Bugzilla – Bug 2623
Problem with tracks that have no 'album' metadata
Last modified: 2008-09-15 14:38:10 UTC
This applies both when using the (standard) web interface and the Squeezebox interface. Most of my library has album data, but about 600 songs don't. It's perfectly sensible not to use the album field when you don't have all the songs on the album, or when the song didn't come from an album. When I find an artist, either by selecting 'browse artist' or searching for them, I see a list of albums, as you'd expect. If there are any MP3s associated with that artist that have no album entered in the ID3 tag, then I get an option 'no album'. When I click on that, I get all the files in my library that have no album attached - rather than just the ones relevant to that artist. Not only that... Of all the songs that are displayed, the only ones that will allow me to add them to the playlist are the ones by the artist I was looking for. On the Squeezebox, this error causes the player to hang for a significant period of time, while it loads the long list.
Me too. XP/6.2.1/Library scanned from iTunes.
I think this might be a instance of the general problem where you can press 'play' on an album and you get all the tracks from albums with similar names also getting played. I get this problem with 'greatest hits' albums in particular. I'm using 6.5. It would be good if someone with the problem in the main description of the bug could confirm this, though.
(In reply to comment #2) > I think this might be a instance of the general problem where you can press > 'play' on an album and you get all the tracks from albums with similar names > also getting played. I get this problem with 'greatest hits' albums in > particular. I'm using 6.5. > > It would be good if someone with the problem in the main description of the bug > could confirm this, though. > I've not got many examples of albums with similar names in my collection. Though I've got 1999 by Prince and 1999 by Cassius. I can navigate to each of these albums no problem, and only see the songs by the correct artist. However, I had already added a trailing space to the album name tag, so iTunes would distinguish between them. If that makes sense. So I'm not the best person to test this.
Yes, I may be muddying the waters of the original report with the general case. It's been pointed out that this is what the "Common Album Titles" preference is for and indeed that does work for me. So, my note is probably irrelevant to this bug (it still seems odd to me, but that's beside the point here).
Same thing here. On the advice obtained on the discussion forum, I changed the album name to "noalbumdata" and set the Common Album Titles to include "noalbumdata". No change. Now when browsing I go from the artist to one or more "noalbumdata" entries, all of which show several hundred mismatched "noalbumdata" entries from all artists. Only one artist shows an "All Songs" link which properly filters files by only that artist. Dan Sully has one of these files.
(In reply to comment #5) > On the advice obtained on the discussion forum, I changed the album name to > "noalbumdata" and set the Common Album Titles to include "noalbumdata". I saw that thread, adn the advice you were given. There shouldn't be any need to add inaccurate metadata to get it to work - and there didn't used to be.
(In reply to comment #6) > (In reply to comment #5) > > > On the advice obtained on the discussion forum, I changed the album name to > > "noalbumdata" and set the Common Album Titles to include "noalbumdata". > > I saw that thread, adn the advice you were given. There shouldn't be any need > to add inaccurate metadata to get it to work - and there didn't used to be. > The thought was to put something in then tell SlimServer it was a "Common Album Title" so it would sort by artist only, but that isn't what happened in my case. It was easy enough to do and it will be easy enough to change back, but it didn't solve the problem.
Mark - you'll need to wipe & rescan after you change a Common Album Title's setting. I'm not able to replicate your issue. Can you attach your slimserver.pref file and a zipped copy of your slimserversql.db file? Thanks.
Dan, can you clear this up... should one have to add 'no album' to the common album titles to fix this? If so what is the correct string? (NO_ALBUM/no album/No Album?)
I just changed to "Only show tracks or albums matching the selected genre for an artist" and this seems to have fixed the problem. Which would mean that this preference is incorrectly labelled or just wrong? Example: Home / Browse Artists / Jukes / No Album 1 album with 240 songs by 205 artists. Wasn't Even Looking by Jukes a) I'm not browsing by genre as the pref description implies. b) there are other tracks with 'no album' that match the genre of the one displayed c) the count shown is incorrect (I can live with this)
Created attachment 1047 [details] Mark Lanctot's slimserver.pref
Created attachment 1048 [details] Mark Lanctot's slimserversql.db, zipped
(In reply to comment #8) > Mark - you'll need to wipe & rescan after you change a Common Album Title's > setting. > > I'm not able to replicate your issue. > > Can you attach your slimserver.pref file and a zipped copy of your > slimserversql.db file? > > Thanks. > I did wipe and rescan several times. Attached are the files you wanted. Thanks.
James - it should be 'No Album'
In desperation I've begun freedb lookups and I'm putting in album tags. Only 975 more to go! :-P I noticed that if you put in "noalbumdata" as the album name for ONE ARTIST ONLY, everything works OK. You click on that artist, you are presented with "All Songs" and "noalbumdata" for that artist. Both bring up songs by only that artist. The problem is when this "noalbumdata" placeholder is used for more than one artist. They will all be included in the "noalbumdata" link, regardless of artist. Things also work OK if just one of the artist's files has an album tag. The rest don't have to, but it works fine - you are presented with an "All Songs" link, a link to the album and a "No Album" link. The "All Songs" and album links work fine, but the "No Album" link brings up several hundred mismatched files with no album tag.
(In reply to comment #14) > James - it should be 'No Album' > I tried that string this morning, and did a wipe and rescan - it made no difference. I'm attaching my files now. Bear in mind that I subsequently went back and removed that option.
Created attachment 1049 [details] Aaron Scullion's slimserver.pref
What happens if you change the "Filter genres at the album & track level." setting? You both have the opposite setting from the one that seemed to work for me.
Created attachment 1050 [details] Aaron Scullion's slimserversql db (zipped)
(In reply to comment #19) > Created an attachment (id=1050) [edit] > Aaron Scullion's slimserversql db (zipped) > James - that's fixed it on mine. So you must be right, that preference is incorrectly labelled. I do find quite a few of the preference descriptions to be completely unitelligible.
(In reply to comment #20) > (In reply to comment #19) > > Created an attachment (id=1050) [edit] > > Aaron Scullion's slimserversql db (zipped) > > > > James - that's fixed it on mine. So you must be right, that preference is > incorrectly labelled. > > I do find quite a few of the preference descriptions to be completely > unitelligible. For clarification - i didn't even need to do a rescan. >
(In reply to comment #20) > > James - that's fixed it on mine. So you must be right, that preference is > incorrectly labelled. > > I do find quite a few of the preference descriptions to be completely > unitelligible. > Dang, still doesn't work for me. Back to album tagging. Seeing how it behaves, I'm thinking of putting in an album name equal to the artist name. That way the artists won't get mixed up when I'm trying to search. As long as the album names aren't the same, songs from different artists don't get mixed up when I browse.
Mark, you really should just leave the album names empty, where you think that's appropriate. There's no reason why you shouldn't be able to do that.
(In reply to comment #23) > Mark, you really should just leave the album names empty, where you think > that's appropriate. There's no reason why you shouldn't be able to do that. > I can't sort by artist otherwise. Hopefully this bug is still in progress because the "Filter genres" trick doesn't work for me.
Update: After putting at least one correct album for each artist (making it to the "G"s before I got tired) I rescanned, building the library from scratch. Things seem to be almost workable now. Even with the artists I don't have album data for yet, I'm now getting the proper list. The description is wrong - for example, after I find an artist, when I click on "No Album" I get a "1 album with 930 songs by 370 artists" but the only links there are the correct ones that point to songs by that particular artist. I also get an "All Songs" link for every artist that points to the correct list. I don't have "Filter by genre" activated either. Since I don't know what changed, it could revert back at any time, but it's working for me right now.
This is fixed in change 5491 in the 6.2 branch and change 5492 in the trunk. The changes will be in the 2005-12-31 nightlies. And you don't need to have any ALBUM tag - if there is none, SlimServer will automatically mark it as 'No Album' - or whatever your localized name is if you aren't using English.
"No Album" now marked correctly. One minor remaining issue, mostly cosmetic - the summary above a "No Album" entry is still inaccurate. For example, when locating one song: "1 album with 923 songs by 361 artists." The album is still grouped with all the other "No Album" entries and artists with "No Album" entries for the summary. But the listing itself is accurate and functional.
Thanks for sorting this out!