[SOLVED] Different versions of the same album

[dastinger]

Hey guys,

First time poster here. I searched the forums and couldn't find an answer so I hope I'm not asking something that has been answered before.

I have a USB drive connected to the RPI running Moode. Inside that drive, I have the directory Music/Albums/ and then various artist folders with the albums inside also separated by folders. I also run each album through MusicBrainz Picard, choose the right version for each and let it add the relevant info.

It all shows up properly on Moode, but there are two problems. One of them ruins a lot of the albums I've got in that drive.

The first one is broken cover art. Picard chooses most of the cover art for my albums and 95% work well. But some, even though the image is properly added, just show a broken image icon.

The second issue, which is the one I'd really love to be able to fix: I like to have different versions of the same album due to mastering differences, stereo vs mono etc. Then I organise them in different folders inside the artist folder. Let's use Kind of Blue as an example:

Kind of Blue [LP UHQR Analogue Productions 2022]
Kind of Blue [CD JP 1983]
Kind of Blue [LP Original Mono 1959]

Moode puts all this under the album Kind of Blue with the same track repeated three times (one for each version). How can I fix this? Is there a way?

I hope this is clear. If you need any more info, please let me know.

Thank you!

[the_bertrum]

For your versions of albums, explore the Album Key settings that are in the Library section of the Preferences menu. I suspect, since you mention Picard, that you have MusicBrainz album id tags and therefore that key might be useful to you. Failing that I think the folder path key might also work.

[Tim Curtis]

I think u can also update the Album tag to contain the unique part for example instead of Album = "Kind of Blue", set it to "Kind of Blue [LP UHQR Analogue Productions 2022]"

[nosferatu_cat]

Hey guys,

First time poster here. I searched the forums and couldn't find an answer so I hope I'm not asking something that has been answered before.

I have a USB drive connected to the RPI running Moode. Inside that drive, I have the directory Music/Albums/ and then various artist folders with the albums inside also separated by folders. I also run each album through MusicBrainz Picard, choose the right version for each and let it add the relevant info.

It all shows up properly on Moode, but there are two problems. One of them ruins a lot of the albums I've got in that drive.

The first one is broken cover art. Picard chooses most of the cover art for my albums and 95% work well. But some, even though the image is properly added, just show a broken image icon.

The second issue, which is the one I'd really love to be able to fix: I like to have different versions of the same album due to mastering differences, stereo vs mono etc. Then I organise them in different folders inside the artist folder. Let's use Kind of Blue as an example:

Kind of Blue [LP UHQR Analogue Productions 2022]
Kind of Blue [CD JP 1983]
Kind of Blue [LP Original Mono 1959]

Moode puts all this under the album Kind of Blue with the same track repeated three times (one for each version). How can I fix this? Is there a way?

I hope this is clear. If you need any more info, please let me know.

Thank you!

As Tim points out, you can probably fix it with tagging.  This is  the primary weaknesses of tagging.  There is no universal standardization and there are always exceptions to existing tag databases.  It would be wonderful to have something like the Library of Congress system for recordings rather than having to rely on the less than comprehensive tag databases available.  Because I started accumulating audio files before I noticed tagging existed I've always used directories.  I can see the utility in attribute strings, things like indices over genre,  but they're really only useful if they're comprehensive and subject to rules.  One of the laws of programming is that if you allow users to put any text they want into a field, they will.

[the_bertrum]

This is  the primary weaknesses of tagging.  There is no universal standardization and there are always exceptions to existing tag databases.  It would be wonderful to have something like the Library of Congress system for recordings rather than having to rely on the less than comprehensive tag databases available.

It is also the very strength of tagging (or metadata in general).  Record the information you find useful in the way that works for you.  When you combine it with a tool that can read and present that information you are in a much more flexible and adaptable world than you would be if there was only one way to describe music.

Taking this case as  an example, the OP can do one of several things:

1. Change the Album Name tag to include the extra information.
   
2. Ensure that the tags include the MusicBrainz album ID and ask moOde to include that in it's key.
   
3. Ask moOde to include the folder path in it's key.
   
4. Use the Folder view in moOde (remember that the path to a file is also part of the metadata for which there is no universal standard).
   
5. Probably some other stuff too.
   

Thankfully, we have in moOde that tool that allows us to play with our data in this way

[nosferatu_cat]

This is  the primary weaknesses of tagging.  There is no universal standardization and there are always exceptions to existing tag databases.  It would be wonderful to have something like the Library of Congress system for recordings rather than having to rely on the less than comprehensive tag databases available.

It is also the very strength of tagging (or metadata in general).  Record the information you find useful in the way that works for you.  When you combine it with a tool that can read and present that information you are in a much more flexible and adaptable world than you would be if there was only one way to describe music.

Taking this case as  an example, the OP can do one of several things:

1. Change the Album Name tag to include the extra information.
   
2. Ensure that the tags include the MusicBrainz album ID and ask moOde to include that in it's key.
   
3. Ask moOde to include the folder path in it's key.
   
4. Use the Folder view in moOde (remember that the path to a file is also part of the metadata for which there is no universal standard).
   
5. Probably some other stuff too.
   

Thankfully, we have in moOde that tool that allows us to play with our data in this way

It's an in the eye of the beholder thing.  If you have music from different sources tagging can be a nightmare.  The same album or whatever you want to call it can have tags that differ.  E. g. composer:  J. S. Bach, Bach, Johann Sebastian Bach, 'Bach, J. S.'  Genre:  Blues, country blues, delta blues,...  I know, it's not so bad if you have software that can do "like" searches.  At my job we added attributes to a retail item database.  Users could enter text like music tags that pertained to items we sold.  We scrapped it after a year.  It was anarchy in the chaotic sense.

[TheOldPresbyope]

This is  the primary weaknesses of tagging.  There is no universal standardization and there are always exceptions to existing tag databases.  It would be wonderful to have something like the Library of Congress system for recordings rather than having to rely on the less than comprehensive tag databases available.

It is also the very strength of tagging (or metadata in general).  Record the information you find useful in the way that works for you.  When you combine it with a tool that can read and present that information you are in a much more flexible and adaptable world than you would be if there was only one way to describe music.

Taking this case as  an example, the OP can do one of several things:

1. Change the Album Name tag to include the extra information.
   
2. Ensure that the tags include the MusicBrainz album ID and ask moOde to include that in it's key.
   
3. Ask moOde to include the folder path in it's key.
   
4. Use the Folder view in moOde (remember that the path to a file is also part of the metadata for which there is no universal standard).
   
5. Probably some other stuff too.
   

Thankfully, we have in moOde that tool that allows us to play with our data in this way

It's an in the eye of the beholder thing.  If you have music from different sources tagging can be a nightmare.  The same album or whatever you want to call it can have tags that differ.  E. g. composer:  J. S. Bach, Bach, Johann Sebastian Bach, 'Bach, J. S.'  Genre:  Blues, country blues, delta blues,...  I know, it's not so bad if you have software that can do "like" searches.  At my job we added attributes to a retail item database.  Users could enter text like music tags that pertained to items we sold.  We scrapped it after a year.  It was anarchy in the chaotic sense.

All that and more! I have multi-CD opera sets which I ripped to my library. The online service(s) my tagger used to get metadata (sorry, I forget which service it was, but it's widely used) had a habit of returning metadata for the tracks from the different CDs differently. So, the tracks from Act 1 might follow one convention for names of composer, composition, performers, aria, etc., while those from Act 2 followed another, and so forth. The metadata sometimes were even expressed in different languages---English, German, Italian! The pitfalls of depending on crowd input. Chaos indeed.

Reminds me of my kids' favorite joke in kindergarten---Q: what do you get when you throw a watermelon into the air? A: It comes down squash.

Regards,
Kent

[the_bertrum]

This is straying somewhat, but I'm finding it very interesting none the less.

In these case where the tagging is a mess, it is because the intention of the data was not defined. Nosferatu_cat's users all had different aims in what data they recorded, I don't know what excuse the metadata source for Kent's multi-CD mess was, but they certainly didn't have a clear enough purpose. In short, there may be a curated source for metadata that fits a particular person's purpose, but most likely it only suits the purpose of the creator, and that purpose might not be clear, or even have anything to do with music. We must therefore decide our own purpose, and modify the metadata to support that purpose.
Nosferatu_cat has decided that his metadata will be encoded in the folder paths, I use tags, but have a quirk where the album_artist can often be a record label, or a composer or another artwork in the case of film scores... The common thing between us all is moOde and it's remarkably flexible ways of accessing the metadata. Most music players will impose their way of interpretation on your collection, moOde tries to work with different methods (within bounds, obviously there must be limits).

So, to relate this back to the original post, dastinger has a clear intention, so is most of the way there. A little exploration of the capabilities of moOde and the existing metadata available will lead to an acceptable solution, but the solution could be one of many.

[dastinger]

Hey guys!

I'm so sorry for the late response. I asked the board for email alerts and I guess that's not working for some reason.

Thank you all for the help! Really interesting conversation that my question unfolded. I ended up tagging my albums with the part that differentiated them, but I'm also glad for the @the_bertrum idea. I had looked in there but missed the proper configuration. That part is fixed!

What is not fixed is the album art on a few albums. I tried adding the cover art using Picard, downloading it myself, naming it 'cover', and using PNG and JPG. Nothing worked.



These are 2 of the ones that don't work. As you can see, the others work just fine. I'm not sure what is happening, but I would love to be able to fix it. I don't see anything different on these albums vs the ones where the cover art works fine.

[Tim Curtis]

Does the cover show up on the main Playback screen?