AFT and MusicBrainz track identifiers, redux
A bit ago I blogged about how Amarok File Tracking can now use MusicBrainz identifiers to do its stuff.
Then, a little while later, I started getting bug reports of peoples' music disappearing from their collection, and requested some of the reporters send me some files. One of the users did so, and I found something curious in his tags (if I had a penny for every time I've personally seen users have something odd or strange in their tags, I'd have...well, a few dollars at least). Several of his files had full MusicBrainz tags -- with absolutely no data populating them, meaning that the MusicBrainz identifier (and all other MB data) for all of those files was ending up the same (blank) and Amarok was thinking them the same file.
It was a quick fix (use generated non-embedded AFT IDs when the MB tags are empty) but just adds to the evidence that you can never, ever trust users' tags. Also, that users that use your Git-based version or betas really rock for finding this stuff before release...so in case I don't say this enough: thanks users!
September 25th, 2009 - 13:24
At last that is fixed..
Amarok should not relay only on tags, but also be able to search trough filenames!
Now it can only be done by dragging entire collection to play list and filtering it..
September 25th, 2009 - 15:24
Hi, I’m kinto on b.k.o. the user who gave the songs for testing. I’m sorry but I wasn’t able to test the fix because amarok-nightly on launchpad stopped to build and I’m stuck with an “old” build. About the tags…I don’t like the idea to have messed up tags and I wanted to ask how can I find songs with empty MusicBrainz tags and, maybe this is too much, a guess on how this could have happened. In the next days if I have time I plan to start compile amarok myself and see if I can be useful again!