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mp3's, ID3 tags, iTunes, and how Android sorts 'em out

D

droid251

Lurker
First time poster here - I looked through a couple pages of threads and didn't find any discussion about my particular problem so I hope I'm not asking one of the "same old questions."

I just converted over to Android after using an iPod for the better part of the last decade. I have a decent amount of mp3's stashed on my desktop at home, and of course it is all organized/maintained by iTunes.

My issue pertains to the way media players are sorting albums that have more than one CD. I've been pretty anal about editing album info whenever I have imported music into iTunes, and I think it might have bitten me in the ass, at least regarding my switch to Android.

Essentially, whenever I imported an album with two or more discs, iTunes would search the database and populate the album info, and it would name the album something like "Artist Name - Album Name (disc x)". I really, really hated the fact that this would force the creation of two separate "albums" when viewing albums on the iPod. However, iTunes allows you to edit the album information and give all songs from a multi-disc album the same name (and hence a single "album") and then edit what I guess are the "tags" to indicate which CD each song was on. So, it would indicate "disc 2, song 1," "disc 4, song 6," and so on.

So now, I've imported a few things into my Droid to get the feel for how the media players work, and if I have a multi-disc album in there, the tracks are playing back in the following order:

1. disc 1, song 1
2. disc 2, song 1
3. disc 1, song 2
4. disc 2, song 2
5. etc. etc.

Obviously this is a little annoying.

Has anyone else experienced this? Any suggestions for a work around? I don't really relish the idea of going back through iTunes and updating every single multi-disc album, plus that means the organization will be sloppy and not the way I like it.

So far I have tried the native Droid music player, PowerAMP, DoubleTwist, and one or two others, and they all seem to have this problem.

Comments? Ideas? Suggestions?

Thank you.

-251
 
I understand what's happening, but I don't have an easy solution for you. Android reads the tags unlike iTunes which maintains a separate xml database. On the multidisk sets (which I assume are the only ones with problems) you can either go back and reset the distinct disk titles or you can continue to number the track sequentially. So, if Album X, disc 1 has 12 tracks then Album X, disc two track numbers would start at 13 and so on. They's play in the correct order that way.

I find iTune tag editing archaic. You should try MP3Tag to keep your tracks organized.
 
lunatic59 said:
I understand what's happening, but I don't have an easy solution for you. Android reads the tags unlike iTunes which maintains a separate xml database. On the multidisk sets (which I assume are the only ones with problems) you can either go back and reset the distinct disk titles or you can continue to number the track sequentially. So, if Album X, disc 1 has 12 tracks then Album X, disc two track numbers would start at 13 and so on. They's play in the correct order that way.

I find iTune tag editing archaic. You should try MP3Tag to keep your tracks organized.
Click to expand...

This is very helpful. I guess (sigh) I'm gonna have to edit all those mp3s. Gonna be a long night.
 
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