I do not think that this is an MP3tag problem but a player problem.
In general, the field YEAR is defined to be a 4-digit-field by the ID3 standard. So there is not real space to expand it.
The more accurate date would be RELEASETIME which allows you to define the date down to a second. The question would be whether your player can cope with it.
I wonder whether your player really only considers the year ... and if so .. you could trick the player and add an non-suspicious character to the album artist's name for all the additional albums in a year like "Beatles" become "Beatles_". The player should treat the Beatles with an underscore as a new artist.
If you are not satisfied with the current player, see