Tracks from same album showing up as different albums in collection!
I have a bunch of tracks all named like:
Artist - Track.mp3
They are all tagged as genre Singles and album name Zingles.
When the Zune software imports these songs into my collection, they show up in the list of albums in a very strange way. Every song is in its own album,though the album names are all the same. The tracks are not duplicated. Each is on the device once... I just have 250 albums with the same name.
I have stripped ALL tags from the tracks and rebuilt them (v2.3 only) from the filenames. Didn't help. I rebuilt my entire collection, reset the zune, etc etc. I have tried different names for the album. In other words, waving a dead chicken over the computer.
WTF is going on? Why would it treat identical albums as different in the database? Thanks for any leads.
Album names do not an album make - zune uses two fields to define an album, one is the album name (which you already have set), the other is album artist - which is what appears under the name of the album in the album view. So, to define an album you need to make all the album artists appear as "Various Artists" or whatever. This of couse means you lose the name of the actual artist, which is not cool, but there's a seperate Artist field that can be used, that Zune doesn't show in the album view. The files for the album also have to be in the same folder (I think).
You can edit these tags in Zune software itself, but going to the list view (click next to browse on the upper right of the album lisitng panel) and changing the tags there - you'll see that in this view you can see both the Album Artists and the actual Artists listed. Sadly this doesn't seem very reliable, and the software seems to have a number of small problems with certain names, and remembering what you did over time (I think it stores a lot of the information in a file somewhere, rather than changing the actual Tag in the MP3, but I'm not sure).
A better way to do it is to get MP3Tag, which is a lot more user friendly when it comes to changing a lot of names, though it doesn't look as pretty. Once you've made the changes in there the Zune software will pick up on them and (in theory) will update your zune with the information once you resynch. I found I sometimes had to remove and re-add an album to get the Zune to recognise changes on occassion, but it was pretty rare. MP3 Tag also allows you to move the actual MP3's around your hard drive, so that you can place the various singles in the same folder, which Zune software does not seem to do.
So, to sum up, what you need for your album to show up as an album is something like this:
Album: Zingles
Album Artist: Various Artists
Artist: Chumbawumba
Location: C:\Zunestuff\Music\Zingles\
Creating custom album art for your "virtual" album should probably be done through zune software though. Once it's there as a single entity just right click on it and select "Add album art".
You can get MP3Tag from the mp3tag site - just do a search on mp3tag in Google and it'll be the first link.
Thanks a ton for the detailed reply! What you described is a batty way for the Zune to do things, but at least I know how it is thinking now.
The thing that really got me is I know this worked the way I wanted on Zune v1.
It seems like most other software doesn't use Album Artist, so if I set that to Various Artists, the Zune will be happy and so will the other players I use. I think.
Oh, yeah, I forgot something (ugh), MP3 Tag doesn't show album artist by default (at least it didn't for me) - you need to set it up, but it's a little weird. What Zune refers to as Album Artist, MP3Tag calls Band, so to add it to the columns view go to View > Customize Columns... And then in the window that appears click the New button. Then, where it says "new" in the upper right corner you can put Album Artist, and in the two fieds below that put %band%
Album names do not an album make - zune uses two fields to define an album, one is the album name (which you already have set), the other is album artist - which is what appears under the name of the album in the album view. So, to define an album you need to make all the album artists appear as "Various Artists" or whatever. This of couse means you lose the name of the actual artist, which is not cool, but there's a seperate Artist field that can be used, that Zune doesn't show in the album view. The files for the album also have to be in the same folder (I think).
You can edit these tags in Zune software itself, but going to the list view (click next to browse on the upper right of the album lisitng panel) and changing the tags there - you'll see that in this view you can see both the Album Artists and the actual Artists listed. Sadly this doesn't seem very reliable, and the software seems to have a number of small problems with certain names, and remembering what you did over time (I think it stores a lot of the information in a file somewhere, rather than changing the actual Tag in the MP3, but I'm not sure).
A better way to do it is to get MP3Tag, which is a lot more user friendly when it comes to changing a lot of names, though it doesn't look as pretty. Once you've made the changes in there the Zune software will pick up on them and (in theory) will update your zune with the information once you resynch. I found I sometimes had to remove and re-add an album to get the Zune to recognise changes on occassion, but it was pretty rare. MP3 Tag also allows you to move the actual MP3's around your hard drive, so that you can place the various singles in the same folder, which Zune software does not seem to do.
So, to sum up, what you need for your album to show up as an album is something like this:
Album: Zingles
Album Artist: Various Artists
Artist: Chumbawumba
Location: C:ZunestuffMusicZingles
Creating custom album art for your "virtual" album should probably be done through zune software though. Once it's there as a single entity just right click on it and select "Add album art".
You can get MP3Tag from the mp3tag site - just do a search on mp3tag in Google and it'll be the first link.
Thanks, you just helped me out with an issue as well. Try getting this tut stickied or something.
i wondered about that. i have a the 1039 album from Green Day in my Zune, but there are 4 instances of teh album with 2-4 songs in each. also Chrome Children tracks show up in their own albums.
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Help! I changed the artists name to one name, they all match, and the album name to one name, they also match, in the zune software itself. It didnt automatically up date on my zune device so I deleted all the songs from that specific album and then added them back on the zune device (with the new tags) and it still shows up on my zune device as different albums (Its still showing as the album name and then a different artist name even though in the zune software I changed it)
I also noticed that under "list" it shows all one artist and one album name but under "browse" it still shows the album name and then under it a different artist name
Example: Under "list" I have artist: papoose album: 1.5 million dollar man
Under "browse" and the zune device I have album: 1.5 million dollar man and then underneath it says dj kay slay or akon,ect....
"Album artist" needs to be the same, not "artist". Each track can have its own "artist", but each album can only be by one global "Album artist" . It sounds like you may have mixed up Album Artist and Artist (easy to do, unfortunately). Flop them over and it should work OK.
If you did mean Album Artist when you said Artist then I'll have to ponder it some more to work out where your issue is...
Yes, I figured it out. I didnt relize that you had to add on the "album artist" column, but now I have another problem. When I tryed to open the Zune software it wouldnt open, so I uninstalled it, and then reinstalled it. It finally opened, but now when i go to play my songs an error message comes up saying "Cant Play" error summary: cant find the item. It might have been moved, renamed, or deleted" I have not moved any of my music.
I also noticed that when I go under "Device" all my albums are organized (because I changed the album artists) but they are not organized on the zune itself
Sounds like you need to do a reset collection... Sadly I'm too sick to work out how to do that right now (been sick for days, hence no clean writeup of all this), but a quick search should help you find out how to do that.
as to why it's not synching correctly... Well, it might get sorted once you reset the collection, or it might be some deeper synching issue (such as it's not actually registering that the files have changed). I'd see if reseting your collection works first though (I've done it once, and it worked fine - although it did screw up some of my album art, but not much of it).
Tracks from same album showing up as different albums in collection!
