Album Artist: Serious Flaw or Deliberate?

[stormer]

After trying to Sync Windows MMW (Gold) to Android MMA (Pro) for nearly two weeks without success (Yes, several deletes, reinstalls etc etc);

- Tracks Missing
- Album Art Missing
- Albums Split (Yes, I have selected File > Maintain Library > Optimize Database (Complete)

I have given up on sync!! Nobody needs to endure this much pain for a music library. Yes, I deleted tracks, library, removed app, restarted and I have thrown everything in the book and CAN NOT GET a Mirror copy of my MMW library on my Android device. It is useless. Library 3.8k songs only 25GB of music on 64GB SD Card.

Anyways, this aside. I decided to copy my MMW Library to the SD Card Manually and GUESS WHAT? You would NOT believe this BUT MM REMOVES the "Album Artist" and REPLACES it with the "ARTIST" on the android device. So I can not simply add my SD Card music Library to MMA and search by "Album Artist".

I have tried this 100 ways, 100 different times and no matter what I do, MM will NOT show the correct "Album Artist" because it has MOVED the Artist to the Album Artist field which in turn has REMOVED the Album Artist!!.

I am sure everyone can REPLICATE THIS SCENARIO.

So! What is the point of having the options of;

- Artists & Album Artists
- Artists
- Album Artists

on android phone when it "Strips" one tag only to replace another tag eg. Strips the Album Artist to Put in the Artist.

Not getting anywhere.

PC: Windows 10 (Anniversary)
MMW: 4.1.14.1813

Android: Samsung Galaxy 5 (S5) Marshmallow
MMA: 1.2.0.0624

[rivorson]

I decided to copy my MMW Library to the SD Card Manually ... BUT MM REMOVES the "Album Artist" and REPLACES it with the "ARTIST" on the android device.

MMA doesn't have its own media scanner yet. It cannot read any tags from files and only displays what Android's built in scanner reads. A dedicated MMA media scanner is on the roadmap but for now MMW is required for full tag support.

- Tracks Missing

What settings are you using in your sync profile? Ideally if you want to sync absolutely everything then you'd have all your collections checked under [device profile] --> "Auto-Sync (-->Device)".
Is there any noticeable pattern to the missing tracks, e.g. a particular file type, bit rate, album, collection, etc? Also are you able to play the tracks missing from MMA in MMW?

- Album Art Missing

A newer version of MMW was recently released and included some fixes for album art syncing. You can download it here:
http://www.mediamonkey.com/MediaMonkey_Setup.exe

I'm not sure what the latest non-beta release of MMA is but the current beta also includes fixes for artwork sync. There are instructions for getting the beta through the Google Play store here:
http://www.mediamonkey.com/forum/viewto ... &start=180

- Albums Split

Are the Album Artist and Album names set to the exact same values? Check for leading and trailing spaces because these are easily missed but would cause the tracks to be recognised as separate albums.
Even better, select all tracks in an album and edit the Album Artist and Album tags to the same values. If you have all the tracks in an album selected when you edit the tags then any tag you edit will be set to the same value for the entire album.

[Peke]

Hi,
First I would suggest that upgrade to latest MMW and MMA Beta

You can download latest MMA beta release Google store or http://www.mediamonkey.com/forum/viewto ... 68820&sd=d

You can download latest MMW Beta from this location http://www.mediamonkey.com/forum/viewto ... 54426&sd=d

Secondly can you please tell us how you mirrored MMW library to MMA? eg. Copy to SD card directly on PC with Card Reader or Copied using Windows Explorer or used MMW to Sync Whole Library to MMA? I'm asking this as in first two cases after copy android media store is scanning the files prior to adding them into MMA and android media store is known to not handle Album Artist correctly.

[stormer]

Thanks guys for your suggestions but I prefer to use stable versions but I will update once the betas are released.

I tried to get track "info" on android to see how the tags looks in there before MM reads them but through my files > audio the most I can see with details is Name, Size, Last modified and path, that's it!

If this is an android issue Google should be thrown over the hot coals because if I selected MM to sync changed tracks back to MMW my Library would an complete MESS as they have butchered the Artist & Album Artist Tracks. The biggest issue I have is WHY are Album Artist tags being removed and replaced with Artist tags.

@Peke, when MM sync did not work fully I put the sd card in my laptop and copied tracks to it using windows explorer. Put back into the phone and then use MMA to scan for new/changed media.

I think a big part of the problem is Auto Sync Device (--> Device) Delete other files & playlists from the device IS NOT WORKING. And MM keeps caching old library info and ultimately gets confused. I have had this option selected from the beginning and not once has it removed content off my android that is not in my MM library (Eg, I have changed tracks and albums and MM leaves the old ones on my phone).

Thanks @rivorson for your suggestions. I hope this MM scanner happens fast! I sync my entire library so nothing can be missed (Well so I thought!) Re: split albums, yes everything matches (I even check for spaces at the end and update tracks/album info in bulk - a habit from my iTunes days to make sure tags are correctly changed) however I found that using Tools > Scripts > Auto-increment track #s has worked on occasions.

[Peke]

Hi,
MediaMonkey Betas are betas in the sense that they are both feature incomplete and have undergone limited testing--so there may be bugs or regressions sneaking through.

(Alphas in contrast have undergone very limited testing and almost certainly have both bugs and regressions).

There is no clear Album Artist standard metadata and many apps implement it the best they could/can which results in incompatibility. Hence Removes and MESS.

Syncing SDCard directly in PC override MM implementation and handling of Album Artists. 10+ years ago many complained how MMW handle that and now they use similar/same approaches.

MMA scanned: We are already working on it.

[rusty]

Hi Stormer,

I just want to re-iterate this so that it's clear: as riverson explained, the reason metadata is missing is because of the manner in which you transferred tracks to your device (by manually copying to the SD card rather than by syncing). More about this can be found at: http://www.mediamonkey.com/support/inde ... e/View/158

All the other info about new versions of MMA/MMW won't solve this if you continue to 'sync' in this manner.

Thanks.

-Rusty