multiple album for a track

[adamdea]

In the notes to settings/my music/separator for multiple items in tags
it claims that you can have multiple albums tagged for a track.

I tried this using a ; separator (as per the same entry) but it did not work. The album was listed with a slash (/) between the two title suggesting that on some level the separator was recognised, but it still only appears as one album in the list of albums.

what is going wrong here?

[slartibartfast]

In the notes to settings/my music/separator for multiple items in tags
it claims that you can have multiple albums tagged for a track.

I tried this using a ; separator (as per the same entry) but it did not work. The album was listed with a slash (/) between the two title suggesting that on some level the separator was recognised, but it still only appears as one album in the list of albums.

what is going wrong here?

Maybe I am misunderstanding but how can a single track be on multiple albums?

Sent from my SM-G900F using Tapatalk

[adamdea]

Maybe I am misunderstanding but how can a single track be on multiple albums?

Sent from my SM-G900F using Tapatalk

It's a bit of a long story, but for the sake of argument let's assume that it might appear on both the orginal LP and a compilation album.

[d6jg]

Maybe I am misunderstanding but how can a single track be on multiple albums?

Sent from my SM-G900F using Tapatalk

If you only collected tracks as opposed to albums i can see where this might be appropriate.

Example
Merry Xmas Everybody (Slade) - must be on numerous Xmas compilations as well as numerous Slade albums

[d6jg]

If you only collected tracks as opposed to albums i can see where this might be appropriate.

Example
Merry Xmas Everybody (Slade) - must be on numerous Xmas compilations as well as numerous Slade albums

BUT if you actually had two albums with it on then it wouldn't work. Only if it was a one off track.

[slartibartfast]

It's a bit of a long story, but for the sake of argument let's assume that it might appear on both the orginal LP and a compilation album.

But you only ripped one of them?

Sent from my SM-G900F using Tapatalk

[adamdea]

But you only ripped one of them?

Sent from my SM-G900F using Tapatalk

Let's suppose that I want to create (or recreate) the compilation album. [Or I want to save the space].

Can we move on?

[d6jg]

Let's suppose that I want to create (or recreate) the compilation album. [Or I want to save the space].

Can we move on?

The short answer is no.
Although you can tag with multiple albums the way the scanner works is that it looks in folders which typically would be

artist1/
album1
album2
artist2/
album1
album2

If you had a track in artist1/album1 that you also wanted to appear in artist1/album2 then there has to be a physical copy in each location for the scanner to see it.

HOWEVER this topic has made me think whether you could actually achieve your objective with Linux symlinks but that is most definitely not for the faint hearted and not guaranteed to work (could put the scanner into a nasty loop) and even if it did would be an absolute pain to manage so I think even the long answer is also No.

[kidstypike]

It doesn't work using a separator for Album titles.

I changed the Album tag for the track "Mellow Yellow" by Donovan to "Easy Like Sunday Morning;Mellow Yellow" and rescanned.
The track is no longer listed under the album "Easy Like Sunday Morning" but appears as a single track in it's own album named "Easy Like Sunday Morning;Melllow Yellow" which is what I would expect.

Perhaps the wording of the info pop-up needs changing?

[emalvick]

I've seen the case of multiple albums tagged discussed elsewhere (other software), and I think it is something that just isn't handled well by software because it is a bit abstract. In theory it is possible, but I think that a lot of software just doesn't support it. I think the expectation is that one track will go with one album.

Other things that would complicate this (from a complete point of view):

track numbers (what do you use?)
album artists (how do you deal with it if they are different?)
Other tags that might vary for each album a track is on: genre, album cover, year, etc.

On a side note, I looked into this in detail about 15 years ago (maybe more as I am getting older). My purpose was to save disk space as a poor grad student in an era when hard-drives were much smaller and the idea of Terabytes of storage wasn't really a thing. I thought why not consolidate when compilations often have tracks that can be found elsewhere. My end verdict was that it wasn't worth it. I am a bit OCD on tagging, and the complications of one file belonging to multiple albums, was just a mess. I think I just ended up getting new hard-drives and then of course getting a real job and not having to worry about finances much.