Amazon MP3 sucks or Player Sucks?

[NFXBeats]

I think it's Amazon that sucks.. Here's the issue.

When you download an album from Amazon it places the files into folders by Artist name. Normally this might not seem like a problem, except that say an artist has a featured guest. Assuming you buy Timbaland's Shock Value, you get something like:

\Timbaland\Shock Value
\Timbaland_Feat_Nelly_Furtado\Shock Value
\Timbaland_Feat_Justin_Timberlake\Shock Value

ugghh...

To make matters worse, the library system on Android - or at least all the players I have tried - seems to use the folders over the MP3 ID3 tags.

So now you have 3 albums called "Shock Value" in your Album List. Each containing one song.

Now to know why this is a major pain for me, consider that I made the mistake of buying 4 albums compiled by Amazon. Each of them are named something like "The 99 Greatest Classical Songs for ....".

Beacuase these are compiled and have different artists performing the songs, I know have close to 400 albums contining 1 song each when I should only have 4 albums each containing 99 songs.

Has anyone else run into this and/or how to you deal with it? Is there a better player that can manage this smarter?

 

[RideZeLitenin]

Man, I'm glad I don't have to go through all this shiz. I use TuneSync to transfer all my songs and playlists from iTunes, and PowerAMP as my player (which works brilliantly).

I've never had this issue, probably because I don't use Amazon MP3's.

 

[skullshank]

yep...its the tagging as far as i know...
those tracks are tagged as artists being timbaland AND nelly furtado or whatever...so it makes a new album folder for what it THINKS is a new artist...
you can retag yourself or sort by albums...

i usually tag my own stuff that isnt tagged the way i want, so thats how ive avoided that issue.

*EDIT*
looks like i didnt read fully...so you ARE trying to organize by album and 3 "shock value" albums show up...hmmmmmm

 

[dawankler]

I just did a test with Kanye West's "My Beautiful Dark Twisted" album I bought from Amazon MP3. It was originally showing up as 3 albums in Android's default music player (two albums of one track each and then the rest of the album). I fixed the ID3 tags on the two errant tracks with the same artist info as the rest of the album, rescanned media, and then opened the player to see three seperate albums still. I changed the ID3 tags back to the original info and then used Astro player to move the two errant tracks into the main album folder. After a rescan the media player is showing just the single album now with all the correct tracks (this is on Album view). A metal sampler album I got for free from Amazon MP3 is showing up as a single album because it's all in the same folder (even though none of the tracks have the same artist info).

I have another "album" of a language tutorial that was transferred from my PC using the drag and drop method. All audio files are in the same exact folder on the file system. The first lesson is properly tagged, while the rest of the tracks have no ID3 info. The music player splits this up into two seperate albums, one of the properly tagged and then another "album" of "Unknown Audio" tracks. Changing the ID3 info of the tracks moves them from one album to the other in the media player's album view, or into another album if I split them up by lesson.

I think the answer is that they're both a little screwy. Amazon could certainly make it easier by downloading all album purchases into a single folder, regardless of the artists while still maintaining the correct ID3 info. Android could fix it by actually using the ID3 tags instead of what looks like a hybrid ID3 tag/folder structure approach.

 

[Vic333]

There are two 'artist' fields in mp3 ID3 tags: 'Artist' and 'Album Artist'. Amazon groups their mp3s by Artist, but it should be by Album Artist. In many cases it wouldn't matter, but for compilations or for Hip Hop albums, in which there may by many guests on various tracks throughout the album, it makes a huge difference. If sorted by Album Artist, Timbaland's Shock Value album would all be in the Timbaland folder, but when you played any particular track Timbaland featuring _ would appear.