Different Artist and Album Artist, Disappears in Genre View?

rclott · Post by **rclott** » Wed Jun 04, 2008 7:44 pm

Sorry if this has been addressed before, but I coundn't find in with a search. I am using MM 3.0.2.1134 on Vista SP1.

I often use the Library Genre view. I recently added a bunch of CDs, several of which I made the Artist and the Album Artist different (I think all my previous CD's were the same). Suddenly these CD's don't appear in the Genre view, whereas they are clearly there in the Location view.

An unrelated question, except that it is in the Genre view... I have two Unknown genre folders being shows. One has some songs I have yet to organize, and are tagged as Unknown. But the other one is empty, yet I can't delete it for some reason.

nohitter151 · Post by **nohitter151** » Wed Jun 04, 2008 9:37 pm

It sounds like the tracks that won't show up in the genre node haven't been added to your library.

Probably there are 2 unknown genres because MM always has an "Unknown" genre node for tracks that are untagged (ie have an empty genre field.) I guess it creates another node if tracks are actually tagged as "Unknown".

rclott · Post by **rclott** » Thu Jun 05, 2008 12:09 am

Thanks for the tips. Your note about UNKNOWN folder worked. I just changed the genre for all those unknown tracks to be blank instead, and now I only have one unknown folder.

As for the other matter, I tried to ADD/RESCAN the tracks to the library as you suggested, and no change. Let me give an example. Many of these tracks are by Eric Clapton in the group Cream. Consider I wanted to categorize them by Clapton, but I didn't want to lose the fact that it was an Album by Cream. I put Eric Clapton as the Artist, and Cream as the Album Artist.

So these are all missing in the Genre view, but still there in the Location view. I half expected them to show up in Genre view, but under Cream instead. No, they're just not there it seems.

rclott · Post by **rclott** » Thu Jun 05, 2008 12:35 am

I did some experiments. If I make some of those tracks with Eric Clapton as BOTH Artist and Album Artist, as expected they show up in the Genre / Western / Eric Claptop view. I tried swapping them around from how I had them before, that is, Cream was the Artist and Eric Clapton was the Album Artist. That also worked just fine. Only when Eric Clapton was the Artist and Cream was the Album Artist would they not show up in the Genre / Western / Eric Clapton view. Nor was there a Genre / Western / Cream folder available.

Let me explain that I use the Genre field in a VERY broad manner. I keep all my western-music labeled as the WESTREN, all my Korean music labeled as K-POP, and language learning files as LANGUAGE.

Also, I noticed that these tracks, when "missing", were indeed visible under simply the GENRE view, that is, at the very top level, before I narrow it down to WESTERN genre.

Strange. I guess I'll just go swap around those fields for now, since that seems to work.

Kilmatead · Post by **Kilmatead** » Thu Jun 05, 2008 12:59 am

Do you use "Auto-Organize" (Tools > Auto-Organize Files) and are any property fields it may reference "blank"?

Perhaps a mask along the lines of
...\Music\<Genre>\<Artist>\<Album>\<Track#:3>_<Title>

(or similar) would sort things on the disc in a more predictable manner, thus allowing the head to follow, as it were.

Also be aware that when editing (en mass) the Artist and Album Artist fields, if both are the same MM will psychotically assume you want to change both, so you have to un-check the one you don't want modifed. This can lead to things not going where expected.

rclott · Post by **rclott** » Thu Jun 05, 2008 2:42 am

I do use Auto Organize when necessary. My organization is
Music\GENRE\<Artist>\<Album>\<Track#:3>_<Title>
I have always Manually typed in where you see GENRE either WesternMusic or KoreanMusic. I had never though of using the <genre> tag as you suggest. But fundamentally my music IS organized as such on the disc. Would it make a difference if I did an Auto Organized on everything, using the <genre> tag (long time, many gigabytes of music)? Or just renamed the two directories to match the tag (quicker)

Noted about the psychotic behavior of the Artist and Album Artist field, I am aware of it and that is not my problem.

nohitter151 · Post by **nohitter151** » Thu Jun 05, 2008 8:26 am

Auto-organizing wouldn't make a difference, the genre node is based only on tags. Are you sure that you closed an re-opened the node after changing the artist/album artist to refresh it? Are you sure that the affected tracks are actually tagged as "Western"? Also, the subnode of genre is Artist, so whatever the artist name is should appear under each genre.

rclott · Post by **rclott** » Thu Jun 05, 2008 6:41 pm

Yes, I'm sure the tracks in question are tagged as "Western". I understand what you're saying about the genre node using Artist, but I'm looking at tracks clearly where the Artist is "The Yardbirds" and the Album Artist is "Eric Clapton", and it is showing up in the genre view under Eric Clapton. Strange...