Me again with another problem! 

I've got a couple of compilation (or fake) albums with multiple artists on them, but since the first Alpha versions of Amarok 2.0 on Kubuntu Hardy to my current Mandriva 2009.0 install (updated to build date Nov 1 2008) I have always had the problem of Amarok identifying each artist's group of songs on an album as a unique album.

I had these albums under Various Artists in Amarok 1.4, but it doesn't work in 2.0 -- they move there, but it still lists duplicates of each album for each artist. Here's some screenshots!

Here's what my collection ends up looking like:



Even if I try to edit metadata to a song, this is the kind of stuff that happens:


These files are all saved in ~/Music/Various Artists/Top 500, which is where Amarok 1.4 put them. Do I just need to wait for a more stable release?

Have you looked at the blog post that Mark is posting as a response to pretty much all feature request threads on here? The one about things that are not yet implemented in Amarok2? I don't have the URL handy, but you should be able to find it pretty quickly.

http://amarok.kde.org/blog/archives/809 ... rok-2.html

dangle_wtf wrote:Have you looked at the blog post that Mark is posting as a response to pretty much all feature request threads on here? The one about things that are not yet implemented in Amarok2? I don't have the URL handy, but you should be able to find it pretty quickly.

Forgive me if I'm a little slow -- I was about to delete this thread but after reading the entire post and comments, I don't see how it relates -- this isn't a "feature request"; it's an actual problem I'm experiencing with an implemented feature not performing the task it was designed to perform.

The "Show under Various Artists" menu selection ought to make an album appear once under the pseudo-Artist in the Collection called "Various Artists", but instead it places one copy of the album there, and multiple copies of the album remain scattered about all the remaining artists.

Now, I've noticed that this problem is only happening to two of my multi-artist albums while the rest are listed as they should be once under "Various Artists". So not only is it not working, it's inconsistent.

If I should close this thread and file a bug-report instead then I'll gladly do that! I just wanted to see if anyone else was having this problem on the forums, becuase it's happened to me every single time I've used the amarok-nightly package in Kubuntu since the repository opened! Every time I've forced it to rebuild my collection I've had this problem.

I have Amarok 1.94 installed in Gentoo, and I'm having the _exact_ same problem. Only happens to a couple of collection albums. One has a single entry for each track, another 3-CD Album has two entries, one for the first two CDs and the last for the third CD. The disc information is only stored in the filename and the appropriate disc mp3-tag, not in the Album title or anything.

Also, I have a lot of individual tracks which do not have complete Album information (and I'm planning to keep it that way). Each of those songs is listed as "Unknown" _individually_ when I group by Album. I'd expect them to be a single entry.

Also, everytime I want to add an Album to display under "Various Artists" Amarok simply crashes. So as an effect each multi-artist Album in my collection now displays with a lot of clutter in the track list.

Well silly me, I could have sworn that's where I read about album grouping still being a work in progress. Must have been somewhere else. If I remember where it was, I'll post the URL, otherwise, please take it as a given that Various Artist album handling is very much a WIP. Sorry to waste your time!

Don't worry about it! That's all I needed to know: that it's a known problem. This is beta software, so I can certainly wait until all the kinks are ironed out. Thanks for your quick replies!

Well, I just installed the Project Neon version of KDE 4 and Amarok, and I still have the same problem as I've described in the OP. That same album, and a few more, are making different albums for each artist, while other multi-artist albums are sticking together just fine. And nothing I have tried has worked. I've tried re-tagging all the MP3s fresh with identical ID3 tags (except track, title, and artist, obviously), and trying the "Various Artists" functionality just moves each individual album into the sub-tree.

Now that the program is well out of beta, has anyone else heard of/had this problem before?

clintonthegeek wrote:Well, I just installed the Project Neon version of KDE 4 and Amarok, and I still have the same problem as I've described in the OP. That same album, and a few more, are making different albums for each artist, while other multi-artist albums are sticking together just fine. And nothing I have tried has worked. I've tried re-tagging all the MP3s fresh with identical ID3 tags (except track, title, and artist, obviously), and trying the "Various Artists" functionality just moves each individual album into the sub-tree.

Now that the program is well out of beta, has anyone else heard of/had this problem before?

Please see here:

http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=172953

That's the bug that applies to me!

I'll subscribe and wait it out, I suppose. Thank!