Okay, here\'s the deal:

All my MP3s are MusicBrainz-tagged. Stored in a /artist/year - album/ -kinda directory setup.

Some situations occur where I\'ll have 2 \"albums\" by the same artist that have the same name.

ex:
Def Leppard - Hysteria (the 12-track full-length album)
Def Leppard - Hysteria (4-track single with unreleased \"b-sides\")
Stored in separate directories, properly MB-tagged

Now, both of these are showing up mixed together as one album in amaroK.


I realise it\'s going by the artist-albumname combination here, but is there any way to separate these in amaroK?

Er, short of changing the ID3 tags. Is there no way to use something like the MB album ID number stored in the tag to show they are different albums? Or even (less preferable, but would work) their directory?

Def Lep on MB

Just using Lep as an example, this could happen with any artist who releases the title track of their album as a single.

As can be seen on the MB link above, there\'s an album \"Hysteria\" as well as a single \"Hysteria\". There\'s nothing in the title to indicate a difference, the difference is noted in the album \"type\" instead, as well as having unique MB album ID nr\'s.

But since Amarok apparently does lookups on MB but doesn\'t use info like the MB album ID nr or album type, there\'s no info (short of possibly having the album/single in different directories on the comp like I do) to indicate which tracks come from which release.

Yes, I realise the following:
- Not everyone uses MB to tag, so using the ID\'s won\'t work for everyone.
- Not everyone keeps their music files organized (computer directories messier than the hair clogging their shower drain), so going by directories won\'t work for everyone either.


I\'ve tried everything short of messing up my MP3 tags, and there\'s apparently no way to separate these when doing sorts by album in the Collection tab. (If I have \'em in the Playlist, I can add the Directory column and sort by Directory, but I don\'t normally have both the album and single in the playlist at the same time.)


Maybe, considering amaroK already has built-in MB tagging, there could be an option to separate albums by MB album idnr (where applicable)? \"option\" to avoid messing up people who don\'t use MB to tag, and \"where applicable\" so it doesn\'t exclude file types and CDs and such that can\'t be tagged.

The MB album ID number gets placed in the ID3v2 tag in the official MB tagger (I use it via wine), so it shouldn\'t be too difficult to implement this as an option.


A second \"option\" could be to indicate different directories are different albums, for those who keep their files organized.


Just throwing these out there for feedback and opinions and such, also whether it\'s even possible with the amaroK code without a major rewrite, before posting it as a \"wish\" or anything....

why dont you just tag them
- albumname
- albumname (single)

Because they\'re MB-tagged.

Yeah, that\'s the \"simple\" solution. But people using MB to tag their files aren\'t going to think to do that. Which will end up with others having the same issue when they tag via MB, whether in the official MB tagger or grabbing MB info via amaroK.

Just thinking if MB is implemented in amaroK, should go all the way and at least allow for the option to use the unique album ID\'s from MB to differentiate albums.

Actually, not just an issue for singles. Just noted that both versions of Hanoi Rock\'s \"12 Shots on the Rocks\" disc are blended as 1 in amaroK. (Have 2 versions because the EU and U.S. releases have different mastering and tracks.)
They\'re tagged via MB using the 2 different listings there, but mixed as one in amaroK.


I agree that adding something like (single) will do the trick. But it adds an (easily forgotten) layer of trickiness to those that use MB to tag their files.

There\'s a few interacting issues here:

1. Yes, pretty much every music app treats their metadata in a braindead way that means you can\'t have two \'albums\' (most apps treat every collection of tracks as an \'album\' disregarding singles, EPs tec.) with the same title since \'albumness\' is usually based solely on the text of the artist name and the text of the \'album\' title. This assumption has been there since mp3 players evolved from CD player apps and single file players. It breaks quite often (e.g. the single-album example given, more than one \'Greatest Hits\', owning releases from different countries, re-releases etc.) but it\'s been broken for so long, and people have been working round the problem for so long, that people look at you as if you are crazy when you want to have to \'albums\' by the same artist with the same name. Oh well, it only took 5 years for everyone to copy the iTunes library based on metadata approach, maybe if Apple sees this kind of advanced metadata as a way to differentiate themselves in the DRM wars then everyone else will catch up by the end of the decade.

2. The MusicBrainz data is (or at least attempts to be) a fully normalised database (for various practical fudgy hacky reasons it doesn\'t even achieve 1st Normal Form, but it\'s nearly there, and moving in the right direction). Fully normalised databases are not attempts to describe the \'right\' or \'correct\' way to present data, instead they try to break it down into its constituent \'atoms\' so that it can recombined in a variety of ways to suit your purpose e.g. a database that stores firstname, middle initial and surname and format the name in various ways for display or use, \"Bloggs, Q, Joe\", \"Joe Bloggs\", \"J Bloggs\" etc. etc.

3. Having said that, it\'s a bit daft of a program that utilises the MusicBrainz data to not spot that the two data models clash slightly and to use the information provided to make it conform to Amaroks model e.g. to append \"Single\" (or other user configurable string) to the end of the \'album\' title\'s of things marked as singles in MusicBrainz. I personally do this with a python script (also changing various other things to my liking e.g. changing titles of UK single releases with (disc 1) in them to have CD1 instead, using Soundtrack, and Audiobook as genre\'s and so on, calculating the total number of discs in a set, all based on the info that MusicBrainz provides)

Well, I for one have noticed that, in a similar senario. Mine consists of having an album named \"Greatest Hits\"...but having multiple \"Greatest Hits\" albums by different artists. Thus, when a song is played in amarok it brings up the greatest hits album by said artist in the info panel, except there are 226 tracks listed under it because EVERY artist\'s greatest hits album content is listed there. From what has been discussed here it seems the issue is deeper than just parsing the artist field along with the album field when displaying that data...

Of course, I could be talking of something completely different, and as stated above for singles vs. albums I usually slap an [ep] or something on the end of the single\'s name...

- ryan

On this side of the Atlantic the problem is solved already. They don\'t release singles anymore.

I guess it would take someone who has this problem to hack on amaroK to fix it. My different albums are all strangely titled uniquely!