Disambiguate albums

Feature requests
1

Feature description

It would be nice to have a feature to show configurable information next to the album name (or below) on albums lists.
It could allow to show codec/sample rate/bitrate, comment tag (for example, of the first song in the album, assuming the comment tag is the same for every track in the album), totaldiscs, media, totaltracks, total album length, release country… or maybe even allow to select more than one to show something like: “15 tracks, 2xCD, FLAC” or “10 tracks, MP3, 320kbps” next to each album name. Allowing to use the comment tag would allow to show things like “deluxe edition” or “20th aniversary edition”.

Problem solved

If you have an album and then an expanded version of the same album another version of the album that includes a bonus CD and then a rip of the vinyl version of the album, this shows 4 albums with basically the same cover and the same name and date (even if the release date is actually different) so if you want to find one version, you have to open all of them to check the album contents, codec/bitrate, etc.

Brought benefits

It would greatly improve the user experience for users who have different versions of the same album (or in musicbrainz terminology, different releases from the same release group, or even different rips of the exact same release).

Other application solutions

Navidrome (which I use as media source) is not perfect but it’s a bit better as instead of showing 1981 for the four albums, it at least shows for example “♫ 1981 · ○ 1997” to show the original release date is 1981 but the album release date is 1997 (and the other albums show “♫ 1981”, “♫ 1981 · ○ 2011” and “♫ 1981 · ○ 2014”).

Device type

All

Additional description and context

In the interface configuration there’s currently an option to sort albums by release date, but still the original date is shown and the release date can’t be seen anywhere (or I didn’t find it at least), so it’s jus

I searched existing feature requests

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2

Use the version tag ?

3

Thanks for the reply. I didn’t know about the version tag. I have searched information about it and finally added an “albumversion” tag to some of my albums to test it.

It kind of works, in the sense that it’s added to the album name and also is shown in the album page, but still, the albums can’t be disambiguated in albums lists, check this example when searching for an album:

symfonium_albumversion
symfonium_albumversion1080×1646 652 KB

Note the difference when doing the same search in the navidrome web ui, where the albumversion tag is shown so it’s clear what version is each album:

navidrome_albumversion
navidrome_albumversion1803×583 572 KB

4

Change display mode to list ? There’s limited space on phones.

5

Yes, using a list is a bit better, but since the album name is so long, only the first characters of the disambiguation text is shown. I think it would be better if another line can be added in grid view (at least optionally) so it would show:

Cover
Album name
Album version
Artist name

or even in list view:

Album name
Cover Album version
Artist name

Another option would be if the album name would scroll so users can see the whole album name just waiting enough time.

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