(\d)(.*$)","zzzzzzz $1$2")

Why two? Because splitting certain logic in multiple variables make it easier to understand and to maintain. The first tag removes the symbols "#(*. ~¡¿+÷$' from the first word in the album name, and then erases any closing symbol such as ")!?. Why doing it this way? Because if you just filter the first character, (Re)venge would get sorted as Re)venge. And I'd like it to be sorted as Revenge.

The second tag relies on the first one and it just replicates the Itunes sorting where numbers and weird symbols would get pushed to the end of the library. Maybe it's just a pet peeve of mine, but I just can't stand looking at the beginning of my library full of albums with titles as descriptive as 1, 2, 12, 123... Just go to to the end of the line please, I guess I love you too, but that doesn't mean I want to see your face every day lol.

[The Incredible Boom Boom]

VirtualSortAlbum2: $RxReplace(<Sort Album>,"^(\"|#|\(|\*|\.| |~|¡|¿|\+|÷|\$|')+(.*)(\"|\)|!|\?)?(.*$)?","$2$4")
VirtualSortAlbum3: $RxReplace(<VirtualSortAlbum2>,"^(\d)(.*$)","zzzzzzz $1$2")

Why two? Because splitting certain logic in multiple variables make it easier to understand and to maintain. The first tag removes the symbols "#(*. ~¡¿+÷$' from the first word in the album name, and then erases any closing symbol such as ")!?. Why doing it this way? Because if you just filter the first character, (Re)venge would get sorted as Re)venge. And I'd like it to be sorted as Revenge.

The second tag relies on the first one and it just replicates the Itunes sorting where numbers and weird symbols would get pushed to the end of the library. Maybe it's just a pet peeve of mine, but I just can't stand looking at the beginning of my library full of albums with titles as descriptive as 1, 2, 12, 123... Just go to to the end of the line please, I guess I love you too, but that doesn't mean I want to see your face every day lol.

Code

$RxReplace($RxReplace(<Sort Album>,"^(\"|#|\(|\*|\.| |~|¡|¿|\+|÷|\$|')+(.*)(\"|\)|!|\?)?(.*$)?","$2$4"),"^(\d)(.*$)","zzzzzzz $1$2")

...will save you a Virtual Tag.

[granmacco]

VirtualSortAlbum2: $RxReplace(<Sort Album>,"^(\"|#|\(|\*|\.| |~|¡|¿|\+|÷|\$|')+(.*)(\"|\)|!|\?)?(.*$)?","$2$4")
VirtualSortAlbum3: $RxReplace(<VirtualSortAlbum2>,"^(\d)(.*$)","zzzzzzz $1$2")

Why two? Because splitting certain logic in multiple variables make it easier to understand and to maintain. The first tag removes the symbols "#(*. ~¡¿+÷$' from the first word in the album name, and then erases any closing symbol such as ")!?. Why doing it this way? Because if you just filter the first character, (Re)venge would get sorted as Re)venge. And I'd like it to be sorted as Revenge.

The second tag relies on the first one and it just replicates the Itunes sorting where numbers and weird symbols would get pushed to the end of the library. Maybe it's just a pet peeve of mine, but I just can't stand looking at the beginning of my library full of albums with titles as descriptive as 1, 2, 12, 123... Just go to to the end of the line please, I guess I love you too, but that doesn't mean I want to see your face every day lol.

Code

$RxReplace($RxReplace(<Sort Album>,"^(\"|#|\(|\*|\.| |~|¡|¿|\+|÷|\$|')+(.*)(\"|\)|!|\?)?(.*$)?","$2$4"),"^(\d)(.*$)","zzzzzzz $1$2")

...will save you a Virtual Tag.

There is no need for it!

Why two? Because splitting certain logic in multiple variables makes it easier to understand and to maintain.

EDIT: Maybe I wasn't clear enough, but my only problem is with MusicBee merging multiple albums with the same name, and Zak already gave a really good answer. There is no problem at all with the virtual tags!

[The Incredible Boom Boom]

There are only a limited number of these special tags.

I once thought similarly to you when I first started using them, but I eventually (and quickly) reached a point where I would have to sacrifice functionality I wanted from MB because I was running out of Virtual Tags. It's ultimately up to you, of course, but I was only positing an idea that could be helpful for the future. 🤷🏿‍♂️