Tags and changing Album Artist and Title display

[Fredo]

Hi:

I rip using Exact Audio Copy and compress as FLAC. When ripping, I grab track titles from FreeDB. Then in MM, I Add/Rescan the new tracks to add them to the MM database.

In the MM Album Artist and Title display, I end up with some misspelled entries like:
Claudia Villa
- track 1
- track 2
Claudio Villa
- track 3

So I move tracks from one name to the other so they all reside under the correct name. OR I change the artist name in the track listing. So far, so good.

But sometimes I Add/Rescan everything to make sure my MM database is complete. I believe this reverts things to names that existed before moved the tracks.

How can I preserve changes I made to the database? Do I need to go into individual tracks and change the file and track names before Add/Rescanning them?

Thanks much,

Fred

[Lowlander]

I haven't seen issues like this and I too use EAC to rip my music to Flac. I do make sure in EAC that all tags are correct though before ripping the files.

Are you tagging in the My Computer or Library node in MediaMonkey? Make sure the option to save changes to tags is enabled under Tools > Options > Tags & Playlists.

[Fredo]

Lowlander:

Thank you for your reply. I was wrong - everything is working correctly!

Summary
------------

I checked and Tools > Options > Tags & Playlists is set. I think it was not set in the past, which caused the problems I encountered.

I ran some tests to confirm that MM is indeed working correctly. These tests involved changing the physical album directory structure and/or changing the album structure in the MM database. Here are my observations:

- In MM, under Artist & Album view, I can move an album from one artist to another artist (for example, the same artist with a different spelling). MM changes track tags and updates the MM database structure, but it does not change the physical album library directory structure.

- Add / Rescan all library tracks keeps the above changes intact because MM had changed the track tags.

- I can change the physical album library directory structure and then Add / Rescan all library tracks in MM. However, MM will not update the MM database structure to reflect the change. This is because I did not change tags (either manually or via MM).

- To change both the physical album library directory structure and the MM database, do so in three steps:

1. Change the physical directory structure (move an album to another artist).
2. In MM, change the tags of tracks in an album. Do this simply by moving an album to another artist.
3. Do a MM Add / Rescan of the album database, or at least of the changed artists. Delete missing tracks from the database when prompted by MM during the rescan(these are the tracks that I moved to a different artist).



Observation
---------------

MM builds its library from track tags. My original expectation was that it would obtain artist and album information from the physical album directory structure, not from track tags. That is not the case.


Tests
-------

To help anyone else with similar questions, here are the details of the tests I ran:


I started with part of the original physical library directory structure:

** Test 1 **

-------------------
Arild Anderson (artist)
- Clouds in My head (album)
- Green Shading into Blue (album)
- If You Look Far Enough (album)
- Live at Velleville (album)
- Shimri
Arild Anderson with Vassilis Tsabropoulos and John Marshall (artist)
- The Triangle (album)
-------------------

Using the Godfather tag utility, track tags for those albums show the artist as "Arild Anderson" for the first 5 albums, and
"Arild Anderson with Vassilis Tsabropoulos and John Marshall" for the last album. So tags were consistent with the directory structure.

In Artist & Album Artist view in MM, the entries for those artists matched the above structure. Then I moved "The Triangle" album into the "Arild Anderson" category. The results were:
- In MM, the Arild Anderson entry now contained 6 albums, including "The Triangle".
- In Godfather, artist tags for The Triangle tracks had been changed by MM to "Arild Anderson".
- The MM database structure was changed, but the physical album directory structure remained unchanged.

Then I did an Add / Rescan of the entire library. Nothing was changed - which is the way it should be!

Then I changed the directory structure: I moved "The Triangle" under "Arild Anderson" and then deleted "Arild Anderson with Vassilis Tsabropoulos and John Marshall".

Then I did an Add / Rescan of the entire library. I got a prompt to remove missing tracks from the old "The Triangle" album. I removed them.

Now the directory structure and the MM database reflected the same structure.

The problem I encountered previously was that I changed the directory structure without changing tags in MM.

To test that, I used the following artist and this directory structure:



** Test 2 **

-------------------
Haslinger (artist)
- Future Primitive (album)
Haslinger, Paul (artist)
- Score (album)
-------------------

I moved the album "Score" unto the "Haslinger" directory and removed the "Haslinger, Paul" directory. I did not change tags - they remained the same. Artist tags for tracks in the Score album remained "Haslinger, Paul".

I directed MM to rescan the entire library. It could not find the old "Score" tracks and I was prompted to delete the tracks. I deleted them.

Then in Artist & Album Artist display under MM, the display for that artist was still:

Haslinger (artist)
- Future Primitive (album)
Haslinger, Paul (artist)
- Score (album)

The reason was that although I had changed the directory structure, I had not changed the tags. So in MM, I moved "Score" under "Haslinger".

Then I did an Add / Rescan of the entire library. It then showed both albums under "Haslinger", and none under "Score":

Haslinger (artist)
- Future Primitive (album)
- Score (album)

All is well!

Fred

[nohitter151]

If you want to obtain track info from folders/filenames, use Tools > Auto-tag from filename

[Fredo]

Perfect!

Thanks,

Fred

[Lowlander]

And Tools > Options > Library > Infer Track Properties also does this while scanning. I prefer to keep it off though.