[PROBLEM] Moode assumes two albums with the same name are the same album

[sophistoche]

(Moved from GitHub at Tim’s request)

Moode considers two albums with the same name to be the same album. This is often not the case with albums with short names, like “Solo”. Moode should group only tracks that have both the same ‘Album’ and ‘Album Artist’ tags together. I don’t think any special handling of the ‘is compilation’ metadata tag would be necessary, but it may depend on the library curation practices of others.

[Tim Curtis]

The issue is that there is no standard tag for Compilation for example iTunes uses a proprietary tag. MPD doesn't support any compilation tag.

Scroll down a bit to see list of supported tags.
https://www.musicpd.org/doc/html/protocol.html

What moOde does to compensate for this is to create a virtual compilation album by rolling up albums that have the same album name but contain tracks with different artist names into a single compilation album. Obviously this is not good for albums named Greatest Hits, Christmas Songs, etc which should be excluded from compilation rollup.

There is a hidden sql column that contains album names to be excluded from compilation rollup

Code:

pi@rp3:~ $ sqlite3 /var/local/www/db/moode-sqlite3.db "select * from cfg_system where param='compilation_excludes'"
99|compilation_excludes|greatest hits

This column is exposed as a setting in upcoming moOde 4.4. You can add the album names that should be excluded from compilation rollup.

   

What a lot of enthusiasts do to compensate for the lack of a compilation tag is the following:

1) Populate the AlbumArtist Tag for all albums
2) For compilation albums set the AlbumArtist tag to the string "Various Artists"

Then in moOde Customize set the Artist list ordering to Album Artist and turn off Compilation rollup.

-Tim

[sophistoche]

it sounds like I am encountering a bug then. All my albums have Album Artist tag filled, and by customise setting is set to sort by Album Artist, and still albums with the same name but different album artists are being rolled up.

[Tim Curtis]

Thats cuz in moOde 4.3 there is no way to turn compilation rollup off and thus it will catch albums that have the same name but are legit different albums e.g., "Christmas Songs".

The capability to turn compilation rollup off is is coming in moOde 4.4