I just started using SongKong and was looking forward to great results. I am disappointed at this point. There have been folders where it did not fix a single song, all of the songs became track 0 or 1, or several track 1’s, 2’s 3,'s, etc. when the original songs were sequentially numbered from 1-101. Considering this was all of the Billboard 100’s from 1956-2013, it really screwed up approximately 5800 songs. I’ve had to manually correct some songs. It is worrisome that I have to check each folder after using this “automatic” song fixer, especially since I have over 40,000 songs in the collection.
SongKong Creates A Mess
Hi, I think I know what the problem is for your scenerio.
SongKong generally trys to match songs to albums and considers one folder as one album, this is how most users have there collections. But some users just organize one folder per artist, and some many users have the occasional folder full of random or unsorted songs, so SongKong trys to cater for these scenarios as well.
I assume you have a folder per year, the trouble is I assume these aren’t actual albums you can buy, but just the way you organize your songs.
When you have more than 90 songs in a folder by multiple artists SongKong considers this a potential random folder and allows just some of the songs to match, as part of this match it will chnage the trackno to reflect the trackno on the album it has been matched to rather than the trackno you have allocated which doesnt actually relate to a trackno on a real album.
When you have less than 90 songs on a folder then SongKong considers this is not a random folder so will only allow match if all songs match to one album, this is probably why some of your folders arent gettting any matches. However they should still match to MusicBrains Song Only section, these songs only have their artist and title fields updated and are not moved or renamed even if you have the rename option enabled.
If you could send me your support files (Help:Create Support Files) I can properly look into this for you. I hope you can see your particular scenarios are a bit unusual but I may be able to add options for SongKong to work as required such as Do not update Track No option and a Do not consider as Random Folder
option.
In the first instance if you are not happy with the results the easiest thing to do would be simply use SongKong select the root folder and then Undo Changes to revert the changes SongKong has made.
Paul,
Thanks for your great reply. I use a Usenet server where someone had posted the top 100 songs for each year from 1956-2013. I don’t know if this compiled by Billboard and presented as an album, or just a collection compiled from various albums (I think the latter). What was weird was SongKong tagged some of the songs, but had the track numbers as 0’s and 1’s. It did the same on a collection of 2014 Grammy nominees, and I couldn’t edit them afterwards. I undid the changes to the Billboard, and I will attach the file you requested and you can see what occurred. Thanks for you interest in helping.
Jeff
PS: I tried attaching the support file, but get an error from the Apache server that it can’t process the request.
Please just email it to support at jthink dot net
This was an interesting situation. A compilation called Billboard Top 100 Hits for 19XX. When I originally tried SongKong with the matching boxes checked, it just wasn’t able to handle over 90 songs in a folder without calling them random, which meant that the track numbering was random. By unchecking the matching boxes and ignoring the existing metadata we were able to get SongKong to do something really cool. It kept the same filename which satisfies most players, but it also designated the track number and title of the album from which the song was derived. So, now I still have track 001 for the Top 100 of 1956 (for example) in the filename, but I also have track #1, Heartbreak Hotel; Album Artist: Elvis Presley; Album: Heartbreak Hotel.
Kind of cool.
Sorry JeffL but this isn’t quite right, in both cases SongKong sets the trackNo to the trackNo of the album the SongKong was on, they are not randomly. it does this rather than keeping the trackNo the same as the pseudoTrackNo it originally had that related to its sales position within the Billboard 100 for that year rather than an actual trackno.
But in the second go because you unchecked Rename Filename form Metadata the filename was left unchanged. This means the files are still ordered by the original trackno because most players list them alphabetically and the trackno comes before the artist names as you can see from the examples below.
Billboard Top 100 Hits Of 1960 - 048 - Ray Charles - Georgia On My Mind.mp3
Billboard Top 100 Hits Of 1960 - 089 - Fats Domino - My Girl Josephine.mp3
Can we either have in option in SK to never treat folders as random songs, or manually set the # of songs in a folder before SK treats it as random… or even better yet, just attempt to match the folder as an album before treating it as random…
I also have the billboard collections and can’t get SK to match them even though they exist in musicbrainz… there needs to be a way to handle this…
thanks!
[quote=chillware] or even better yet, just attempt to match the folder as an album before treating it as random…
[/quote]
That is a great idea and that will work as long as the album exists in MusicBrainz - https://jthink.atlassian.net/browse/SONGKONG-955
[quote=chillware]I also have the billboard collections and can’t get SK to match them even though they exist in musicbrainz… there needs to be a way to handle this…
thanks![/quote]
I didnt realize they were actual albums, although Ive looked at many in MusicBrainz and although they say top 100 they only seem to be top 10 https://musicbrainz.org/release/a1d73fff-5baf-46f7-9109-5ea7d2bbd413
If the top 100 album does exist in MusicBrainz a workaround in Jaikz is to use Match to Musicbrainz Release Id but there is no such option in SongKong.
nice, thx for open #955 
that’ll be helpful!
Hmm, the trouble with this approach is for a grouping the first thing SongKong does is fingerprint all songs, no matching can occur until all songs in grouping. In some cases users put all their songs in one folder, therefore first time run against SongKong nothing would happen until all songs have been fingerprinted, so we need some kind of middle way
Maybe for now should just add a flag, the trouble with this approach is it would work for users who understood how SongKong works like yourself but not new users.
I see your point, makes sense…
What about adding in an Advanced tab in the GUI w/ a warning about the settings and you can start adding some of these advanced features here… or maybe just add a flag in the INI file that only advanced users know about.
Thoughts?
I can add it GUI no problem, but my point it wont stop some users getting the occasional folder messed up because incorrectly identified as random folder as they wont have option enabled.
But I’lll work something out
So how about this
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In the first instance do not break up folder unless it has at least 200 songs, additionally needs to have metadata indicating at least 10 different artist and albums or no artist metadata at all. Otherwise we try to match the whole folder first,
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If that fails to match then if has at least 80 songs and additionally needs to have metadata indicating at least 10 different artist and albums or no artist metadata at all.
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If less than 80 songs and user has Only Allow Match if All Songs in Grouping Matched enabled then MusicBrainz matching for these songs fails, but we try Discogs matching. If not enabled we can do further metadata and single song matching.
So in most cases this would work for people with the defaults allowing folder not to be broken up but also dealing with the odd random folder without having to change options. And fingerprinting the occasional large folder shoud not take too long because limited to 200 songs.
But if you have a folder containing more than 80 songs and it does represent an album but MusicBrainz doesnt have that album it could still be broken up. So as failsafe for power users we should add a All folders represent a single album option on the Match tab.
This sounds like a good approach, I think I can follow the logic and it makes sense…