Random mini-rant about something totally not SS's fault

[supra92]

Like many folks here, I prefer to see my albums in chronological, rather than alphabetical, order. As such, I name the album folders underneath an artist in the following manner: "YYYY - AlbumTitle" Usually this is perfect for SS.

The problem comes when the artist releases more than one album in a given year -- with that, you are at the mercy of praying for the first-released album to have a "lower" letter, alphabetically... otherwise the later-released album comes first.

As with this:



Having loved the Beatles for over 25 years, I know their 13 original albums better than the back of my own hand.... and seeing their 3rd album (Hard Day's Night) show up fourth, while the 4th album (Beatles For Sale) shows up third, is BEYOND disconcerting. Needless to say, it is not SS's fault whatsoever -- it is just doing its job.

It was sheer luck that the two 1963 albums and the two 1965 albums are in the correct chronological order. "P" before "W" re: the first two, and "H" before "R" re: Help before Rubber Soul. Sheer luck.

Believe me, I know the only real way around this is to go to the extreme solution of naming folders "YYYY-MM - AlbumTitle".... but that is seriously clunky and unnecessary for 99.5% of all SS albums.

That's my little worthless gripe for the day

Cheers,
Supra92

[BKKKPewsey]

If you named the album as "A Hard Days Night" the order would be correct

[supra92]

LOL!! True, true.... though truth be told, I've been toying with the idea of getting rid of all "The"s and "A"s altogether. Having them at the beginning is an alphabetising faux-pas, while have it at the end following a comma, as I do, is just rather clunky. Ditto with "Beatles, The" at the artist level, especially as it appears in the song filenames:

01 - Beatles, The - Nowhere Man.flac

Simply "Beatles" would be more succinct and pleasing, even if not as accurate. Tough call there.

And sadly, that doesn't help us re: Magical Mystery Tour before Sgt. Pepper, or Abbey Road before Yellow Submarine...


Actually, one thing I was going to look into was whether or not there was a way to find a "lower-ranking" hard space... like a "Shift-Space".... that would visually look the same but allow us to thus specify which of two same-year albums actually come first. Problem is, I'm not sure Windows would differentiate between the two. Will hafta look into that...

Cheers!
Supra92

[BKKKPewsey]

You could use a hard space (alt 0160) which is recognised by windows

[supra92]

Well well well.....



Now how much better does that look! Alt-0160 is indeed further down the ASCII pecking order than a normal space, so I just replaced the space between the dash and the album title, with a hardspace, for Hard Day's Night, Magical Mystery Tour and Yellow Submarine.

Lovin' it!! It will take some pre-planning when naming the albums, as I rip FLACs first, then do backups to a secondary 2TB drive, and then finally rip the MP3s from the FLACs. So each time a new album comes in, will just check SS to see if there's another album by that artist from the same year, where this chronological issue might arise. If so, then alt-0160 it is!

Cheers mate,
Supra92

[mp83]

Although it would require a redo of your library, you could start naming the albums by year and month,

1975.05
1975.11

[supra92]

Yep, that was the "YYYY-MMM" (or YYYY.MM in your case) theory.... which, probably not a bad idea, though I'd be concerned that some older albums from the 50's and 60's, it isn't possible to find the confirmed release date, beyond the year. Sometimes AllMusicGuide, Wikipedia, etc. are only able to say "Released: 1962" or something, at which point one would be stuck, re: naming the folder.

But that idea would certainly help in the (admittedly rare) situations where a band releases THREE albums in one year, and all are out of order chronologically due to album titles. The Rolling Stones had this in 1965, when they released "The Rolling Stones Now!", "Out Of Our Heads", and "December's Children (And Everybody's)" all in that same year. Pretty unusual though, especially from 1970-on.

[mp83]

sorry did not read through the entire post, must have gotten side-tracked from the pictures.

I agree that this does not seem to be the best solution for your current library.

I do know that if you have an interest in electronic music, then this comes in handy, and one could even refine to the day of the month when it comes to some artists.