Taking into consideration that bands sometimes even release several different singles/EPs/albums of the same name within the same year, and in different countries, it actually gets even more complicated to separate them.
Using Picard’s scripting and filenaming possibilities, I’ve been using an elaborate scheme for the past 15 years or so, and continuously refine it.
Basically, I use the album artist sortname, followed by the album title, followed by the release group comment (if any), followed by release year, album type, album subtype and release country in parentheses.
Let’s take some Peter Gabriel albums as an example: They are all called “Peter Gabriel” but actually are different albums: “Car”, “Melt”, “Scratch” and “Security”. With above logic, I get a good (separate folder) result like this:
Gabriel, Peter - Peter Gabriel (Car) (2002 album, XE)
Gabriel, Peter - Peter Gabriel (Melt) (1987 album, XE)
Gabriel, Peter - Peter Gabriel (Scratch) (2002 album, XE)
Gabriel, Peter - Peter Gabriel (Security) (2002 album, GB)
The relevant part of the (much more complicated) filenaming command is:
if2(%albumartistsort%,%albumartist%,%artistsort%,%artist%)/$if(%album%,$if2(%albumartistsort%,%albumartist%,%artistsort%,%artist%) - %album%$if(%_releasegroupcomment%, \(%_releasegroupcomment%\))$if(%date%%_primaryreleasetype%%_secondaryreleasetype%%releasecountry%, \()$if(%date%,$left(%date%,4))$if($and(%date%,%_primaryreleasetype%), )$if(%_primaryreleasetype%,%_primaryreleasetype%)$if($and(%date%%_primaryreleasetype%,%_secondaryreleasetype%),\, )$if(%_secondaryreleasetype%,%_secondaryreleasetype%)$if($and(%date%%_primaryreleasetype%%_secondaryreleasetype%,%releasecountry%),\, )$if(%releasecountry%,%releasecountry%)$if(%date%%_primaryreleasetype%%_secondaryreleasetype%%releasecountry%,\))/$if(%discsubtitle%,$if(%media%,%media% ,)$if(%discnumber%,%discnumber%: ,)%discsubtitle%/,),)
(all in one line!)
The above will also create subfolders for separate named media in a set, like:
…/CD 1: The early years
…/CD 2: Greatest Hits
(Find the full script here: Repository for neat file name string patterns and tagger script snippets)