What causes album songs to sort out of order?

[glennergy]

98% of the albums I import into Mediamonkey will either auto-sort by track number (when I search by artist), or will line up in order when I click on the "Album" column in the detail view in the main window in MM.

But there is a small percentage of albums which display their songs out of order. Now I have noticed that SOMETIMES they sort out of order if I added in some of the songs from that album at different times. But other times, I can't find a single discrepancy among the song tags, and they still sort out of order.

Here is a link to a screenshot of what I am talking about. I just added a new Ray LaMontagne album yesterday. I searched for Ray Lamontagne under artist, and clicked on that artist in the left column. That brought up my collection of his songs. Then I clicked on the top of the album column, to sort by Album. But there is ONE SONG -- #6, which shows up out of order. All the songs were added at the same time, and are tagged identically. What's up with this?

Here is the screenshot: http://www.antiochsea.net/MM_Lamontagne_Screenshot.jpg

Thank you!

[Lowlander]

After clicking on the Album column to sort on it, hold down the CTRL key and click the Track# column.

The issue might be that some tracks have a disc# value and others don't.

[glennergy]

That's great! First, when I tried the "Control-Track#" trick, it worked. And second, when I checked the Disk#, that one track was missing a value, while the other ones weren't. When I standardized the entire album, it works without needing the Control key trick. So thank you, problem solved!

[RayeGunn]

I know, dead thread. But I came looking for the same answer and I'm not satisfied with that solution. Here's the thing, it appears that when you sort by album, it sorts first by, well the album name, second, by disc number if a value is entered, then by... something... sometimes it appears to be alphabetical according to artist, other times I can't see a pattern, just that it's out of order when the artists on a CD are different.., *then* by track number. Or something like that, I'm not entirely sure. On albums that have various artists, this can cause some problems! Track number should come before artist in priority by default, but not trump CD #. Is there a way to change this in some setting somewhere? Here's an example with the Watchmen soundtrack. It was a 2 CD set, one set with score music, one set with songs by various artists that appeared in the movie.

Here's what it looks like with the default 'album' sorting:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v720/ ... -sort1.jpg

As you can see, the two CD's are properly separated thanks to the tag info, and the score CD is in proper order since it has the same artist throughout, but the 'CD' with the assorted artists is all out of order numerically, but if you look in the 'artist' column you can see they are in *alphabetical* order. (the 'the' in one being ignored)

so, do the ctrl+click of the track # column....
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v720/ ... -sort2.jpg
doh! now the second CD is all mixed in! I could rename one of the two, append them with (CD 1) and (CD 2) or something, and it would all sort normally, and i realize that's not a situation that will arise frequently, but still... that kinda defeats the purpose of the CD# tag info. If you have a CD that has one song tagged as (main artist) feat. (other artist) that one gets knocked out of order, and it shouldn't.

another example:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v720/ ... -sort5.jpg


there is one exception I've come across, and if i could figure out what went right here, it would crack the mystery:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v720/ ... -sort3.jpg
wtf is different about that one album that it gets put in the right order?? to deepen the mystery, this album:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v720/ ... -sort4.jpg
Was ripped from a CD within MINUTES of Tarzan, using MediaMonkey, using the exact same settings. So...

Yes, I realize that with all but the Watchmen soundtrack, I can sort by track number instead and all will be in the right order. My point is, I shouldn't have to, And I would like to change that.

... I actually don't listen to Soundtracks THAT much, they just seem to be especially prone to this :p

[Lowlander]

Check the Album Artist tag. It needs to be the same for all tracks on an Album for MediaMonkey to consider it an Album. On the first example you probably have different values for the first Watchmen album. Change all tracks Album Artist to Various Artists (or something similar) and sort on Album again, all should be well.

I believe Album sort to be Album > Album Artist > Disc# > Track#

[RayeGunn]

But they AREN'T the same 'album artist' so that's kinda silly... but now that you mention it, yes, Tarzan got tagged with 'disney' rather than the actual artists. Still a bad design, but i can re-tag them to... something.

[Lowlander]

That's why you would use Various Artists as Album Artist as the tracks are done by various artists. Check out the Library > Files to Edit > Multiple Artist Albums node for all potential albums that need this fix.

[RayeGunn]

It's just that I use last.fm so in order to keep tracks scrobbling to the correct artist pages, I sometimes put contributing secondary artists in the 'album artist' tag since last.fm ignores it, but it keeps the info for my own reference. So while it fixes this problem, it causes another for me in that I now have to put that info somewhere else, when the 'album artist' field actually would be the logical place for it.

*edit: aaaand it's not working, anyway :p

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v720/ ... -sort6.jpg

I have tried clearing the album artist for the whole album and resetting it incase it was a capitalization error or something, but 4 and 9 refuse to get into order... having the issue with some other albums too

[Lowlander]

It isn't logical as the Album Artist refers to the Artist who created the Album. The additional artists are supposed to be added in the Artist field separated by ; (Artist1;Artist2). Just checked and last.fm accepted the track under Artist1. In any case your issue would be either with last.fm or the last.fm plugin.

[RayeGunn]

enh, nevermind, some had the CD# and some didn't

[erit]

Ok, I thought that all 2800 of my properly tagged albums were listing out of order, and it was driving me insane trying to figure out why. I think it may be how I'm searching for albums...(?) Here's what I'm doing:
I am using the 'Show Album Art' view, with the 'Album Artist' column highlighted (because I like the albums to be sorted by artist, otherwise i have to scroll every time, as there is usually only one picture on each line with any other column highlighted).
I have 'Library' in my File Directory highlighted so that all albums are available, and I type in a name in the search box.
I double click the album cover art to play it, and almost every time the tracks are out of order (It seems to be inconsistent).
If I use the Track Browser to select something, it lists the tracks in the correct order every time. It only seems to happen after searching, and double clicking on the album art.
What am I missing?

[nohitter151]

Ok, I thought that all 2800 of my properly tagged albums were listing out of order, and it was driving me insane trying to figure out why. I think it may be how I'm searching for albums...(?) Here's what I'm doing:
I am using the 'Show Album Art' view, with the 'Album Artist' column highlighted (because I like the albums to be sorted by artist, otherwise i have to scroll every time, as there is usually only one picture on each line with any other column highlighted).
I have 'Library' in my File Directory highlighted so that all albums are available, and I type in a name in the search box.
I double click the album cover art to play it, and almost every time the tracks are out of order (It seems to be inconsistent).
If I use the Track Browser to select something, it lists the tracks in the correct order every time. It only seems to happen after searching, and double clicking on the album art.
What am I missing?

Did you check that the disc number is the same for all the tracks like previously mentioned in the thread? How about the album artist?

[erit]

Did you check that the disc number is the same for all the tracks like previously mentioned in the thread? How about the album artist?

Yep, it's pretty reproducible too. Is this possibly a bug? Try it. Or do I have some settings somewhere to change?
The 'Show Details' view & any column in the Track Browser doesn't ever do it, but the 'Show Album Art' & 'Show Album Art with details' do it about every time.
Here are some screenshots after searching for something:

Choosing by double clicking the album art (out of order):
http://img694.imageshack.us/img694/5775/01search.jpg

Choosing through the Track Browser (in order):
http://img690.imageshack.us/img690/8048 ... rowser.jpg