How do you deal with multiple copies of a song

[BKGT]

I have many songs that are actually on more than one CD. I keep my music files in .ape format and don't want to waste space by keeping multiple copies. How do ya'll deal this?

[Colby]

delete the song.

[BKGT]

Haha. I guess I deserved that. I'll be more specific. For the purposes of creating the database for XLobby, I'm trying to follow the beginners guide put together by Jowaldo, i.e. making a folder for each CD and putting the music files in the appropriate folder. For the CDs that contain songs already on another CD (like a greatest hits CD), I'd like to have just a shortcut to the song in another CD folder instead of putting another copy in that folder. I hope this question makes sense.

[Colby]

I was being serious, and I understood what you were wanting. The flaw in your logic is this, if you have a shortcut to the song on another cd, what is the other cd? Does Band A Origional release Disk have all the tracks or does Best of Band A Disk have all the tracks? To which would have the shortcut? And you would still have to delete one of the tracks to save space. So my original suggestion stands. Furthermore, did you try using shortcuts?

Honestly it doesnt matter if your albums list the original songs. The music details of an album only shows what is imported for that disk anyway. So for all practical purposes if an Album only shows 4 songs, because the others are on all on other Albums then that is what is on the open album. The only real reason you need to have all the tracks on every album anyway is if you are duplicating the album. If you are just listening to it, it wont matter what tracks are on the album. Besides you can always search for the particular song if you forget where it is.

[BKGT]

Thanks for all of your help so far Colby.

did you try using shortcuts?

Yes, I made a small test database with 2 folders: one with all the songs and another with one duplicate file and also a shortcut to another song file. The duplicate showed up of course but not the shortcut.

The only real reason you need to have all the tracks on every album anyway is if you are duplicating the album.

This is basically what I was trying to do. If I clicked on the album cover, I wanted all of the tracks that were originally in that CD to be displayed (duplicates and originals) without actually having to have all of the track files in the folder. It looks like if I really wanted to do this, I'd have to have a copy of the file in both folders.

Thanks again for the explanations.