[SOLVED] Different versions of the same album

[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.