MediaMonkey forum

I noticed that sometimes the type of files is set automatically to Classical Music. This happens when the genre of such a file is tagged with 'classical' or 'neoclassical' or similar.

Is there an extensive list of what characteristics make MM auto-set the type to Classical Music?

Is there a way to prevent MM from doing this?

When classical is in Genre it is set as Type = Classical Music: http://www.mediamonkey.com/forum/viewto ... al#p299374

You can't change this. However you can manually change Type in the Properties window. You can also change the Collection rules, for example you can set the Music Collection to Type = Music and Classical Music and the Type set by MM no longer matters.

Right, I feared this would be the case. I wish it wasn't hardcoded since it takes a lot of effort to remember to undo these changes.

It's only relevant if you rely on Type and customizability will be looked at for 4.1 (nothing concrete was promised though).

Onweerwolf wrote:Right, I feared this would be the case. I wish it wasn't hardcoded since it takes a lot of effort to remember to undo these changes.

So instead you could just delete the "Classical" collection or always browse with the "Entire library" node.

Does deleting the classical collection result in the type not being auto-changed anymore?

I know how you feel, Onweerwolf, I have the same problem with new Music Videos being automatically classified as Videos by MM.

I do what Lowlander suggests to "change the Collection rules" and include Videos as part of my Music Video library criteria.

Then, so that I don't have to "remember to undo these changes", I have an AutoPlaylist to search my Music Video library for files whose 'Type' 'equals' 'Video'. Then I just bulk change the Type to Music Video (via Properties or, in my case, a RexExpFind&Replace custom button). Not a solution to the problem of mis-classification, I know, but it means I don't have to worry about whether I've forgotten to change the Type for new Music Videos - they still appear in my library and I can just go to the AutoPlaylist whenever I remember.

Right I'm doing the same with a playlist. It's not an unrecoverable problem, but it still takes extra effort. Besides not every genre that contains the world classical is classical music, like for instance neoclassical of which I have a lot.

Is "Type" not a tag and only exists in the MM database? This is brutal. When I sync my music files to another computer, like my home theater PC or a new replacement PC, it breaks the Collections on that destination PC. My Classical Music collection contains many tracks that I do not want in that Collection. Other Collections, where I filter out Classical Music, the tracks are missing. Changing the Collection rules doesn't fix the problem because the track Type is already changed. It takes me hours to sort it out.

And if Type is only a database entry, that doesn't explain why it happens on the same PC in the same session if I change an Auto-Organize rule that affects tracks with the word "Classical" in the genre. I've had to change some tracks back to Type "Music" multiple times in one sitting while tweaking Auto-Organize rules.

As this is going on, tracks with Type "Audiobook" is also changed to Type "Music", even tho there's nothing in the Genre to explain it.

Yep, 6 years later and this is still absolutely horrible. Please stop the automatic type converting based on the contents of the genre tag, MediaMonkey.

Software that tries to think for the user instead of doing what the user wants is bad software!

Ok,
Lets please re evaluate it then. I'm still not sure to follow what exactly MMW is doing wrong and I dare and hope you will prove me wrong as it will benefit both you and MM.

That said I'm taking an assumption you are right and MMW is faulty. You would agree that this needs to be fixed, so:
1. I would like to ask you to closely explain what track is not in the right Type (you can send me DL links of Sample tracks on PM)
2. What is the right type and why it falls only by that type
3. Why That genre needs to be in Conflict and stay as is even it do not closely describe actual File type.
4. A suggestion on what personally you think MM should do in order to better Detect Classical/AudioBooks/Music/...

Personally I'm not avid classical listener. I have my favs and tunes I love to listen from time to time, but not that I closely know if my metadata is correct.

Thank you in Advance.

The core of Type is to sort files into the different Collections. This is something the user can easily change by changing the Collection Criteria (Gold feature).

There are some secondary effects like Playback Rules (only if you use individual settings) and Properties layout (annoying, but fields are generally available) and most problematic syncing with MMA as it will sort files according to Type into the different sections.

Sync and UI presentation of various file types in MMA should be fixed along with MMA 2.0 when we introduce our ow tagger.

The problem is simply this: when a file is added to the library MM automatically changes the type of that file based on some internal criteria. I am not sure of all these criteria but one is that when you add a file to the library that has it's genre tagged in such a way that it includes the phrase 'classical' MM will give this file Type=Classical.

That is a very bad thing and also extremely obnoxious. I want to manage my library the way I want to and I do not want software to make these decisions for me. I don't want to have any files set with Type=Classical. And most certainly not music files that aren't even in the classical genre, but simply influenced by classical music, like Neoclassical for instance. As it is now every time I add a file to my library I have to consider it's genre and if that contains the phrase 'classical' manually change the type of that file back from Classical to Music.

It's fine for MM to have the option to sort these automatically but it's not ok for it to do so without the user wanting it. It should be something that can be flagged to set or not.