All my albums have been split up.

[IckyQualms]

Hi.

I just got the update and all of my self-made compilation albums and some actual albums have been randomly split into separate albums. 

For example it has split up the Dexys Midnight Runners album Searching for the Young Soul Rebels into 2 different folders/playlists. 

I'm very careful and even OCD with my id3 tags, I'm certain they're all as they should be, so I can't understand why this has happened. Wondering if anyone can help before I roll back to the old version. 

[andrewilley]

Could you post screenshots of what PA shows for the ID3 tags for two tracks which should be together in one album but are being shown as separated?

Also, you mention that they are in "different folders/playlists", however both of those categories are up to you to define and locate, PA does not do that automatically.

Andre

[IckyQualms]

Hi again. I managed to correct the issue. The error was mine. 

Thanks for taking the time to respond.

[richardsull]

I'm having a similar problem. I'm not sure if it's exactly the same as the OP's.

I have many compilation albums with several artists represented (using the "artist" and "albumartist" metadata tags on ogg vorbis files). When I open the "Albums" list, Poweramp separates these compilation albums into separate "albums" by artist. This results in the album being split into dozens, or even over a hundred different little "albums" for some of my larger compilations (large multi-disc box sets). This makes navigation very difficult and annoying. I tend to most often listen to whole albums and find them through the album list view. While there are other aspects of the new release that I really don't like, this particular problem is a total deal-breaker for me.

I've attached some screenshots showing the album list view, and a sample of the metadata for one of the songs.

[andrewilley]

Have you got the Join Albums option enabled? It's in Settings > Library > Lists.

Andre

[richardsull]

4 minutes ago, andrewilley said:

Have you got the Join Albums option enabled? It's in Settings > Library > Lists.

Andre

I do. I think the issue is that I'm using the "artist" and "albumartist" tags in a way that Poweramp V3 doesn't work well with. I may be using these tags in a nonstandard way. In which case I think I'll be looking for a new player (or downgrading to V2). I have something  25,000 songs on my computer using this tagging system. (Not all would be affected the same way, but several thousand would, I think.)

[andrewilley]

The tag you have shown seems OK. You are using plain Albums view aren't you?

Andre

[richardsull]

I am using the plain Albums view. See the screenshot below. Note that the first album is split into four albums (there are four different "artists" and "albumartists" in the tags for the songs in that album. If there's something different I should be doing with the settings, I'm not sure what it is.

[andrewilley]

On 12/18/2018 at 9:27 PM, richardsull said:

here are four different "artists" and "albumartists" in the tags for the songs in that album.

Then they are, and should be treated as, separate albums. Just because an album title wording is the same, it does not mean the album itself is the same. For example, think of an album title such as "Greatest Hits" - you don't want songs from Billy Joel's album of that title to be mixed up with the same album name by ABBA or The Beatles. That was a problem that Poweramp v2 had before the implementation of Album Artist support. The individual track artists can differ of course (such as when some songs have guest artists too, or for a compilation album all tracks may be by different artists) but the Album Artist tag should stay the same for each track on one album so they can be joined together correctly.  

Andre

[whatisthissongcalled]

14 hours ago, andrewilley said:

Then they are, and should be treated as, separate albums. Just because an album title wording is the same, it does not mean the album itself is the same. For example, think of an album title such as "Greatest Hits" - you don't want songs from Billy Joel's album of that title to be mixed up with the same album name by ABBA or The Beatles. That was a problem that Poweramp v2 had before the implementation of Album Artist support. The individual track artists can differ of course (such as when some songs have guest artists too, or for a compilation album all tracks may be by different artists) but the Album Artist tag should stay the same for each track on one album so they can be joined together correctly.  

Andre

Shouldn't the artist be enough to separate those albums though? I can't go back and re-tag thousands of files of files.

[blaubär]

5 hours ago, whatisthissongcalled said:

Shouldn't the artist be enough to separate those albums though? 

So what is the situation ?

You recently spoke of songs with different artist and album artist tags - that won't ever be taken for one album.

There are categories for both artist and album artist. If you choose artist, are then songs with the same artist but different album artist tags not taken for one album ?

Edit: tried it - it seems Poweramp defines one album as the set of songs with same album artist and album title.

For want of a better definition this seems reasonable to me.

[andrewilley]

Correct, if present Album Artist can be used to group multiple tracks by different artists into a single album (such as Various Artists compilation albums, etc). If there is no Album Artist field present then the Artist tag will be checked - but of course to be considered as part of the same album (without any extra Album Artist tagging) all of the tracks must have the same artist name.

As another example of why this is important, I have a CD entitled "Time" by ELO, and my wife has a different album also called "Time" which is the soundtrack to a Dave Clark musical that starred Cliff Richard. If only the Album Title was used for sorting, all of the tracks from both of these two albums would get lumped together as one big entity, which is obviously wrong.

Andre

[theymademesignup]

On 12/21/2018 at 8:48 AM, andrewilley said:

Correct, if present Album Artist can be used to group multiple tracks by different artists into a single album (such as Various Artists compilation albums, etc). If there is no Album Artist field present then the Artist tag will be checked - but of course to be considered as part of the same album (without any extra Album Artist tagging) all of the tracks must have the same artist name.

As another example of why this is important, I have a CD entitled "Time" by ELO, and my wife has a different album also called "Time" which is the soundtrack to a Dave Clark musical that starred Cliff Richard. If only the Album Title was used for sorting, all of the tracks from both of these two albums would get lumped together as one big entity, which is obviously wrong.

Andre

sorry for the late reply 18 months after the last post but i discovered this problem after transferring over 100gb of music to my phone, couldn't both the file location and album name be cross referenced to avoid this? the join album doesn't seem to be working and i have albums that range from 5 different listings because they ft people to 22 different listings because they're a compilation

[andrewilley]

Don't worry, it seems to be the season for dredging up old threads.

If you are one of the organised people who have all your albums neatly arranged in folders, you can use Folders mode for browsing as that uses the file location as you suggest. Not everyone is so organised though, and automated download/sync systems are rarely so tidy, so it doesn't work for everyone.

Your problem is almost certainly that your files do not have their Album Artist embedded tags set correctly. The 'Join Album' option was only ever a workaround for badly tagged files (and before Album Artist tags were scanned) and it is not a perfect solution for the reasons outlined above.

In general, for multiple tracks to be considered as being part of the same album they need to have identical Album Title tags and also identical Album Artist tags - e.g. Album Artist would be set to "Various Artists" for the case you describe. The individual Track Artist tags can all be different though, especially in the case of compilation albums.

You can check the status of the different embedded tags by long-pressing on a song title and selecting Info/Tags. PA does allow you to edit mis-tagged items in the app, but only file-by-file so if you need to do a large number I would suggest using a batch tag editor such as TagScanner or MP3Tag on a PC, which can read your whole music collection in one go and update the Album Artist tags for whole albums at a time.  

Andre