"Best of Albums" - how do you play yours..

greenwoodmonkey · Post by **greenwoodmonkey** » Thu Aug 09, 2007 5:43 am

As I have explained in other topics I have an ever growing music collection which I am slowly tweaking in all the right places to give me a workable structure, correct tagging and some great play listings that will make my life so much happier..

Now, like alot of you I have the "standard" structure when it comes to my storage :
Drive/music/artist/album/track

Thats all well and good... but I have a fair few duplicates now because of various compilation and best of albums which is starting to grate....

Now... the question is... how are you dealing with this?

My first reaction is to delete all duplicate tracks... but that is going to leave some pretty big spaces in albums...

I was thinking about using one of the spare "custom" tag fields to display something like "also on best of xxxx" or "compilation y" to pick up any missing files, but I fear that might be messy...

So come on, how are you all handing it.. or shall I just live with the duplicates and move on?

Teknojnky · Post by **Teknojnky** » Thu Aug 09, 2007 10:40 am

I just leave any duplicates from compilations/greatest hits.

Complete and accurate library is far more imporant than possible duplicates (my opinion of course).

If I have other dupes that are not from a different album then I will normally delete those.

Hooah · Post by **Hooah** » Thu Aug 09, 2007 10:42 am

I leave them. I prefer to have complete albums and sometimes the tracks will be named the same but it might be a slightly different version (live, accoustic, extended, etc.).

BTW, this is how I have my collection labeled.

Media/<Artist> - <Album>/<track>
Media/Various Artist - <Album>/<track>
Media/Soundtrack - <Movie>/<track>

Keeps it neat.

gege · Post by **gege** » Thu Aug 09, 2007 12:06 pm

It looks like there's a lot of 'completists' here.
I live with the dupes too! But I manage them as follows:

- 'Custom 1' field is set as 'Recording Type' and I fill it with Studio, Live, Acoustic, Remix, Demo, etc
- 'Custom 2' field is set as 'Uniqueness' and I fill it Unique, Original, Alternative or Duplicate.

So:
"U2\Achtung Baby\03 - U2 - One.mp3" will be set as Studio and Original.
"U2\Best of...\05 - U2 - One.mp3" will be set as Studio and Duplicate.

"U2\Zooropa\01 - U2 - Zooropa.mp3" will be set as Studio and Unique.

"U2\The Joshua Tree\02 - U2 - I Still Haven't found....mp3" will be set as Studio and Original.
"U2\Rattle and Hum\06 - U2 - I Still Haven't found....mp3" will be set as Live and Alternative.

Got the idea?

This way I can easily create AutoPlaylists avoiding dupes on them.
I can also pick only Live or Acoustic tracks if I want.
I even set up two Magic nodes for this:

Code: Select all

Recording Type\<Recording Type>\<Album Artist>\<Album>
Uniqueness\<Uniqueness>\<Album Artist>\<Album>

GSV3MiaC · Post by **GSV3MiaC** » Thu Aug 09, 2007 2:27 pm

I just set the genre for duplicates to 'Near duplicate', and filter that out in (most) auto playlists, and when synching to a removable device. Typically I leave the version in the 'best' of the two albums, or the original album. If some album gets to where there is nothing over 2.5 stars except 'near duplicates' then I sell the album.

Obviously you don't take 'duplicate' tracks out of the middle of a 'play me gapless' album like 'Days of Future Passed', but for most albums losing a few tracks doesn't affect anything. The whole concept of 'album' is headed down the chute anyway, with the 'buy the tracks you like and play them in the order you like' on-line music thing.

Would be nice if MM (2.5) could actually spot duplicates, but it doesn't really do so IME. Fwiw I don't consider 'live' and 'acoustic' to be duplicates of an original track, so I'd probably change the title to 'XYZ (Live)'.

Custom fields would be OK, but I'm using them for other things.

Teknojnky · Post by **Teknojnky** » Thu Aug 09, 2007 3:08 pm

Can also use any of the classification nodes to indicate type/dupes, and you get the bonus of having a dedicated node for them (instead of using custom fields which have no built in node).

GSV3MiaC · Post by **GSV3MiaC** » Thu Aug 09, 2007 4:38 pm

What I do find lacking in MM (2.x) is some way to handle the 'I want ONE and only one of these duplicates' (selected for auto playlist, send to portable device, whatever). If I tag all duplicated tracks as 'dup' and then exclude 'dup' from playlist/synch list I obviously get none of them. 8<,

Right now I am manually picking one of them and tagging that differently, but obviously if I delete that one I need to notice, and then manually pick another, and turn off the dup tag on that (whatever it is).

Some way to 'select one of the dups, ignore the rest' would be really nice. Suggestions welcome ..

gregmasciola · Post by **gregmasciola** » Fri Aug 10, 2007 2:20 am

I hate duplicates. I just always feel that it's a waste of my computer's space to have a bunch of copies of the same song.
If I have many actual albums by a band, I just delete the duplicate tracks from the Greatest Hits CD's. If I have several compilations by a certain band, I just decide which copy of a song has the best sound quality and delete the other copies. Then when I upload those songs on to my Toshiba Gigabeat, I just change all of those album titles to the name of the band.

Alfadog · Post by **Alfadog** » Mon Oct 01, 2007 12:52 pm

I agree with the last post. I also like whole albums but for greatest hits I prefer just to keep the bonus tracks. I do like alternate versions of the same song, radio promos, boot legs or live takes done over the years. But only like to have one version of the original recording.

royzee · Post by **royzee** » Thu Oct 11, 2007 2:08 pm

My first reaction to this thread was confirmation of just how much a rip off CDs are. We are buying tracks several times. If you factor in possible past purchases on vinyl or MC, it is scary. That's one of the reasons why I like EMusic - I buy only the tracks I want. There are a few exceptions where I buy the entire album if I really like the artist(s) but even then I would avoid spending money on a dupe.

freeqboi · Post by **freeqboi** » Sun Oct 21, 2007 6:17 am

i tend to delete them, especialy if they are on one of the many "best xxx album ever" type things, i use MM for home and for dj-ing, i use a seperate software for mixing and playing, and MM to search, and playlist, so i have a lot of comps knocking around, and i really dont need 6 copies of things like sweet child of mine, also, deleting them, saves disk space, which i desperatley need!

saying that, what i'm thinking of doing is taking all the compilation albums and running them thru ishite, in the auto organise function, and then delete/ intregrate the lot into artist folders, making it a bunch easier to organise. if that sounds overtly complicated, its maily cos i've not explained it well..

jc836 · Post by **jc836** » Thu Oct 25, 2007 12:51 pm

Old Timer here- I have always kept the complete album, even with tracks that are less than what I will listen to. Face it, the industry churned out all sorts of compilations and many, sadly, were not from the original studio "master" tapes or discs. It is very possible to have a re-recording that is actually more enjoyable, if processed to CD correctly.
Took me a very long time to find a CD of Del Shannon and Freddy Cannon from the original vinyl. Then again ther are numerous comp's with their tunes. Just as an example-La Bamba is a standard that has many versions. Ritchie Valens made it famous initially, but Los Lobos redid it for the movie and I like their version. I have NOT deleted the original-just don't use it.
Very true that the business is going the way of downloadable singles (gee wasn't that the thing in the 50's?) My 2 cents

Alfadog · Post by **Alfadog** » Fri Oct 26, 2007 12:21 pm

I do agree this the last post to keep the same some if there is something different. I have several that are the album version and another that is a radio version.

Also Media Monkey is great for adding more that one album art. Some of my files have the ablum art of both the orginal release and the greatest hits release and sometimes US and Import covers.

It would be cool if there comes a day when the art being displayed when the song is playing does some kind of slide show with the differnt pics on that file.

MustangM · Post by **MustangM** » Wed Nov 21, 2007 8:09 am

I think that deleting tracks from albums, even if duplicates will be a problem for compatibility moving forward with other players and managers.

There is a need for a music manager that could delete the duplicates but keep a link to the file where its needs in other albums. Thus when synching to exporting those albums it would also copy the linked file.

gege · Post by **gege** » Wed Nov 21, 2007 8:36 am

MustangM wrote:I think that deleting tracks from albums, even if duplicates will be a problem for compatibility moving forward with other players and managers.

There is a need for a music manager that could delete the duplicates but keep a link to the file where its needs in other albums. Thus when synching to exporting those albums it would also copy the linked file.

http://www.mediamonkey.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=16998