Using Amarok version 1.4.4 under Kubuntu (Edgy) I have a problem where the last 4 tracks of the album "The Photo Album" by Death Cab For Cutie are appearing under Various Artists -> The Photo Album instead of alongside the other tracks in the album. The other 6 tracks of the album are correctly listed under Death Cab For Cutie -> The Photo Album.

Here's a screenshot:
[img]http://img381.imageshack.us/img381/8/snapshot1nw1.th.png[/img]

As you can see the tree view on the left shows the last 4 tracks under the wrong artist even though the id3 tags for all tracks have the correct information (as can be seen from the playlist on the right).

Any help or explanation for this anomaly appreciated.

check the suggestions in this thread: http://amarok.kde.org/forum/index.php/topic,13317

There are a variety of reasons albums end up under Various Artists, so there's provision to over-ride it.

Thanks dangle_wtf, I'll try that when I get home from work. Can you explain the criteria Amarok uses to decide when to place tracks under "Various Artists"? I assume it's not a bug, the behaviour is intentional? What makes these tracks different to the others in this particular album?

Tracks by different artists on the same album.

I don't understand? All of the 10 tracks in that album are by the same artist...The id3 tags for all of those tracks have "Death Cab For Cutie" in the artist field and "The Photo Album" in the album field.

If this is a bug then no worries, as long as the workaround solves the problem. I just want to know if I've done something wrong with my id3 tags that I can avoid in the future.

[edit] FYI my library scan completes without any errors.

it can be if there are minor differences in case, extra spaces, that kind of thing. Amarok's collection is case sensitive. Editing all tracks on an album together (not on a per track basis) will give you an indication of whether Amarok considers the album and artist tags are identical. It might also be that some tracks have id3 tag version differences, although I'm not sure this would matter.

In this case the id3 information is identical across all 10 files. To double check I used Amarok to overwrite the artist and album information for all tracks in this album. I also thought it might be a case of id3v1 and id3v2 tags being mixed between the files but I'm not sure how I can view both (e.g. like in winamp). In either case the workaround has solved the problem for me so I'm happy, although I'd like to get to the root of the problem rather than resort to a kludge fix.