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I only go so far as sanitizing and standardizing my music collection through Tag&Rename (and I haven't found a good OSX equivalent to this yet sadly). It gets t

by cletus 14y ago

I only go so far as sanitizing and standardizing my music collection through Tag&Rename (and I haven't found a good OSX equivalent to this yet sadly). It gets the data from Amazon in 98% of cases, adds the album art (which I like having on my player), etc. Then I store the files in: Artist/Album/Track# - Song name [- Artist name] The last is only there for soundtracks and other "Various Artists" type collections. This is Good Enough [tm] for me. I can sync this across hard drives (backup), minimize duplicates (although I end up with these through compilations of various sorts), etc. Unfortunately the ID3 tag system is All Wrong [tm] for this in many ways stated (in this post and elsewhere). For example: - Albums don't really have an artist; songs do; - Programs for automating this that get info from Amazon and elsewhere tend to use what year the particular CD was released rather than when it was originally released, which is far more useful and relevant (eg if you want the Beatles White album you don't care the CD was released in 1998, it should come up under 1968; - Albums don't really have years either. Or at least they have publication years. The songs have years. Normal studio albums have a common year. Compilations and soundtracks do not; - Genres are coarse-grained, arbitrary and (IMHO) mostly useless; - What I like is greatly influenced by the circumstances around the song, sometimes more than the song itself. I might like a song because it reminds me of a particular person, place or event. Or even mood. Sometimes its the lyrics. Sometimes its the sound. No recommendation engine is going to capture this sort of angle. This goes beyond music: people just aren't interested in classifying, well, pretty much anything. Playlists seem to be about as far as most people are willing to go. Playlists are a fairly convenient way of coming up with s event-specific music eg for working out, for relaxing, for dancing, for a party, etc. Efforts at far strong and more accurate metadata, classification and organization speak more about one's festidious--even anal-retentiveness--more than any real need or better outcome (IMHO). It's just rabbit-holing really.

wrekkuh 14y ago
I'm not sure how much of this is conjecture. My thinking differs from yours with respect to the following - "Albums don't really have years either. Or at least they have publication years. The songs have years. Normal studio albums have a common year. Compilations and soundtracks do not." An album that is released by a record label does have a year, as upon release it becomes a publication. By this train of thinking i would also say a soundtrack does have a year, too, as it is published as a collection timely to the context of its release. The same can be said of compilations, as they are a contemporary release.
- qbrass 14y ago
  Yes, but you're usually more interested in when the song came out than when the album came out. If you sort your playlist by date so you can pick songs from the 90's, you probably wanted to hear something like Nirvana instead of The Best of The Who: Volume 3.
  - adamzochowski 14y ago
    I agree that year is screwed up, but some taggers (like the picard-lastfm tagger) reads also decade feel tags. So music that sounds like 90s is tagged as 90s music, even if it isn't recorded in 90s. For example, ""La Roux -- In It For The Kill"" will get the song tagged as sounding 80s like: http://www.last.fm/music/La+Roux/_/In+for+the+Kill/+tags http://www.last.fm/music/La+Roux/_/In+for+the+Kill/+tags
twelvechairs 14y ago
Yeah. Music is classifiable in some sense, but its a hugely complex and multi-directional thing and most 'classifications' really just scratch the surface. And while algorithmic recommendation services (lastfm, spotify, etc.) can be nice for a while, actually people are complex and always change their views and interests, so they are never always going to give you what you want. Personally for my own collection - I have a loosely interpreted directory structure that I've evolved that is basically 'continent and/or genre'/'artist'/'album (with year recorded at the start if I have lots of them)' that works well for me and I don't have to constantly rename everything I download (theres some less-sorted directories of things I don't listen to much within this). For searching, tagging and playing I use foobar2000 (unfortunately still windows-only) because it has plenty plugins which handle everything from tagging (eg. from discogs and freedb), through to searching (keeps a constantly updated and strongly index media library, which can be searched from a range of front-end UIs) and information finding (getting album covers, lyrics, artist biographies, etc. and displaying as you like). I don't do lots of retagging, but I do find it useful sometimes - for instance I have tagged some of my more listened classical music by composer and performer separately, so I can look at it from either direction when I want to.
adamzochowski 14y ago
Addressing points -- [[ Albums have artists too ]] Albums often have a person that mixes songs together. In ID3v2 series we use a tag "TPE2". Early ID3v2 adopters used "TXXX ALBUM ARTIST" and "TXXX ALBUMARTIST" as originally TPE2 was reserved for Band definition. iTunes and WMP both standardized on TPE2 for album artist. Armin Van Buuren - State of Trance v561- #2 - Artsy - Open Space TPE1 (song author) - Arsty TPE2 (album author) - Armin Van Buuren TALB (album title) - State of Trance v561 TRCK (track number) - 2 TPE2 typically comes in use with TCMP designating that a song is a compilation. (Before TCMP became standard, people also used "TXXX COMPILATION"). -- [[ You need multiple versions of songs ! ]] Most programs automating software will ask which version of album it is. For example, Pendulum band released album "Hold Your Color" in 2005. http://www.discogs.com/Pendulum-Hold-Your-Colour/release/494991 http://www.discogs.com/Pendulum-Hold-Your-Colour/release/494... However, in 2007 the rereleased the album, http://www.discogs.com/Pendulum-Hold-Your-Colour/release/1345228 http://www.discogs.com/Pendulum-Hold-Your-Colour/release/134... The last two songs differ. You need to pick right year to ensure you tag them properly. Alternatively, the year could foretell how remastered the song is. Is this original compression, or the new louder version? See Loudness war article. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war -- [[ date/year is screwed up -- agreed ]] We have to differentiate three types of dates: When song was recorded -- aka: This song was released in 1994 When album compilation was released -- aka: the best of 90s was released in 2005 What decade the song is trying to recapture -- aka: the song feels like music from the 60s -- [[ Genres / taggins is a solution -- although at time blunt ]] Genres were terrible in old ID3v1, where we were locked to 127 genres. In ID3v2 we can enter whatever we want into genre, and store multiple of them. Good taggers read data off Last.fm / discogs / music brainz enter complete information about songs. This includes tags detailing genre, instruments, style, moods, decades. Certain players, like XBMC can use style and moods. Some systems like discogs even support hierarchal tags (see their style vs genre).
wazoox 14y ago
Unfortunately ID3 tags are a terrible failure for classical music: do I put Chopin's Nocturnes by Martha Argerich under Chopin or under Martha Argerich? I actually have a random mix of both : a Chopin folder with stuff played by Argerich, Pollini, etc. and some Argerich, Ashkhenazy, etc. folders. Standard genres are terrible: you have like 20 different sub-genres of electronic music, but Machaut, Bach, Verdi and Boulez should all go under "Classical", are you friggin' kidding me? There's a much worse problem which isn't related to classification by the way: it's almost impossible with any compressed audio format to chain parts without an audible cut. It's a big, big problem for classical music too.
dangravell 14y ago
Genres are coarse-grained, arbitrary and (IMHO) mostly useless They're as useful as you want them to be. They're just strings, strings which might be a way of grouping works just as ALBUMARTIST or YEAR might be. If you want highly specific genres, use them. If you want very general genres, use them. If you want some general genres for areas of your music collection that is less populated, have a mixture. All this data is available online.

by cletus 14y ago

wrekkuh 14y ago

I'm not sure how much of this is conjecture. My thinking differs from yours with respect to the following - "Albums don't really have years either. Or at least they have publication years. The songs have years. Normal studio albums have a common year. Compilations and soundtracks do not." An album that is released by a record label does have a year, as upon release it becomes a publication. By this train of thinking i would also say a soundtrack does have a year, too, as it is published as a collection timely to the context of its release. The same can be said of compilations, as they are a contemporary release.

qbrass 14y ago
Yes, but you're usually more interested in when the song came out than when the album came out. If you sort your playlist by date so you can pick songs from the 90's, you probably wanted to hear something like Nirvana instead of The Best of The Who: Volume 3.
- adamzochowski 14y ago
  I agree that year is screwed up, but some taggers (like the picard-lastfm tagger) reads also decade feel tags. So music that sounds like 90s is tagged as 90s music, even if it isn't recorded in 90s. For example, ""La Roux -- In It For The Kill"" will get the song tagged as sounding 80s like: http://www.last.fm/music/La+Roux/_/In+for+the+Kill/+tags http://www.last.fm/music/La+Roux/_/In+for+the+Kill/+tags

twelvechairs 14y ago

Yeah. Music is classifiable in some sense, but its a hugely complex and multi-directional thing and most 'classifications' really just scratch the surface. And while algorithmic recommendation services (lastfm, spotify, etc.) can be nice for a while, actually people are complex and always change their views and interests, so they are never always going to give you what you want. Personally for my own collection - I have a loosely interpreted directory structure that I've evolved that is basically 'continent and/or genre'/'artist'/'album (with year recorded at the start if I have lots of them)' that works well for me and I don't have to constantly rename everything I download (theres some less-sorted directories of things I don't listen to much within this). For searching, tagging and playing I use foobar2000 (unfortunately still windows-only) because it has plenty plugins which handle everything from tagging (eg. from discogs and freedb), through to searching (keeps a constantly updated and strongly index media library, which can be searched from a range of front-end UIs) and information finding (getting album covers, lyrics, artist biographies, etc. and displaying as you like). I don't do lots of retagging, but I do find it useful sometimes - for instance I have tagged some of my more listened classical music by composer and performer separately, so I can look at it from either direction when I want to.

adamzochowski 14y ago

Addressing points -- [[ Albums have artists too ]] Albums often have a person that mixes songs together. In ID3v2 series we use a tag "TPE2". Early ID3v2 adopters used "TXXX ALBUM ARTIST" and "TXXX ALBUMARTIST" as originally TPE2 was reserved for Band definition. iTunes and WMP both standardized on TPE2 for album artist. Armin Van Buuren - State of Trance v561- #2 - Artsy - Open Space TPE1 (song author) - Arsty TPE2 (album author) - Armin Van Buuren TALB (album title) - State of Trance v561 TRCK (track number) - 2 TPE2 typically comes in use with TCMP designating that a song is a compilation. (Before TCMP became standard, people also used "TXXX COMPILATION"). -- [[ You need multiple versions of songs ! ]] Most programs automating software will ask which version of album it is. For example, Pendulum band released album "Hold Your Color" in 2005. http://www.discogs.com/Pendulum-Hold-Your-Colour/release/494991 http://www.discogs.com/Pendulum-Hold-Your-Colour/release/494... However, in 2007 the rereleased the album, http://www.discogs.com/Pendulum-Hold-Your-Colour/release/1345228 http://www.discogs.com/Pendulum-Hold-Your-Colour/release/134... The last two songs differ. You need to pick right year to ensure you tag them properly. Alternatively, the year could foretell how remastered the song is. Is this original compression, or the new louder version? See Loudness war article. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war -- [[ date/year is screwed up -- agreed ]] We have to differentiate three types of dates: When song was recorded -- aka: This song was released in 1994 When album compilation was released -- aka: the best of 90s was released in 2005 What decade the song is trying to recapture -- aka: the song feels like music from the 60s -- [[ Genres / taggins is a solution -- although at time blunt ]] Genres were terrible in old ID3v1, where we were locked to 127 genres. In ID3v2 we can enter whatever we want into genre, and store multiple of them. Good taggers read data off Last.fm / discogs / music brainz enter complete information about songs. This includes tags detailing genre, instruments, style, moods, decades. Certain players, like XBMC can use style and moods. Some systems like discogs even support hierarchal tags (see their style vs genre).

wazoox 14y ago

Unfortunately ID3 tags are a terrible failure for classical music: do I put Chopin's Nocturnes by Martha Argerich under Chopin or under Martha Argerich? I actually have a random mix of both : a Chopin folder with stuff played by Argerich, Pollini, etc. and some Argerich, Ashkhenazy, etc. folders. Standard genres are terrible: you have like 20 different sub-genres of electronic music, but Machaut, Bach, Verdi and Boulez should all go under "Classical", are you friggin' kidding me? There's a much worse problem which isn't related to classification by the way: it's almost impossible with any compressed audio format to chain parts without an audible cut. It's a big, big problem for classical music too.

dangravell 14y ago

Genres are coarse-grained, arbitrary and (IMHO) mostly useless They're as useful as you want them to be. They're just strings, strings which might be a way of grouping works just as ALBUMARTIST or YEAR might be. If you want highly specific genres, use them. If you want very general genres, use them. If you want some general genres for areas of your music collection that is less populated, have a mixture. All this data is available online.