Same track in multiple albums

[DougP]

Hi all,

Had a look at the forums and could not find info I need - anybody know how to get the -same- track to appear in multiple albums? Tried adding multiple names to ALBUM tag, but my music streamer (SlimServer) got confused. I know I can rip n copies of the track but that seems wasteful...I have 1200 CDs ripped to FLAC so would like to keep storage needs as low as poss...

Thanks.

[LtData]

Re: Same track in multiple albums

What exactly are you trying to do? Have one copy of a track that is in multiple albums?

[xoas]

Re: Same track in multiple albums

I may be wrong, but it seems doubtful that too many tagging programs would support multiple album names or (more to the point) that there are too many players that could handle multiple entires in the album tag field.

The more straightforward approach would be to use playlists for albums with tracks that appear in multiple albums (or maybe, for consistency) to make a playlist for each album. Playlist files are very small so you would save a lot of space. You could also have tracks stored singly in your library so that if you wanted to use a random play feature you would not be bound to sorting only through full albums.

If this seems less than satisfactory, perhaps more details about the player(s) you are using would be helpful. Or we might be able to talk through some of the rough edges of this approach which might allow you or another of our users to come up with a better idea.

Best wishes,
Bill

[DougP]

Re: Same track in multiple albums

To be clear -> I want to only rip one version of a track but have it referenced by many albums...compilations are the main targets ; if I have the 'original CD track' why duplicate?

Playlist per album is just not feasible - I have 1200 + albums right now. Plus I use Squeezebox/Slimserver, ripped to FLAC. This allows me to play an album dynamically (ie. without creating playlists).

This is not a major pain (guess I just need lots of duplicate rips), but I am surprised this issue is not easily addressed.

Any help (or R&D) in this would certainly help me and others.

Doug

[JoeRip]

Re: Same track in multiple albums

Yes, I've been fighting with this problem for a year. I haven't come up with anything better than "One Playlist Per Album", either.

The problem comes down to this: what is an album? In most current models, an album is just an attribute of any given song (actually, song FILE). If your music player/streamer understands attributes, then you are set. Except - currently, none of the common/standard "attribute" schemas - ID3 tags, for example - support multiple values per attribute. So, you can't have multiple "genres" or "moods" for a song. Nor can you have multiple "albums".

A better model would be to have a container, which contains pointers to objects would ultimately resolve to the unique location of music content data. So a playlist could contain the location of a song file, or it could contain a request to a music service that yielded one or more streamed songs, or it could contain a reference to yet another playlist. With this, every album would simply be yet another playlist.

And each playlist should also have attributes, so you can go meta-operations on playlists. If I have mood based playlists (upbeat) and location based playlists (local files) and artist based playlists (Elvis Costello), I should be able to generate other playlists based on these attributes (gimme a playlist of high quality, Elvis Costello songs that are stored locally and are upbeat and are each no less than 3 minutes long).

The way to do all of this, of course, is to use a database.

Unfortunately, current/standard playlists limit themselves to being lists of file locations (no references to other playlists, no searchable collections of song attributes, no metadata of their own), and are therefore limited in usefulness. Moreover, very few music player hardware or software are capable of doing much with playlists.

So, ultimately, you are stuck with either (a) using attribute-based management, which means having multiple copies of songs per album or (b) doing the work to generate all of these playlists yourself, and losing much of your flexibility in song management.

I chose to do nothing, but complain about it a lot.

[gameplaya15143]

Re: Same track in multiple albums

what you do is delete the extra copies.. and replace them with a shortcut to the one you keep

or

you could replace them with a playlist file (pls or m3u for example)

[DougP]

Re: Same track in multiple albums

Shortcuts will not work - Slimserver/squeezebox player decodes Tags not directories....

Playlists are manual...

One day I will work this out.. :-)

Doug