What is an “Album” to LMS? Albums split into two

[guptaas]

Hoping someone knowledgeable could explain how LMS defines an album.

Some of my “albums” consist of songs drawn from various compilations. However, they have been retagged together as an album. Many of these show as two albums in LMS with the same album title and album artist. They are not split by file type e.g. FLACs and mp3s. Examining extended tags in MP3Tag hasn’t explained it either. Some files have two tags “ALBUM ARTIST” and “ALBUMARTIST”. However, even this is not the basis of the split. These tracks do not have a Musicbrainz album ID. Out of ideas on possible cause.

[slartibartfast]

Hoping someone knowledgeable could explain how LMS defines an album.

Some of my “albums” consist of songs drawn from various compilations. However, they have been retagged together as an album. Many of these show as two albums in LMS with the same album title and album artist. They are not split by file type e.g. FLACs and mp3s. Examining extended tags in MP3Tag hasn’t explained it either. Some files have two tags “ALBUM ARTIST” and “ALBUMARTIST”. However, even this is not the basis of the split. These tracks do not have a Musicbrainz album ID. Out of ideas on possible cause.

Are the tracks in different folders? I wonder if a disc number tag would help.

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[kidstypike]

Hoping someone knowledgeable could explain how LMS defines an album.

Some of my “albums” consist of songs drawn from various compilations. However, they have been retagged together as an album. Many of these show as two albums in LMS with the same album title and album artist. They are not split by file type e.g. FLACs and mp3s. Examining extended tags in MP3Tag hasn’t explained it either. Some files have two tags “ALBUM ARTIST” and “ALBUMARTIST”. However, even this is not the basis of the split. These tracks do not have a Musicbrainz album ID. Out of ideas on possible cause.

In mp3tag, do any of these files have more than one tag type?

[guptaas]

Are the tracks in different folders? I wonder if a disc number tag would help.

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They are in one folder and there is no disk number in these particular tags. Though I do leave the original disk number for multi-disk sources and the name of the source album in a “Grouping” tag. Are you suggesting I add a disk number tag? It doesn’t seem logical when one album is allowed to have multiple disks - a default choice in settings which works well.

[guptaas]

In mp3tag, do any of these files have more than one tag type?

[ATTACH]36700[/ATTACH]

No. I am very particular about not having a redundant set of tags.

[slartibartfast]

They are in one folder and there is no disk number in these particular tags. Though I do leave the original disk number for multi-disk sources and the name of the source album in a “Grouping” tag. Are you suggesting I add a disk number tag? It doesn’t seem logical when one album is allowed to have multiple disks - a default choice in settings which works well.

I just tried adding a couple of different GROUPING tags to tracks of an album and it appears as a single album either with or without a disc number tag. Are you sure the ALBUM tag and ALBUM ARTIST are exactly the same in the two versions of the album?

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[RobbH]

.... Are you sure the ALBUM tag and ALBUM ARTIST are exactly the same in the two versions of the album?

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Exactly the same, as in no differences in capitalization, no umlauts or diacriticals in one but not the other. An issue that has bedeviled me on occasion is an extra space at the end of tag.

[kidstypike]

Exactly the same, as in no differences in capitalization, no umlauts or diacriticals in one but not the other. An issue that has bedeviled me on occasion is an extra space at the end of tag.

If it were my problem, I would make a copy of the offending album, in mp3tag remove the ALBUM ARTIST & ALBUMARTIST tags, remove the original album from the scanned folder, add the copy and do a clear & rescan of the library.

[garym]

I have had albums separate in LMS because some tracks had a disk number and some didn't. Or because some tracks had total tracks filled in and some didn’t. Usually I trace the issue back to me having to rerip some tracks with dbpa at the time of original ripping and forgetting to change some option. As recommended, mp3tag and it’s extended tags function is very useful here.

[guptaas]

If it were my problem, I would make a copy of the offending album, in mp3tag remove the ALBUM ARTIST & ALBUMARTIST tags, remove the original album from the scanned folder, add the copy and do a clear & rescan of the library.

This was my planned solution too. Understanding the problem would be better. I still am curious about how LMS defines an album. I use Mediamonkey as my main library management tool because it can sort through a large database quickly enough, allow me to play back tracks, move them around a directory tree and mass edit an artist name, a genre name or edit one field for files from several albums. The lack of direct access to the raw tags, however, likely causes problems not visible on the interface.
My tagging flow is:
-MIP Mixer writes its fingerprints
-MP3Tag tags from Musicbrainz
-The Godfather overwrites with Tags from AMG. This adds composers, moods, occasions etc.
-An MP3Tag action formats composer, mood and occasion tags to work with Mediamonkey
-Subsequent additions,replacements, ratings of individual files for any reason are all done within Mediamonkey. It’s very likely that the culprit is Mediamonkey.

If I understand what LMS actually is looking at, I can fix my approach accordingly. Ultimately it’s all about feeding precise and detailed personalized tags to LMS.

[BJW]

maybe you have some MB tags that are the issue? i know MB spammed all kinds of proprietary tags into some files of mine causing issues. i think LMS recognizes some too, that have albumartist type implications. just a suggestion.

[Shozzer]

Does the Year tag differ across the tags. In my experience, this is another culprit for creating multiple albums.

[eCo]

I've been having this album split issue, seemingly at random, since I started retagging my complete music collection. I changed from my old tagger (since it had stopped being developed) to Musicbrainz Picard which has been a lot more useful.

I've reviewed the tags in a split album with Picard, but can see no differences to cause a split. I assume a complete rescan will fix the issue, but I'm wating to finish retagging before I run it. I thought it might be useful to let y'all know there's apparently still an issue here. My LSM ver is 8.3.0. If you'd like help debugging, just let me know.

[garym]

I've been having this album split issue, seemingly at random, since I started retagging my complete music collection. I changed from my old tagger (since it had stopped being developed) to Musicbrainz Picard which has been a lot more useful.

I've reviewed the tags in a split album with Picard, but can see no differences to cause a split. I assume a complete rescan will fix the issue, but I'm wating to finish retagging before I run it. I thought it might be useful to let y'all know there's apparently still an issue here. My LSM ver is 8.3.0. If you'd like help debugging, just let me know.

Every split album I’ve had has ultimately been caused by a tag difference. Some are quite subtle. I use mp3tag (similar in power to Picard), and I have to look at “extended tags” to even see some of the tags. In some cases, because of some retagging, or reripping just a subset of tracks at the time of ripping, or fixing a track with CUETOOLS, I ended up with one track that has a “disc total” tag, even though a single disk album, and the others do not. That was enough to cause separate albums. It’s always subtle things like this.

[d6jg]

I've been having this album split issue, seemingly at random, since I started retagging my complete music collection. I changed from my old tagger (since it had stopped being developed) to Musicbrainz Picard which has been a lot more useful.

I've reviewed the tags in a split album with Picard, but can see no differences to cause a split. I assume a complete rescan will fix the issue, but I'm wating to finish retagging before I run it. I thought it might be useful to let y'all know there's apparently still an issue here. My LSM ver is 8.3.0. If you'd like help debugging, just let me know.

If you post a couple of example files from the same album that are shown in LMS as from different albums then we can assess and comment.