How to Fix the Problem of an Album Appearing Multiple Times in the Zune Software

There is a problem with the Zune software in how it handles some albums. In particular compilation albums which contains songs from different artists. The problem is that the same album will appear many times in the album listing in the Zune software. This can be very annoying. To fix the problem of an album appearing multiple times in the Zune software perform the following steps:

  1. Download and install the free MP3Tag program
  2. Launch MP3Tag and navigate to the folder on the hard drive which contains your MP3 or .wma files.
  3. Select all files in the album
  4. Click the “Actions (Quick)” button
  5. Select action “Format Value”
  6. Select the value “BAND” in the top drop down box
  7. In the bottom text box, specify: %album%
  8. Click OK to commit the changes
  9. Relaunch your Zune software and now you should only see one listing for your album

Zunes

Zune – Sync using different software

zAlternator Screenshot

zAlternator allows you to sync your Zune with software other than the Zune software like Windows Media Player, iTunes, Winamp, or Media Monkey. You can read more about zAlternator at this link.

And here is a description of the application from it’s homepage:

“Finally, a release candidate of zAlternator is here! Yay! zAlternator is a program that will allow the Zune to be picked up and synced with programs other than the Zune program. It has been fully tested and proven to allow the Zune to be picked up and synced with the Zune program (duh), Windows Media Player 11, Winamp, and MediaMonkey. I have been unable to fully test the iTunes side of the program, but hopefully it should work.”

Zune – Installing Zune 2 Software in Windows XP Professional x64

Update: These instructions still work when installing the recently released Zune 2.5 software.

Microsoft currently does not support Zune software being installed on Windows XP Professional x64. The only 64-bit operating system the software officially supports is Vista 64-bit edition. However there is a hack to get the Zune 2 software to work with Windows XP Pro x64 and the syncing with the Zune device works as well. The instructions for doing this are available on this blog post.

Here is a copy of the instructions which appear on the blog site (without the screenshots):

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