Windows Media Player - Album View

[gordo]

I've been ripping my CD collection on Windows Media Player. Something weird is happening for some CD's. When I go to the Library and view by Album, some of the albums are split up, sometimes its 1 or 2 tracks in a separate album by themselves, sometimes every single track is in its own "album".

What I've noticed is that when the "Artist" tag is set to something other than "Various", it seems to split it out into a separate album. If I change the artist on some of the tracks/albums to Various Artists then it will merge them into a single album. But then, I lose the artist, the contributing artist will be set to "Various Artists" for all the tracks in the album then.

This is a little hard to explain. Does anyone understand what I'm trying to say? And have encountered this also? What was your workaround?

Thanks in advance.

[tmiranda]

I had this issue as well. The trick is to make sure "Album Artist" as well as "Artist" is set for every CD. If the CD is by various artists, set Album Artist to "Various", otherwise set it the same as "Artist".

[sleonard]

You need to use both the "Album Artist" and "Artist" tags. (The "Artist" tag is called "Contributing Artist" in the latest versions of WMP. See my screenshot.

S

[gordo]

I started editing the Album Artist and Artist tags in Media Player and that is doing the trick. Its a major pain though !!!

[mickp]

Originally Posted by gordo

I started editing the Album Artist and Artist tags in Media Player and that is doing the trick. Its a major pain though !!!

The best way that I've found to do this is from Windows. Select all the files from a particular Album, press <alt><enter> or right click and select properties and set them all at once from the details tab. Makes it pretty quick.

Mick.

Edit: There's a more detailed description here.

[loomdog32]

Originally Posted by mickp

The best way that I've found to do this is from Windows. Select all the files from a particular Album, press <alt><enter> or right click and select properties and set them all at once from the details tab. Makes it pretty quick.

Mick.

Edit: There's a more detailed description here.

I second this method as being the best way to make sure every "song/file" has the same album artist... It really helps if you have all your albums seperated in different folders