Fix Duplicate Albums in the Library April 2005
Do some of your albums appear more than once in the Windows Media Player 10 library? Or does an artist name appear in parentheses after some of your albums, but not after others? If so, one or more files in your library might have incorrect or missing "Album Artist" information. This article explains the issue and how to fix it.
Identifying the IssueIn the Windows Media Player library, the Contents pane (the pane on the left) includes a category called Album. If you expand the category, you'll see all of the albums that are in your library.
In most cases, the artist name appears in parentheses after each album name. For example, the album "The Man-Machine" by the artist Kraftwerk would appear in the Album category as "The Man-Machine (Kraftwerk)."
However, there may be instances where the artist name does not appear after the album name, or the same album appears twice: once with the artist name and once without the artist name, as shown in the following screen shot. In other cases, the album might appear more than once, each with different spelling of the artist name.
This happens because the Player sorts albums based upon the media information associated with each song. More specifically, the Player groups albums by the value of the Album Artist media information attribute (sometimes called the Album Artist tag).
The Album Artist attribute is used to identify the artist credited with creating the entire album (for example, Kraftwerk). When you see an album that doesn't have an artist name after it, this indicates that the songs in that album don't have a value entered for the Album Artist attribute.
When you rip a CD using Windows Media Player, the Album Artist information is usually added to the files for you. However, the Album Artist information might be missing if Windows Media Player wasn't able to download the information from the Internet for some reason or if you used another program to rip the CD.
Differentiating Between Artist and Album ArtistYou might be wondering how the Album Artist attribute differs from the Artist attribute. In a nutshell, the Artist attribute is used to identify all the major performers on a song and the Album Artist attribute is used to identify just the primary performer.
In many cases, the Album Artist attribute and the Artist attribute contain the same value; however, there are cases where the Artist attribute might include additional values. For example, if Tom Jones was a guest vocalist on one song on a Kraftwerk album, the Artist attribute for that song might contain the value "Kraftwerk; Tom Jones" while the Album Artist attribute for that song would contain just the value "Kraftwerk."
If you clicked the Contributing Artist category in the Contents pane, you'd see separate entries for Tom Jones and Kraftwerk because both names appear in the Artist attribute for a song in the library. If you clicked the Album Artist category, you'd see an entry for Kraftwerk, but not for Tom Jones because his name doesn't appear in the Album Artist attribute for any song in the library.
If you clicked the Album category, you'd see "Kraftwerk" in parentheses after the album name because Kraftwerk appears in the Album Artist attribute for all the songs on that album.
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Fixing the IssueTo fix the duplicate albums and to add the artist name after all album names, you must update the Album Artist attribute for any songs that are grouped with an album that doesn't have an artist name in parentheses. You can do this in a number of ways, using the following procedures.
Find Album Info MethodOne way you can update the Album Artist attribute is to use the Find Album Info command to download the missing information for the album from the Internet. This is usually the best method to use; however, on occasion, the online database might not have a listing for the album you are looking for, or it might contain missing or incorrect information about the album artist.In Windows Media Player, click Library. In the Contents pane, right-click the album that you want to fix, and then click Find Album Info, as shown in the following screen shot. Follow the instructions on the pages that appear.
For more information about using Find Album Info, see the Add or Edit Media Information Web page.
Drag-and-Drop MethodIf an album appears twice in the library, and one of the albums has the correct information and the other does not, you can fix the incorrect album by doing the following:In Windows Media Player, click Library. In the Contents pane, click the album with the incorrect or missing information, and then drag it on top of the album with the correct artist information, as shown in the following screen shot. When you are prompted to confirm that you want to change the media information, click Yes. The attributes of the correct album are copied to the incorrect album.
Edit Library MethodIf you don't mind doing a little typing, you can also edit the Album Artist attribute manually by making the Album Artist column appear in the library (it's hidden by default), and then entering the album artist name.In Windows Media Player, click Library. In the Contents pane, click the album that you want to fix. In the Details pane (the pane in the middle), right-click one of the column names (such as Title), and then select Album Artist in the list of attributes, as shown in the following screen shot. This action makes the Album Artist attribute visible in the library. For the song or songs that you want to edit, right-click the Album Artist area (which should be blank), and then click Edit, as shown in the following screen shot. Note You can edit multiple songs at once. To select multiple adjacent items, click the first item, hold down the SHIFT key, and then click the last item. To select multiple nonadjacent items, hold down the CTRL key as you click each item. In the Album Artist box, type the name of the album artist, and then press ENTER, as shown in the following screen shot.
Advanced Tag Editor MethodIf you don't want to go to the trouble of showing the Album Artist column in the library, you can instead use the Advanced Tag Editor to edit the Album Artist attribute.In Windows Media Player, click Library. In the Contents pane, click the album that you want to fix. In the Details pane, right-click the song or songs that you want to edit, and then click Advanced Tag Editor, as shown in the following screen shot. Note You can edit multiple songs at once. To select multiple adjacent items, click the first item, hold down the SHIFT key, and then click the last item. To select multiple nonadjacent items, hold down the CTRL key as you click each item. In the Advanced Tag Editor dialog box, click the Artist Info tab, and then enter the name of the album artist in the Album Artist box, as shown in the following screen shot.
For more information about the Advanced Tag Editor, see the Add or Edit Media Information Web page.
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Verifying the FixAfter you update the Album Artist attribute, each album appears only once, and with the correct artist name in parentheses, as shown in the following screen shot.
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