How to merge two folders one with '&' and one with 'and' for same artist

Help
1

Some albums by artists/collaborations with an ‘and’ or ‘&’ in there name are submitted with different spelling into MusicBrainz and therefore get filed into two folders instead of one during import. E.g.

Ólafur Arnalds & Nils Frahm
Ólafur Arnalds and Nils Frahm

What would be a best practise to merge these two folder under the name

Ólafur Arnalds & Nils Frahm

Thanks, Jan

2

You’ll want to import them together as one album. Here’s a relevant old thread from the mailing list:
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/beets-users/EhJXmqWNr6o

3

Hi @adrian,

Thanks for pointing me to the Google Groups thread. But I guess that solution is for albums that span multiple discs. In my situation there are totally different albums by the same artists in each folder. Not the same album split over multiple folders. So adding them as one folder wouldn’t make much sense I guess.
Is there a trick to get both different albums filed under one folder.

Thanks, Jan

4

Oops; sorry—I misread your question. You can just use the modify command to change the artist. Type something like beet modify -a albumartist=something to change it.

5

Terrific that worked like a charm! Thanks.

6

Hi! I’m sorry to jump in years after on this thread, but I’m having troubles with this. I have the same question than @janpeeters had but with Sleater-Kinney (I’m having duplicated artists folders, one with – and one with -).

If you run beet modify -a albumartist=something as @adrian suggested, my prompt starts displaying

...
Burial - Chemz / Dolphinz
  albumartist: Burial -> Sleater-Kinney
Burial - Kindred
  albumartist: Burial -> Sleater-Kinney
Burial - Rival Dealer
  albumartist: Burial -> Sleater-Kinney
...

until I control-C it in panic. The same happens when I run beet modify -a albumartist="Sleater–Kinney" albumartist="Sleater-Kinney"

I’m obviously doing something wrong. I appreciate guidance here!

7

As far as I can tell you’re missing one part.
After the albumartist=“name” you have to type a query like:
Beet modify -a albumartist=“name” Sleater-Kinney
Otherwise it will change all albumartists in your beets database.