Adding New Tracks To Existing Albums

[Si6776]

I have several compilation albums which I often add additional tracks to, but each time I do this GMMP creates a 'new' album instead of adding to the existing one.

All tags are the same, and other music players don't do this.

If I clear and rescan the database, the albums then display correctly with the recently added tracks, but this then disrupts my shuffle queue and I have to start it again.

Is there any way to add additional tracks to existing albums without clearing and rescanning the database?

[GoneMAD]

assuming the multi folder album setting is enabled in the scanner settings.. if you match the album artist, album name, and year it should correctly add to the same album. Having the albumartist tag set is the important part

[Si6776]

So, if the albumartist field is blank, on both the existing album and the new tracks, would that stop them merging?

Also, I found one with a year in the year field when the year in the original album was blank or different, and that seemed to trip it up as well, even though I have it set to ignore the year in the settings.

[GoneMAD]

Nov 27, 2021 5:09:23 GMT -5 Si6776 said:

So, if the albumartist field is blank, on both the existing album and the new tracks, would that stop them merging?

Also, I found one with a year in the year field when the year in the original album was blank or different, and that seemed to trip it up as well, even though I have it set to ignore the year in the settings.

Yes you need the albumartist populated in all the files if you want various artist albums to group correctly

[Si6776]

Thanks. This isn't a various artist album, but I get the point.

[Si6776]

Sorry but unfortunately I'm still having issues with this. When adding a track to an album, with identical Album Artist and all other tags, it's still creating a 'new' album, rather than adding the track to the existing album.

This is incredibly frustrating as I don't want to keep disrupting my shuffled queue in order to clear the database and rescan, which seems to be the only way to get all albums to display correctly.

If this is a case of getting tags right, then how does clearing the database and a full rescan rectify the issue, when the tags haven't been changed?

This doesn't happen in any other music player, but equally, no other music player I've found has an 'Enqueue Shuffled' feature, which I find very useful, so I want to stick with GMMP as all other aspects are great and work perfectly.

[Si6776]

I think I may have found the issue. I have the Year set to Always Ignore in the Scanner Settings, but it doesn't seem to be ignoring the year. Having changed the year on several fragmented albums, they have now grouped as they should.

[GoneMAD]

Dec 16, 2021 20:44:01 GMT -5 Si6776 said:

I think I may have found the issue. I have the Year set to Always Ignore in the Scanner Settings, but it doesn't seem to be ignoring the year. Having changed the year on several fragmented albums, they have now grouped as they should.

that's only for initial scans in the same folder.. if you want to add to an existing album you need to match the year. gonemadmusicplayer.blogspot.com/p/dealing-with-split-albums.html

"If the album files are in different folders or you adding extra files to an existing album:
Make sure Advanced Scanner Settings - MultiFolder Albums is turned on
Make sure not only the albumartist and album tags are identical, also make sure the year tag is identical. All 3 are used by the scanner to group albums in multiple folders."

i also said it in my original response so it should be no surprise: "assuming the multi folder album setting is enabled in the scanner settings.. if you match the album artist, album name, and year it should correctly add to the same album. Having the albumartist tag set is the important part"

[Si6776]

Sorry to resurrect this yet again, but I'm still having issues.

I have a compilation 'album' called Music Mix, which has over 1000 tracks in it by different artists. These are odds and sods of individual tracks that I either don't have the full albums for, or don't keep the full albums on my phone. All of these tracks, plus several other full albums (and selections of albums) are added to my queue, and shuffled. Each time I add a track to my 'Music Mix' compilation, I 'Enqueue Shuffled' them to my queue so I have a continuously playing random tracklist, which can be added to at any time. It currently has 3870 tracks in it, and I am up to track 911. The shuffle queue works perfectly, and adds new tracks to the queue still to be played, which is brilliant.

Now, here's the annoying thing. I know I've asked this before, and you've answered it , but still, when I add a track to my Music Mix compilation, with EXACTLY the same tags as the other tracks, and AlbumArtist is 'Various', with the Year being set at 0, these new tracks (or even just one) appear as a separate album, and are not merged with the existing Music Mix album. I have checked time and time again that the tags are identical, and this even happens when I replace one track with an identical track by over-writing it.

I usually use iTunes as my desktop music library, and enter the tag details this way. The tracks are in AAC format, and the 'Compilation' box in iTunes is ticked.

Once a new track appears as a separate album in GMMP, I then have to go through a series of processes, by selecting both my Music Mix album, and the new track(s) to be added to it, then in Tag Editor, I once again enter Various for the AlbumArtist, 'Music Mix' for the album title, and 0 for the year. This is with two albums selected, so the edited tags must then be identical, and STILL the new tracks appear as a separate album. To clarify, I am re-entering what is already in the tags data for two selected albums.

I then open Settings and start the Scanner, at which point, if I'm lucky, the two albums will join as they are supposed to. If I'm unlucky, I end up still with two separate albums, but each with even more, and different tracks, divided between them. I then go through the process above again, re-entering the tags data with the two supposedly identical albums selected.

I have tried telling GMMP to ignore the year, but that has no effect, and it doesn't seem to make any difference if I tick the box to ignore AlbumArtist tag either. Adding or replacing tracks in an album is a complete faff every time I need to do it. If I do a Delete Database > Start Scan, the albums all group perfectly without any fiddling about, but if I do that, presumably the current queue would also be deleted and I would have to start all over again.

I'm sure you must be fed up with me raising this again, but it's incredibly frustrating, as I'm doing all that you've suggested, and the problem still occurs.

Thanks for any further advice.

[GoneMAD]

i am not sure what to tell you, it sounds like whatever you are using to tag your music externally from your phone is not tagging them correct. I loaded up some various songs in mp3tag and tagged them the exact same way you described. Copied 4 over to my phone in the same folder. Ran scan, single album under Various was created name Music Mix. I add another song tagged the same way to the same folder, run another scan, and that song is added to the same album. No duplicates

Itunes is not exactly one to follow tagging standards. mp3tag is probably the most versatile tagger that actually follows all the tagging standards correctly. GMMP typically reads exactly what mp3tag shows

[Si6776]

Two things I would add:

Firstly, this doesn't happen with any other music player I've used. I have other music players installed on my phone and the new tracks all merge into the albums as they are supposed to with them, so this is something unique to GMMP. The other things that seems to be unique to GMMP is the Enqueue Shuffled action, which does exactly what I need, so I really want to keep using this player.

Secondly, is there a reason why deleting the database before scanning seems to result in all albums being grouped correctly when a normal scan doesn't? If the tags were incorrect, wouldn't the albums still appear separately even after a delete database > scan?

I will try the tagger you suggested, but could the issue be to do with the files being AAC and not MP3? The reason for this is that gapless playback works better with seemingly anything other than MP3s.

[MotleyGord]

Jan 26, 2022 20:05:58 GMT -5 Si6776 said:

Firstly, this doesn't happen with any other music player I've used. I have other music players installed on my phone and the new tracks all merge into the albums as they are supposed to with them, so this is something unique to GMMP. The other things that seems to be unique to GMMP is the Enqueue Shuffled action, which does exactly what I need, so I really want to keep using this player.

Secondly, is there a reason why deleting the database before scanning seems to result in all albums being grouped correctly when a normal scan doesn't? If the tags were incorrect, wouldn't the albums still appear separately even after a delete database > scan?

Many other players simply use the standard Android music api and that database is somewhat limited. So odds are it will add almost anything with similar tag values into something that already exists.

GoneMAD builds it’s own library, which is far more comprehensive. That is why we get the benefit of having sort tags that work - no other Android based player today does this that I am aware of. But it also means it is pretty picky about combining new tracks into existing albums, even if they are in the same folder and have identical Album and AlbumArtist tag fields. I have noticed this myself, most of my library is in ALAC format, so .m4a extensions as well. I don’t often add new tracks to an existing album, so it doesn’t typically cause me any grief. But when I have made changes to my library I usually delete the database and run a fresh new scan. That 5 minutes or so saves a ton of grief.

[Si6776]

Jan 26, 2022 20:27:13 GMT -5 MotleyGord said:

Jan 26, 2022 20:05:58 GMT -5 Si6776 said:

Firstly, this doesn't happen with any other music player I've used. I have other music players installed on my phone and the new tracks all merge into the albums as they are supposed to with them, so this is something unique to GMMP. The other things that seems to be unique to GMMP is the Enqueue Shuffled action, which does exactly what I need, so I really want to keep using this player.

Secondly, is there a reason why deleting the database before scanning seems to result in all albums being grouped correctly when a normal scan doesn't? If the tags were incorrect, wouldn't the albums still appear separately even after a delete database > scan?

Many other players simply use the standard Android music api and that database is somewhat limited. So odds are it will add almost anything with similar tag values into something that already exists.

GoneMAD builds it’s own library, which is far more comprehensive. That is why we get the benefit of having sort tags that work - no other Android based player today does this that I am aware of. But it also means it is pretty picky about combining new tracks into existing albums, even if they are in the same folder and have identical Album and AlbumArtist tag fields. I have noticed this myself, most of my library is in ALAC format, so .m4a extensions as well. I don’t often add new tracks to an existing album, so it doesn’t typically cause me any grief. But when I have made changes to my library I usually delete the database and run a fresh new scan. That 5 minutes or so saves a ton of grief.

Thanks for the additional explanation. Yes, deleting the database and running a fresh new scan does usually resolve any issues, but I assume it would also remove the existing play queue, so when I'm over 900 songs in to a 3000 track queue in shuffle, I really don't want to have to start all over again every time I want to add or replace one or two tracks.

[GoneMAD]

Jan 26, 2022 20:05:58 GMT -5 Si6776 said:

Two things I would add:

Firstly, this doesn't happen with any other music player I've used. I have other music players installed on my phone and the new tracks all merge into the albums as they are supposed to with them, so this is something unique to GMMP. The other things that seems to be unique to GMMP is the Enqueue Shuffled action, which does exactly what I need, so I really want to keep using this player.

Secondly, is there a reason why deleting the database before scanning seems to result in all albums being grouped correctly when a normal scan doesn't? If the tags were incorrect, wouldn't the albums still appear separately even after a delete database > scan?

I will try the tagger you suggested, but could the issue be to do with the files being AAC and not MP3? The reason for this is that gapless playback works better with seemingly anything other than MP3s.

"Secondly, is there a reason why deleting the database before scanning seems to result in all albums being grouped correctly when a normal scan doesn't? If the tags were incorrect, wouldn't the albums still appear separately even after a delete database > scan?"

albums scanned in during the same scan are cached locally and dont have to do a database lookup to find a match. files in a single folder are much more forgiving in being grouped together because the assumption gmmp makes is files in the same folder are most likely part of the same file. On scans after the initial, its only scanning in new files.. so from the scanners point of view a single new file in an existing folder is the same thing as putting a new file into a new folder

With multi folder albums off, a new album will always be made because it doesnt search the database for a match. The naming is a bit deceiving but the majority of people are adding files one at a time to the same folder and expect it to be grouped with an existing folder. With that setting on it will do a db query trying to match albumartist, album, and year

"I will try the tagger you suggested, but could the issue be to do with the files being AAC and not MP3? The reason for this is that gapless playback works better with seemingly anything other than MP3s."

There shouldnt be any fundamental difference in how gmmp sees m4a tags and mp3 tags. The tagging library handles all that and gives gmmp the info in the same format (so the scanner doesnt really know or care what the tag format was)

[Si6776]

Whatever I do, I can't get this to work properly. I must have synced tags on two albums that shouldn't have been separated, at least twenty times this evening and done as many scans, but the additional tracks just refused to join the existing album. I eventually resorted to a Delete Database > Full Scan, which rectified the issue immediately, but I lost my place in my play queue and have had to start again.

Is there any way a queue can be saved when doing a full rescan after deleting the database?