In my previous run of SongKong, I got into trouble with tracks that have been released multiple times. I ended with tracks that originated on one CD scattered across multiple compilation albums. I am hoping that there is a setting in here somewhere that prefers to pull tracks together when it can.
A related issue is that I have a giant box set of Hayden string quartets, all of which were re-releases. Is there any way to make it prefer the compilation?
Once songs are split across multiple folders it can be difficult to get them back into one folder, but now we have a Inconsistencies section that is really helpful for tracking these things down.
What I would suggest is you run the Status Report task to get a snapshot of the current state of your metadata, then run Create Support Files to upload the report to my server, and then I can take a look and help with the best approach for your particular case.
Each disc should be stored in a subfolder underneath a boxset album folder, then selecting the album folder should cause it to prefer to match all to the boxset (assuming it exists on MusicBrainz)
I uploaded support info. Another case of trouble is that I have two different two-disc sets of the Bach Cello Suites by two different players, and they seem to have converged.
Hi, so just before you ran Status Report task you ran Fix Songs task and if you go to the Basic Metadata Inconsistencies/Multiple values for Album Artist tab we can see the problem folders
and if select one we can indeed see there are two different albums interleaved into the folder
But if we look at any particular song that has been updated we can see that the only thing that has been added by SongKong is the SongKong Id so this means the album was already matched (probably by Picard) rather than recently matched by SongKong
But, anyway it seems that it is correctly matched but at some point in the past the two albums were incorrecty put into the same folder perhaps by using a rename mask based on album title which is the same for both albums (Cello Suites), I don’t think this was done by SongKong since I can’t see any sign that you have run Rename Files task
So the solution is to probably to run a Rename Files task to move files into different folders, looking at these files the problems seems to be that you dont have an Album Artist folder for your music only Album folders, so if two different arists have the same album title they are going to end up in the same folder. So I would recommend using a rename mask that organizes things by Album Artist and then Album
If we continue looking at the Inconsistencies section there are not that many problems
MusicBrainz Inconsistencies:Split Folders
This shows the Cell Suites problem already discussed, and the Retold album
Looking at this album, we see it simply has duplicates files that could be deleted with Delete Duplicates task or manually.
MusicBrainz Inconsistencies:Split Albums
Shows a few albums such as Come Away With Me where songs with the same MusicBrainz Release Id are in different folders
These are best fixed by manually moving the file, for example here just need to move song 12 into same folder as other songs
MusicBrainz Inconsistencies:One Song Matched
Now these are the tricky ones and probably include your split compilations. For example you have three Beck albums with only one song, and if you look at the Songs Missing tab there is another Beck album with only two songs. Unless you disabled the Only allow match if all songs in grouping match to one album option SongKong would not split these songs up, but something has and they are all in their own folders now not their original folder so they have also been renamed, and this means there is no context to help identify what album they were originally from.
So assuming you originally had a Beck Best of Album, the best thing to do would be move all these songs to one folder and then see if Match to One Album can find album they matched.
So would repeat this for other single artists best of albums
If you originally had Various Artists compilations its not possible to automatically find them now, even with the Various Artist albums listed its not clear if you had this whole album and songs have been moved from the album or if the songs were originally part of a different album and have incorrrectly been matched to this Various Artists compilation. So unfortunately these albums are going to have been manually put back together if you don’t have backup or reripped from CD.
But what may be helpful is if you go to Matched:Matched to MusicBrainz section and then select the Various Artists artist. This shows the albums that have matched to Various Artists with their counts, if the badger is yellow rather than green only some song on the album have been matched. This may help track down the names of some of your compilations albums that have now had songs removed
Thank you very much for the very detailed assistance!
I have one followup question of detail.
After renaming, I have:
./London Symphony Orchestra; Bryden Thomson/The Complete Symphonies
Notice that the composer’s name is nowhere to be seen here. Would one of the ‘IsClassical’ masks have stuck him into the path?
Could you re-run Create Support Files please, this will enable me to give you the best answer.
It is because the Rename mask you are using AlbumArtistorArtist/Album/DiscIfMultiDisc/Disc - Track - Title uses Album Artist not the Composer field, and the composer Ralph Vaughan Williams is not part of the Album Artist field
Now I’m aware that can be a point of disagreement, but MusicBrainz does not typically include the Composer in the Album Artist field unless they were actively involved in this recording. For example if I was to record a Rachmaninoff piano piece and release it on Bandcamp it doesn’t make much sense for Rachmaninoff to be the album artist because he had nothing to do with the creation of this release. Consider if i was to play some Elton John songs on piano and then release them on Bandcamp you would not expect my release to be listed under an Elton John discography!
So MusicBrainz doesnt usually include composer in album artist field , but sometimes it does, and SongKong has an option Remove Composer from Album Artist to remove these cases, but we don’t have an option to add it in.
So your choices are:
Was this just an example, or is this the only album where it is a problem?
No, that just split classical from non-classical at the top level
Thanks. That’s what I needed to know.
