Tracks from versions of the same album are all in one

Help and Support
#1

Hi,

I have 6 or so versions of Pink Floyd’s Dark Side. Each version is its own Musicbrainz release ID and tagged so (by Picard), and in its own directory.

After the first scan of my library, Volumio has every track in a single album.

What’s the best approach to fix this?

Thanks

#2

To fix your problem, you shall have Various Artist as albumartis of the problematic albums, if you have other tags, insert the name of the tag in the sources configuration

PS: Check this article out, it might give good info https://volumio.org/get-perfectly-organized-music-library-guide-bliss-founder-dan-gravell/

#3

Hi,
thanks for the link but I’ve read it and it doesn’t help. Unless there’s a bit I’m missing.
It talks about:

  • Cover art
  • Multi-artist compilations
  • Multi-disc albums

None of which apply to my situation: Same artist, same album, different releases.
Plex deals with this fairly well (and when it fails, you can correct it in the GUI), as does Kodi.

Can Volumio handle this situation? Have I missed something?

Thanks.

#4

Sorry, I misinterpreted your question then.
No, Volumio does not handle different releases… sorry

(noted for future updates)

#5

Eek. My search for the perfect music player continues (back to Plex in the meantime). Good thing the iOS app only set me back a few bucks.

Thanks for clarifying.

#6

You can use the Album tag to separate different releases of the same album

Folders can match for ease of identifying/understanding when copying files, etc/
\Dark Side Of The Moon - SACD-2004 <folder
Dark Side Of The Moon [SA-CD 2004] <album tag

\Dark Side Of The Moon - 1973 Harvest-UK <folder
Dark Side Of The Moon [1973 Harvest UK] <album tag

etc

#7

Thanks. I had considered that (actually altering the album tag of the files’ metadata). But would that break things like album cover and info lookups? I mean, there is no such album called “Dark Side Of The Moon [SA-CD 2004]” in any online database. If the lookups were done using the MusicBrainz release ID then that idea would work, but any lookup using the title would fail, no?

#8

I’m not sure what you mean, these are generated manually, not from a database lookup.
I just made up that SACD 2004 as an example to explain the separate folders and matching album tags.
The album artwork is a local file in each folder, folder.jpg, so you can use the correct cover art for the album you have. Again, this is manually managed.

#9

Oh ok. I thought Volumio goes off to some online database to gather things like artwork, posters, album information, release dates, etc. I didn’t release it ONLY used the files’ metadata to populate it’s database.

In that case it should work - although I’m not sure what it will do to my other players. I’ll need to test.

Thanks.

#10

As far as I know, the only images sourced online by Volumio are the band/artist photos.
If you have a paid My Volumio account, some metadata is sourced online, I haven’t experienced that, but paid users seem to say it’s a good thing.

#11

I’m using the free tier at the moment while I trial it. Thanks for the info. I’ll see how it goes.

#12

If you’re using something like MP3Tag to manipulate and manage the tags, you could put the exact album number into the Comment field. Then if it becomes important to use as part of the Album field or similar, you could use an action to append the album label and number to the Album field.

It’s a fair amount of work, but if you aren’t using a paid subscription or Roon or similar (these get metadata from online databases, etc), it’s worth it to get your music collection presenting and playing well on things like Volumio or Moode.

#13

Thanks. I’m using Picard for tagging but the concept is the same.