First let me state I am not considering classical music in this post, just the rest …
If I have a local download of an album in my library I usually have the Qobuz stream added to my library as well to provide best artist/label support, buy the thing outright but play the stream.
Within the album view they show up as versions as they sort of should, except they’re not really versions, they are 2 formats of the same version. Within a single album view that’s OK and lets me set the stream as the primary.
But within the library views, by album, by artist, etc, they show up as 2 distinct entries for what is essentially the same album. They may show up next to each other, on the same page, or on different pages depending on the sequence.
Am I missing something or do we need the ability to say “this is not a different version of this album, this is the same version in my local file system AND on the streaming service.” A bit for bit comparison SHOULD declare them identical.
As far as I can see, the term version should be reserved for "this is the original master, this is the blah de blah remaster, this is the whenever delux version, this is the retirement fund special delux, etc.
So, question is, how do I handle hidden tracks then which is why I switched it on the first place, although beggared if I can remember for which album … Hmmm
So there is room for a feature request to split hidden track functionality away from duplicate albums, or indeed introduce the concept of format such that we can have the same recording in different formats without them being considered duplicates. Strikes me there is an equivalence node missing in the object model. It’s the same recording be it local or streamed, WAV, FLAC, or ALAC, and indeed in lossy formats, hmmmm.
