Multiple albums generated from 1 album's worth of files

[NigelC]

My wife tried to put on some festive music this morning (Ce Lo Greens Magic Moments), and LMS just queued 1 track. Last Xmas, the album played fine.
LMS seems to have created 6 albums, all with the same name. 1 version has all the 14 tracks, the others have 1 or more tracks seemingly at random.

I went in with Mp3tag to see if there were any strange tags - nothing that unusual, but I simplified it to leave just:
Title, Artist, Album, Track, Genre
with nothing else in Extended tags
I also made sure the Album and Artist fields were the same

I tried a "new & changed" scan, as well as full rescan, but in both cases, I now only have 2 albums of the same name, the first with all 14 tracks, but the other with tracks 1, 2, 7, 9, 10, 13

This album is mp3, whereas most of my music is flac, and the folder structure is ...\<artist>\<album>\tracks

The option Treat TPE2 MP3 tag as Album Artist is set
LMS 8.0.0 1590399854 running on a Pi4 with PicorePlayer 6.1.0

I have tried a scan with logging set to debug for the scanner options, but this doesn't show anything relevant.

Any ideas??

Cheers
Nigel

[garym]

My wife tried to put on some festive music this morning (Ce Lo Greens Magic Moments), and LMS just queued 1 track. Last Xmas, the album played fine.
LMS seems to have created 6 albums, all with the same name. 1 version has all the 14 tracks, the others have 1 or more tracks seemingly at random.

I went in with Mp3tag to see if there were any strange tags - nothing that unusual, but I simplified it to leave just:
Title, Artist, Album, Track, Genre
with nothing else in Extended tags
I also made sure the Album and Artist fields were the same

I tried a "new & changed" scan, as well as full rescan, but in both cases, I now only have 2 albums of the same name, the first with all 14 tracks, but the other with tracks 1, 2, 7, 9, 10, 13

This album is mp3, whereas most of my music is flac, and the folder structure is ...\<artist>\<album>\tracks

The option Treat TPE2 MP3 tag as Album Artist is set
LMS 8.0.0 1590399854 running on a Pi4 with PicorePlayer 6.1.0

I have tried a scan with logging set to debug for the scanner options, but this doesn't show anything relevant.

Any ideas??

Cheers
Nigel

A few things I've seen cause this:

1. are there tracks with ARTIST tags that are different from others on the album
2. Have you set ALBUM ARTIST to be identical for all tracks
3. Do some tracks have Disk number filled in or Total Disk Number filled in and others don't.
4. Do some tracks have COMPILATION tag set?
5. Any other tag field that differs other than track number and title?

I use mp3tag (tagger for all sorts of files, including FLAC), and it is great for finding these problems. Install mp3tag. Load up all these files from problem album, select all, right click and select "extended tags" This will show you all the tags in that file and you can tell whether some files are different from others, etc.

https://www.mp3tag.de/en/download.html

[kidstypike]

I would remove the album from the drive, do a clear and rescan, put the album back and do a new and changed, or clear and rescan.

[NigelC]

Thanks for the input

@garym
yes, ive checked all those issues with mp3tag.
There's only 1 artist (Cee Lo Green), no album artist, no disc number or disktotal, no compilation
The only tag that varies between each file is Title and Track

@kidstypike
Good idea, so tried it ...
moved files away, rescanned everything, checked the albums had gone completely, copied the album back and then rescanned
Same as before 2 albums one with all tracks, and one with same 6 tracks as before

Very strange

[garym]

I've had same issues before and really had to scratch my head to eventually fix. Take another look at mp3tag, extended tag just to double check. I recall once I had one file that had a "track total" field and the others didn't. That was enough to make it a separate album.

Next step for me would be to re-rip that album. and then do the "remove old", rescan, then add your new rip back in and scan for new and changed.

in case it is track numbering, in mp3tag, select all, click on TOOLS menu, then renumbering wizard to renumber your tracks in a consistent format. can't hurt.

[kidstypike]

Thanks for the input

@garym
yes, ive checked all those issues with mp3tag.
There's only 1 artist (Cee Lo Green), no album artist, no disc number or disktotal, no compilation
The only tag that varies between each file is Title and Track

@kidstypike
Good idea, so tried it ...
moved files away, rescanned everything, checked the albums had gone completely, copied the album back and then rescanned
Same as before 2 albums one with all tracks, and one with same 6 tracks as before

Very strange

You don't have a m3u playlist or cue file in the folder that LMS scans?

If you drill down to track level, are the paths the same in both albums?

[BJW]

All good ideas above.

Are all the files in the same folder? (Should be imo)
Are u sure u have no dupe files anywhere?
I would assign the same 'album artist' value to all tracks. (For now)
I would remove any comp tags. (For now)
I would try a new slightly different folder name.
I would do a full clear and rescan.

Also, u gotta look for weird or incongruent tags/fields... do they have id3v1 as well as v2? Remove all v1 tags. Any musicbrainz tags? Anything unusual? Replay album gain mismatch? And weird disc tags? Disc number? Etc.

[d6jg]

Off Topic. But what is said album like for festive purposes?

[NigelC]

We like the album - even the track with the Muppets!

I've double checked the tagging, and its now very minimal and consistent.
I have also checked the various versions of the album and they all pint to the same physical track file

I did wonder if it was due to being in mp3 format, as I'm not very familiar with the MP3 tags.
However, Ive also noticed the same problem with another Christmas album by John Legend which is all Flac.

I now have 6 albums all called A Legendary Christmas", one has the full 14 tracks, the others each have 1 track.
I am very confident that this did not happen with previous versions of LMS. The behaviour has arrived since I adopted picoreplayer and the latest LMS version.
I will play with the tags on the John Legend Album to see if I can diagnose anything.
There is a difference between the album versions - track 11 from the album where it is the only track has no mention of Play Count or Last Played


whereas the full album does. This suggests that LMS thinks they are separate tracks



Ill keep digging

[kidstypike]

We like the album - even the track with the Muppets!

I've double checked the tagging, and its now very minimal and consistent.
I have also checked the various versions of the album and they all pint to the same physical track file

I did wonder if it was due to being in mp3 format, as I'm not very familiar with the MP3 tags.
However, Ive also noticed the same problem with another Christmas album by John Legend which is all Flac.

I now have 6 albums all called A Legendary Christmas", one has the full 14 tracks, the others each have 1 track.
I am very confident that this did not happen with previous versions of LMS. The behaviour has arrived since I adopted picoreplayer and the latest LMS version.
I will play with the tags on the John Legend Album to see if I can diagnose anything.
There is a difference between the album versions - track 11 from the album where it is the only track has no mention of Play Count or Last Played

whereas the full album does. This suggests that LMS thinks they are separate tracks


Ill keep digging

Another difference is the paths, one starts with a double forward slash, the other has only one forward slash.