albums split into two instances when I rate certain songs

[jsh]

I've actually had this problem for years, but am finally wondering if there is a solution to it. I can't figure out how it happens with any consistency, I've noticed it happens the most in compilations that have different values in the year field. After I rate a song, whenever a rescan or whatever happens, a new instance of the album will be in the list and considered separate, even though they have the same title and album artist tags. The only surefire way to fix it has been deleting the album and adding it again, but obviously this is cumbersome.

Is there some way to avoid this problem? For more info, before I transfer files, I edit the tags in foobar2000 and check the boxes to update for idv2, 3, and whatever the third one is.

Other than that, still have preferred this player over all others for nearly a decade now!

[GoneMAD]

i've had this report in the past but could never reproduce it (report wasnt via rating.. but by regular tag edits)

gonemadmusicplayer.blogspot.com/p/dealing-with-split-albums.html

Shows the rules used when grouping albums.

The below point is the only thing i could potentially think of:

Albums with some files containing and albumartist tag and some files without the albumartist tag will not be grouped together
Use the "song info" option to view the actual tags of a file. The tag editor will automatically populate the albumartist field with the artist if it is blank, so it is not a good way to tell if the albumartist tag is correct.

gmmp will show the artist in the album artist tag if the albumartist is empty. If you have a mix of some tracks with no album artist and some with albumartist tag set in the same album.. they will be split like mentioned above. Its a case i will have to test out myself.. but it could be that saving tags in any form (rating or tag edits), is then writing the albumartist tag that was previously blank

[jsh]

Here is an example of a split that occurred the other day. The only thing I changed was rating 1 song, and after I added a different album to my folder and gmmp scanned everything, there were two albums. I have no idea if this is helpful:

media.discordapp.net/attachments/525396831337840650/1103005550305878077/Screenshot_20230502_130626_GoneMAD.jpg
Here you can see there are now two copies

media.discordapp.net/attachments/525396831337840650/1103005560879718470/Screenshot_20230502_130642_GoneMAD.jpg
Data from a song on the original one

media.discordapp.net/attachments/525396831337840650/1103005567968096346/Screenshot_20230502_130658_GoneMAD.jpg
Data from the new one created

[GoneMAD]

screenshots are unfortunately not helpful for this issue. I need a set of files that can be used to reproduce the issue consistently.. as mentioned i've never been able to get any of my music to split using the in app editor or rating change. All my music is correctly tagged with something like musicbrainz picard, mp3tag or beets.io, so im never missing any fields

[GoneMAD]

actually. the one thing that stands out is the year is different in the one that split off and neither of those files have an albumartist. That is one scenario i did not test. The scanner only groups songs with different years together is if they are in the same folder and picked up in the same scan. In general if you want things to always group correctly in gmmp you would put each album in its own folder.. and make sure every file has an albumartist tag

I added the above condition to my bug list to see if i can recreate it splitting

[GoneMAD]

yeah i think i see whats happening.. im guessing the song split off has a different year than the album year? Tag change / rating change write to the file which update its file's lastModifiedTime. the scanner uses lastModifiedTime to determine whether to rescan it. In the process of rescanning, it tries to look up its album.. which uses year to find it.. doesnt find the album.. so in the process of updating the tags in the database.. the scanenr things there is no album associated with it so it creates a new one. It should be fixable.. but not likely a quick and easy fix

its always been in my opinion the year field should be the album year.. not the track year but many taggers disagree with that mindset.

[MotleyGord]

May 2, 2023 21:02:13 GMT -5 GoneMAD said:

its always been in my opinion the year field should be the album year.. not the track year but many taggers disagree with that mindset.

I agree with this. The YEAR tag is supposed to represent the release year of the ALBUM. So in theory this should match for all of the tracks. And there should always be an ALBUMARTIST tag as well, even if it is “Various Artists” or something similar. There is a separate field for ORIGINAL YEAR that can be used if you want to keep track of compilations, but there aren’t too many players that can access it (none on mobile platforms that I am aware of).

[GoneMAD]

k i was able to reproduce and fix this. thanks