Metadata OCD

[Tydirium 1,167]

I have it pretty bad when it comes to managing my metadata. Over the years I've gone from obsessively trying to make all my albums match exactly what was in the iTunes Store (mistakes included) like some sort of ultra-Apple-fanboy—to getting fed up with the all the inconsistencies and then redoing everything, this time by following the Apple/Music iTunes Style Guide myself—to searching for other alternative ways of dealing with metadata like MusicBrainz, etc. At the end of the day I wish I could just pick one method and stick with it, but as someone who consumes a lot of classical music (a whole other beast than more mainstream genres), it's tough to find something that works. But I won't give up!

 

So, how do you deal with your metadata? Do you only include information if it is on the booklet/album cover, or do you include missing data and fix incorrect data? Do you treat classical music different from other genres, and if so, how do you handle tagging the composer and various performers?

 

Last but not least, an example that is relevant to all of us here at this particular site: in the recent Obi-Wan Kenobi soundtrack, the digital music sellers and streaming services list "William Ross" as the Artist of the "End Credit" track, while "John Williams" is listed as the Composer. Assuming that Williams himself didn't write the actual end credits music, it would seem that the reason he is listed as the sole Composer for that particular track (rather than "William Ross & John Williams" as in most of the other tracks Ross conducted), is because the entire track is just his theme.

 

Now here's the thing: if I were to stick with this choice for the metadata of this track, then this logically also forces me to reevaluate how I tag Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. For instance, wouldn't this mean that virtually every track of HP2 should list "William Ross" as the Artist at the track level, and "William Ross & John Williams" (or potentially even just "John Williams") as the Composer? It seems like most places list Williams as the Artist for all the tracks on that OST, but if Ross was the one who adapted and conducted them, then by the logic of the Kenobi credits, shouldn't it be Ross instead?

[Smeltington 1,440]

10 minutes ago, Tydirium said:

I have it pretty bad when it comes to managing my metadata.

 

It feels good to know there are other people like me out there! Not sure if we need a support group, or if we should just enable each other instead.

 

11 minutes ago, Tydirium said:

Do you only include information if it is on the booklet/album cover

 

Pretty much. I look up screenshots of original LP or CD releases on discogs and treat that as the source of truth.

 

12 minutes ago, Tydirium said:

Do you treat classical music different from other genres, and if so, how do you handle tagging the composer and various performers?

 

Usually the composer is also the album artist, then the conductor, orchestra, and soloists are all in the artist tag, separated by slashes or commas. I like to use the year the work was composed rather than the recording year, although I try to only collect one recording of each classical work, so it kind of makes sense from that perspective.

 

15 minutes ago, Tydirium said:

the recent Obi-Wan Kenobi soundtrack

 

If William Ross is officially listed as the artist, I might take that into consideration and list the artist as "John Williams / William Ross". Then under the composer info, maybe specify a bit more, e.g. "John Williams / William Ross (adapted by)".

[bollemanneke 3,349]

I had a brief phase where I would manually correct everything, especially in classical music since that was a real mess. Then that became too much work and I decided that collecting music was much more fun than managing it, so now I have a very simple system:

 

Film scores: folders by artist, one folder per score and one folder for re-recordings (so JW's is huge)

Classical music: One folder per composer and one folder per conductor. (It sounds insane to some people, but since works tend to have different names in classical music because fuck logic, it's actually the easiest.)

Religious hymns and carols: one folder per choir

Modern msuic: one folder per artist, only live stuff goes into another one

Traditional music: one folder per artist, if artist is unclear, first artist in metadata gets folder.

MP3Tag auto-numbers everything according to album title, which I never change unless album has multiple disc number. It's magic.

Metadata itself: ONE GIANT, HUGE MESS. And I don't care anymore. It's all just what FreeDB, Presto or uploader says it is. My folders are all I need. Don't use iTunes on PC, and for iPhone it's all shuffled anyway.

 

If you want my advice: let it go.

[Smeltington 1,440]

7 hours ago, bollemanneke said:

If you want my advice: let it go.

 

Impossible... but I'm happy you managed it!

 

7 hours ago, bollemanneke said:

Religious hymns

 

Can you suggest one single album in this category for afternoon listening?

[Tydirium 1,167]

23 hours ago, Smeltington said:

 

It feels good to know there are other people like me out there! Not sure if we need a support group, or if we should just enable each other instead.

 

I know what you mean. I'm fine with enabling! Lol

 

23 hours ago, Smeltington said:

 

Usually the composer is also the album artist, then the conductor, orchestra, and soloists are all in the artist tag, separated by slashes or commas. I like to use the year the work was composed rather than the recording year, although I try to only collect one recording of each classical work, so it kind of makes sense from that perspective.

 

 

Interesting. Collecting only one recording of each classical work would certainly make things easier... My problem is that I have some works that I'm obsessed with. A recent example is R. Strauss' Four Last Songs. Can't get enough of it; I think I'm up to 10-12 recordings at this point. But anyways, let's say you've got an album of Mahler's Symphony No. 7: would the album title be something like "Mahler: Symphony No. 7"? Or "Symphony No. 7," with "Gustav Mahler" as the Album Artist?

 

And then each track would list the orchestra and conductor as the track Artist?

 

23 hours ago, Smeltington said:

 

If William Ross is officially listed as the artist, I might take that into consideration and list the artist as "John Williams / William Ross". Then under the composer info, maybe specify a bit more, e.g. "John Williams / William Ross (adapted by)".

 

 

Interesting. Thanks. Here's another question; how do you title your soundtrack albums? Is ROTS in your library just "Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith," or is it "Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)"?

 

Speaking of which, obviously the actual cover art should probably supersede whatever data the digital music stores/services have, but it's strange to me that there are situations like where JNH's soundtrack to Dinosaur clearly says "An Original Walt Disney Records Soundtrack" on the cover art, and yet iTunes has it listed as "Original Soundtrack." Likewise there are some occasions where an album will be listed as "Original Motion Picture Soundtrack" on the cover, and yet the digital music services will have it listed as "Music from the Motion Picture" (or vice versa). Can't help but wonder how some of these things end up happening.

[Bayesian 1,363]

On 1/7/2022 at 12:36 PM, Tydirium said:

I have it pretty bad when it comes to managing my metadata. Over the years I've gone from obsessively trying to make all my albums match exactly what was in the iTunes Store (mistakes included) like some sort of ultra-Apple-fanboy—to getting fed up with the all the inconsistencies and then redoing everything, this time by following the Apple/Music iTunes Style Guide myself—to searching for other alternative ways of dealing with metadata like MusicBrainz, etc. At the end of the day I wish I could just pick one method and stick with it, but as someone who consumes a lot of classical music (a whole other beast than more mainstream genres), it's tough to find something that works. But I won't give up!

 

So, how do you deal with your metadata? Do you only include information if it is on the booklet/album cover, or do you include missing data and fix incorrect data? Do you treat classical music different from other genres, and if so, how do you handle tagging the composer and various performers?

 

Last but not least, an example that is relevant to all of us here at this particular site: in the recent Obi-Wan Kenobi soundtrack, the digital music sellers and streaming services list "William Ross" as the Artist of the "End Credit" track, while "John Williams" is listed as the Composer. Assuming that Williams himself didn't write the actual end credits music, it would seem that the reason he is listed as the sole Composer for that particular track (rather than "William Ross & John Williams" as in most of the other tracks Ross conducted), is because the entire track is just his theme.

 

Now here's the thing: if I were to stick with this choice for the metadata of this track, then this logically also forces me to reevaluate how I tag Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. For instance, wouldn't this mean that virtually every track of HP2 should list "William Ross" as the Artist at the track level, and "William Ross & John Williams" (or potentially even just "John Williams") as the Composer? It seems like most places list Williams as the Artist for all the tracks on that OST, but if Ross was the one who adapted and conducted them, then by the logic of the Kenobi credits, shouldn't it be Ross instead?

I am in the very same OCD boat as you (and Smeltington). The inconsistencies in album metadata compelled me to wrangle a new system sui generis over a decade ago. Since I use iTunes, er, Apple Music, my system is based on the metadata fields Apple gives me access to. (Some fields, like Release Date, appear uneditable, so I ignore those.)

 

First, I should mention my primary organizing principle is every track of music belongs to an album and every album is also a playlist. That means I have no mixtapes. Also, in my library, singles like the JW's Obi-Wan Kenobi or Galaxy's Edge become albums/playlists with a single track to them.

 

Second, I organize albums/playlists into nested playlist folders. At the top level is genre: classical, scores & soundtracks, jazz & vocal jazz, musicals, and non-classical (ie, everything else). Within each of these genre folders is a series of playlist folders. For the soundtracks genre folder, I have about three dozen playlist folders, each one named for a composer I like, plus a "Various composers" folder. (For me, luckily, Vangelis is the last named composer folder, so my Various folder falls naturally at the bottom of the list.) Inside each composer playlist folder are individual playlists. Each score gets its own playlist (remember, album = playlist). Some composers might have four or five playlists because I only like four or five of their scores. Others will have over a hundred.

 

Now, then. For each score = album = playlist, I have to make sure my "Album Artist" info is identical for every track that is found in that score/album/playlist. This field appears to be the primary way that Apple can tell apart albums. Once Album Artist has been batch-renamed inside Apple Music, I turn to the other fields. In short: Title, Artist, Album, Composer, Genre, Year, Track, and Disc Number are always 100% filled in for every track. I also add the highest quality artwork I can find for each and every album. (This was to make sure my Cover Flow experience was perfect; remember Cover Flow??)

 

In terms of spelling and formatting: I separate two-part track titles with slashes (so "Main Titles and Arrival" becomes "Main Titles/Arrival"). I capitalize all words except conjunctions, making exceptions as the situation warrants -- unless the title is written in French, whereupon I use sentence case. I replace ampersands with "and". In the Composer field, arrangers are denoted "(arr. John Doe)". For album titles, expanded editions are denoted with "[Expanded Edition]" after the movie title. On the topic of expanded releases, I use the Grouping field to batch-edit a group of tracks that represent "Original soundtrack", "Additional music", or something like that.

 

Literally every one of the ~73,000 tracks in my library has been critically reviewed in this manner--sometimes several times--over the last decade. If I were somehow to start a library from scratch today, I'd want to say fuck it and let Apple or Gracenote handle all the metadata, but the truth is I'd still be just as OCD as I am now.

 

You don't want to know the shit I put myself through to make my classical albums consistent.

 

While my system may sound like madness to many, it does have some benefits. For one thing, there is no possibility whatsoever of finding a duplicate album in my library. It's also dead simple to navigate my folder tree to find any score (or classical album) you're interested in.

[Richard Penna 3,694]

I've only ever encountered two issues with metadata:

 

• The way PowerAmp organises albums means that it uses 'album artist' to group (or not) tracks, so when I first started using it I had to retag quite a lot of albums so that it wasn't blank for any tracks.
• Symbols such as '/' not being supported in filenames meant finding another symbol, and for the last few years I use mp3Tag to replace them with ' - '.

 

I have to say that having individual composer credits for each track is really not important to me. I put much more value in curation of track ordering and finding the best-looking cover art. No one else looks at my collection -  just need to be able to find stuff and have something to look at on the app that shows the cover.

 

Even my naming across different editions isn't very consistent. I have three Robin Hood playlists so I used the suffix (BBC) for the BBC series and (2010) for Streitenfeld's score.

 

The one issue I've never solved is grouping related albums, such as Jurassic, Potter, Who, Bond, etc. I don't use iTunes so no native way to associate albums.

[Koray Savas 2,251]

I used to spend hours of my life reformatting metadata and organizing my iTunes library. Thankfully I stopped caring years ago. 

[bollemanneke 3,349]

On 01/07/2022 at 9:54 PM, Smeltington said:

 

It feels good to know there are other people like me out there! Not sure if we need a support group, or if we should just enable each other instead.

 

 

Pretty much. I look up screenshots of original LP or CD releases on discogs and treat that as the source of truth.

 

 

Usually the composer is also the album artist, then the conductor, orchestra, and soloists are all in the artist tag, separated by slashes or commas. I like to use the year the work was composed rather than the recording year, although I try to only collect one recording of each classical work, so it kind of makes sense from that perspective.

 

 

If William Ross is officially listed as the artist, I might take that into consideration and list the artist as "John Williams / William Ross". Then under the composer info, maybe specify a bit more, e.g. "John Williams / William Ross (adapted by)".

Now wouldn't that be something? Only one recording for each classical work? Then again, there's so much great stuff out there... The ideal thing would be if orchestras massively started re-recording scores too to make the classical situation less abnormal.

[Holko 9,529]

I use MusicBee on my PC and PowerAmp on my phone. I keep my album rips, but also I edit most of them - joining, editing tracks, swapping alternates, etc. Folderwise, I separate music into CDs Archive, Downloads Archive and Music - the latter being my edits, remaining from an old mirrored PC/phone structure. Editing can't be done with playlists so zero playlist use, everything is in albums. On my phone I only keep my edited ones and the ones that didn't need to be edited, sorted alphabetically, on PC I keep all of them in my MusicBee library - separation is achieved by removing the year tag from the edits so my library starts with an alphabetical list of my edits and continues with a proper album rip/download collection sorted by year. Further separation is achieved by naming the rips by edition ([Original Motion Picture Soundtrack], [Expanded Archival Edition] or whatever), while removing these tags from the edit albums' names - once I edited them, they're not relevant anyway. Further renaming is sometimes necessary for the edits to achieve proper order when sorted alphabetically (Jurassic Park - Jurassic Park 2: The Lost World, Harry Potter I - The Philosopher's Stone, Harry Potter II - The Chamber of Secrets, Harry Potter III - The Prisoner of Azkaban, etc.). Tagging is done either by EAC before ripping, or with Mp3Tag after ripping if it's more than 2 discs - mass saving the same album name, artist, composer, album artist, adding the album art is much easier than typing them in 3-4 times. For the rips, grouping from the back cover tracklist (The Film Score - Source Music - Bonus Tracks etc.) is replicated by using MusicBee's grouping feature. It was a pretty easy groove to get into, and I never have to touch any of it again after ripping is done and my edit's finalised at most a week after I got the release.

[Tom Guernsey 2,286]

I have a few "rules" I apply (more or less consistently) when importing into iTunes (don't judge haha):

 

• I don't add "original soundtrack" or similar qualifiers, except when there's an expanded/complete release and I keep the original album in which case the original album is called "original album" (or "album versions" if I elect to just keep the album edits).
• If it's a re-recording, I label how I do classical, i.e. "RSNO McNeely" or whatever.
• Where there are more than two scores with the same name (like the many Hamlets or Christmas Carols etc.) the oldest is usually just the name and any subsequent versions have the year in brackets after the title. I don't like this, but can't think of a better way to differentiate between them.
• Bonus tracks, alternates, source music etc., are always split out into a "separate" album, if it's just a mix they all get lumped under "Bonus Tracks" (with "alternate" or "source" in brackets after the track name), but if there's a particularly large number of a particular type, I'll do a few sets of bonus tracks for alternates, source cues etc.
• For classical, I usually go with the key work or works then the orchestra initials (LSO, RSNO etc.) then the conductor's surname in brackets, and the full name (for some reason) of any soloist/s. For chamber or solo albums, I just put the name of the chamber group or soloist in brackets. I never use "artist" for the artist, it's always just the composer (because... iTunes).
• I usually number movements I. II. III. etc., although have taken to not bothering for things like ballets or choral works where each movement/section has a name, although do often leave in if it comes up with act/scene information per track. I've used iTunes' "work name" feature but I think it's more hassle than it's worth so haven't bothered after converting a few since it relies on you having the tracks named and then needing to add in further metadata.

I should get out more...

[Tydirium 1,167]

On 5/7/2022 at 12:58 AM, Bayesian said:

In terms of spelling and formatting: I separate two-part track titles with slashes (so "Main Titles and Arrival" becomes "Main Titles/Arrival").

 

Thanks for your comment; glad to see someone else who understands! I'm curious about this bit in particular, though. Your system for this is actually in agreement with the Apple Music Style Guide, and in the past I've tried adopting this method myself. However, I've run into some pitfalls with it.

 

What about a situation like the Star Wars: The Clone Wars movie OST? On the back cover, we've got "Star Wars Main Title & A Galaxy Divided"—which according to your system would ordinarily get separated via a forward slash. (In fact, that track was re-released as the first track of the first album for TCW's final season a couple years ago, and in that digital-only release it was titled "Star Wars Main Title / A Galaxy Divided.") But further down in the track list, we've got tracks like "General Loathsom / Ahsoka" and "General Loathsom / Battle Strategy." How would you handle a case like this, where the track listing contains both "and" (or "&") tracks, and already-separated "/" tracks? Since it seems to differentiate between them.

 

Also, my only real gripe with applying a forward slash to the "and" tracks, is that sometimes there's really no good way of knowing whether it's actually intended to be a two-part track, or it just so happens to use the word "and" in it. For instance, should it really be "Star Wars / The Revenge of the Sith"? Or just "Star Wars and the Revenge of the Sith"? Should it really be "Hidden Treasure / The City of Gold"? Or just "Hidden Treasure and the City of Gold"? Sometimes it is difficult to figure out where one part of the track ends and the other begins, which begs the question of whether it's really even a two-part track.

 

In some ways, the uncertainty makes me tempted to just write it as the back cover says, but then that means it won't be consistent across the board. Ugh! Lol

[Disco Stu 15,495]

Oh man I have to put spaces around the forward slash or it drives me crazy.

 

”Main Titles/Arrival” has to be “Main Titles / Arrival” or I won’t be able to sleep.

[Bespin 8,483]

In Québec's typography there's no space before and after the "/".

 

I don't know the rule in plain American. I think you don't even have a rule for that. After all, if it's not in your Const... Whoops, sorry...

 

[Disco Stu 15,495]

I just prefer how it looks with the spaces.  Neater, cleaner.

[Jay 37,369]

2 hours ago, Stu said:

Oh man I have to put spaces around the forward slash or it drives me crazy.

 

”Main Titles/Arrival” has to be “Main Titles / Arrival”

 

I agree with Disco Stu

 

2 hours ago, Stu said:

I just prefer how it looks with the spaces.  Neater, cleaner.

 

Yes

[Positivatee 327]

4 hours ago, Stu said:

Oh man I have to put spaces around the forward slash or it drives me crazy.

 

”Main Titles/Arrival” has to be “Main Titles / Arrival” or I won’t be able to sleep.

 

I manually change every case of front slashes to include one space after but no space before. That way, when I convert tag to filename, there is only space in the filename instead of two. 

[Tydirium 1,167]

21 hours ago, Stu said:

Oh man I have to put spaces around the forward slash or it drives me crazy.

 

”Main Titles/Arrival” has to be “Main Titles / Arrival” or I won’t be able to sleep.

 

Yep, I feel like no spaces gives off more of an "or" vibe, than a separation.

[Bayesian 1,363]

On 06/07/2022 at 3:04 PM, Tydirium said:

 

Thanks for your comment; glad to see someone else who understands! I'm curious about this bit in particular, though. Your system for this is actually in agreement with the Apple Music Style Guide, and in the past I've tried adopting this method myself. However, I've run into some pitfalls with it.

 

What about a situation like the Star Wars: The Clone Wars movie OST? On the back cover, we've got "Star Wars Main Title & A Galaxy Divided"—which according to your system would ordinarily get separated via a forward slash. (In fact, that track was re-released as the first track of the first album for TCW's final season a couple years ago, and in that digital-only release it was titled "Star Wars Main Title / A Galaxy Divided.") But further down in the track list, we've got tracks like "General Loathsom / Ahsoka" and "General Loathsom / Battle Strategy." How would you handle a case like this, where the track listing contains both "and" (or "&") tracks, and already-separated "/" tracks? Since it seems to differentiate between them.

 

Also, my only real gripe with applying a forward slash to the "and" tracks, is that sometimes there's really no good way of knowing whether it's actually intended to be a two-part track, or it just so happens to use the word "and" in it. For instance, should it really be "Star Wars / The Revenge of the Sith"? Or just "Star Wars and the Revenge of the Sith"? Should it really be "Hidden Treasure / The City of Gold"? Or just "Hidden Treasure and the City of Gold"? Sometimes it is difficult to figure out where one part of the track ends and the other begins, which begs the question of whether it's really even a two-part track.

 

In some ways, the uncertainty makes me tempted to just write it as the back cover says, but then that means it won't be consistent across the board. Ugh! Lol

I did not know of the existence of the Apple Music Style Guide; thanks for alerting to me to that. Interesting to me that Apple opts to treat film scores and musicals as subsets of the soundtrack genre.

 

To your question about the use of slashes: If the track title already contains slashes, I keep them as is. I don't have a personally-satisfying solution to differentiating titles where the slash is inherent to the name of a cue and where I impose the slash to remove the "and" that implies the linking of two otherwise-distinct cues into a single track. So what I'm resigned to doing is just going by memory as to what the actual situation is. If I can't remember, that's the price I'm willing to pay for OCD-satiating consistency.

 

In your example of Star Wars and the Revenge of the Sith, I always lose the "and". In fact, I also drop "The" to make it snappier and shorter. That might be one sacrilege too many for some folks, but it works for me. Sometimes it's preferable for me to preserve the "The" after the slash, though. Mostly, I do this in situations where "The" helps demonstrate the uniqueness of the subject. To take your example, "City of Gold" wouldn't be satisfying to me because it seems to suggest any old city of gold (if such a thing existed). But "The City of Gold" makes it obvious we're talking about a very specific city.

 

Yes, it's lunacy. Don't get my wife started on it. I used to try to explain this kind of thing to her and it made her want to wring my neck, lol.

[bollemanneke 3,349]

Question: What do I do to make MP3Tag export a list of simple folder names without anything else? I tried editing the txt export template, but unsuccesful.

[whitenoise23 22]

I typically use MusicBrainz Picard to manage metadata--I often find myself having to add it for new/niche releases, but it is way better than doing it track-by-track, and has the major advantage of being easy to retrieve/reproduce and benefits from community updates/changes.

[Jurassic Shark 12,079]

I just play the CD, and if it has CD text it's a pleasant surprise. 

[Brónach 1,302]

no slashes in file names for me (Linux goes mad) and hence, not in the metadata if possible

[Smeltington 1,440]

On 14/07/2023 at 1:28 AM, whitenoise23 said:

I typically use MusicBrainz Picard to manage metadata--I often find myself having to add it for new/niche releases, but it is way better than doing it track-by-track, and has the major advantage of being easy to retrieve/reproduce and benefits from community updates/changes.

 

This looks like a great tool, I'm gonna try it out! Thanks for the suggestion!

[Tydirium 1,167]

How do you guys handle double albums like this Heidi / Jane Eyre set? Do you split them into separate “albums” for each score, or keep them together? At the moment I’m inclined to keep them together, but then the question becomes: how does one best differentiate between multiple scores in the same album?

 

Do you put the film title at the start of the track title, such as “Heidi: Return to Dörfli”? Or do you put it at the end in parentheses, such as “Return to Dörfli (From “Heidi”)? Or do you just leave the track as is, “Return to Dörfli,” and rely on your knowledge of the score or its location on the album to know which score you’re listening to?

 

Lastly, for those who keep the scores together as a single album, do you use just one album cover (logically the main one that is visible when you buy the CD) to represent the whole release, or do you change the art halfway through the album when it switches to the other score?

 

 

[Faleel 5,356]

I break up the scores.

 

Maybe keep the film title in the first track only.

[Bayesian 1,363]

1 hour ago, Tydirium said:

How do you guys handle double albums like this Heidi / Jane Eyre set? Do you split them into separate “albums” for each score, or keep them together? At the moment I’m inclined to keep them together, but then the question becomes: how does one best differentiate between multiple scores in the same album?

 

Do you put the film title at the start of the track title, such as “Heidi: Return to Dörfli”? Or do you put it at the end in parentheses, such as “Return to Dörfli (From “Heidi”)? Or do you just leave the track as is, “Return to Dörfli,” and rely on your knowledge of the score or its location on the album to know which score you’re listening to?

 

Lastly, for those who keep the scores together as a single album, do you use just one album cover (logically the main one that is visible when you buy the CD) to represent the whole release, or do you change the art halfway through the album when it switches to the other score?

 

 

I’d split them up for sure. You have separate artwork, so it’s like you bought two separate albums. 
 
Regarding your second question, the film title should always come after the track title. And never capitalize the F— it must only be in the form of [Track title in sentence case] (from Title of Movie). 

[bollemanneke 3,349]

Definitely split them up.

[Marian Schedenig 8,200]

On 15/07/2023 at 9:32 PM, Brónach said:

no slashes in file names for me (Linux goes mad) and hence, not in the metadata if possible

 

I use Soundkonverter for ripping, which automatically replaces non-FAT characters with underscores. Useful not only for the few characters that bother Linux, but also for the many more characters that would cause problems when copying the files to a non-Linux drive.

10 hours ago, Tydirium said:

How do you guys handle double albums like this Heidi / Jane Eyre set? Do you split them into separate “albums” for each score, or keep them together? At the moment I’m inclined to keep them together, but then the question becomes: how does one best differentiate between multiple scores in the same album?

 

I rip them as one album, but then break them up by editing the metadata. This way, they're kept in the same directory (i.e. "physically" as an album), but show up separately in the collection. I also keep the track (and disc) numbers. I do the same with single-score releases that have multiple versions of the score, or extensive bonus track sections - I'm often too lazy and forget about it, so it's rather inconsistent.

[mstrox 6,651]

In most cases I break them up and throw a note in the metadata that it was a split album with x other score.  If it’s very small, like one track from Conrack, I’ll just treat it like a bonus track on the main album.

[bollemanneke 3,349]

Okay, I need to say it and I need to say it now.

 

I am SICK of having to worry about classical music tags.

I am SICK of the fact that there have to be 12425 recordings of every goddamn work.

I am SICK of the fact that there are so many great conductors I want to listen to and who all do the same repertoire 50% of the time.

I am SICK, SICK, SICK of compilation albums that have nothing but ‘various fuckign artists’ in the FreeDB databse. I am SICK of having to try and find credits to all damn tracks on those albums so as to make sure I won’t duplicate things. I am SICK of being attached to some of these albums and that I can’t just throw them out and move on to albums with clearer credits.

 

Somebody help me.

 

[Bespin 8,483]

"Tagging your digital files? Spare me! Normal people don't bother with that nonsense!" - Lucy from Peanuts.

[mstrox 6,651]

Just say they’re all the London Symphony Orchestra

[Tom Guernsey 2,286]

7 hours ago, bollemanneke said:

Okay, I need to say it and I need to say it now.

 

I am SICK of having to worry about classical music tags.

I am SICK of the fact that there have to be 12425 recordings of every goddamn work.

I am SICK of the fact that there are so many great conductors I want to listen to and who all do the same repertoire 50% of the time.

I am SICK, SICK, SICK of compilation albums that have nothing but ‘various fuckign artists’ in the FreeDB databse. I am SICK of having to try and find credits to all damn tracks on those albums so as to make sure I won’t duplicate things. I am SICK of being attached to some of these albums and that I can’t just throw them out and move on to albums with clearer credits.

 

Somebody help me.

 

I feel your pain and have developed my own rules for how I apply metadata to my classical collection. It doesn’t really follow how anyone does it through any of the metadata databases or only digital stores. I use the basics and edit to my own preferences. Maybe I’m quite a sad person (no comments) but I actually enjoy faffing about on my computer tidying up my music library. Sometimes I go through an entire composer and update anything that is either (somehow) wrong or maybe has albums which use an older style which I’ve since changed. I guess it’s a bit like someone going through their vinyls sorting their collection but digitally. I find it quite therapeutic. 

 

[bollemanneke 3,349]

The thing is, I can totally relate to faffing about on your computer and it being enjoyable. I guess what triggered me today was the endless classical repertoire out there that I want to listen to and already have. I should be making time for Bruce Springsteen and Aznavour, but no, I've discovered the 23th fine Messiah.  Then there's the huge elephant in the room: that ultimately I'm not going to care about 95% of these performances, but kept them because they sounded lovely at the time. I can't keep collecting like this, but then collecting is so enjoyable. And then there are the wretched 'classical hits' albums that my parents bought me as a child. Try finding metadata for those.

[Tom Guernsey 2,286]

Ah for sure I understand that. Especially with favourite works and some new, very well reviewed version comes out and the arduous decision of whether I really need another version of whatever it is. I usually cave in eventually if only because I buy most of my classical digitally (thank you Presto) and it’s either relatively inexpensive anyway or on sale and an absolute bargain! So the arduous decision becomes an easy one but it does mean I have multiple versions of certain works and probably have never listened to some of those versions to make a meaningful judgement as to whether I like them more or less than my favoured recording. I just kinda go with it. Data storage is cheap and maybe one day I’ll listen to them all. Maybe. 

[Tydirium 1,167]

Just wondering, what do you all use for the year field: the year the album originally came out (even if it’s a later, remastered version), or the year the CD itself actually came out? Lately I’ve been going with the year of the actual CD release, but am currently dealing with the frustration of not being able to find a clear answer for when a particular CD was released. (No year anywhere on the product, and conflicting information across the web.)

[bollemanneke 3,349]

I've spent the best of two days changing some metadata and am just sick to death of it. Might chuck it all out. Let the record show I'm actually considering deleting every duplicate performance of every single thing in my library just to have a normal structure. Blessed are those who don't listen to classical.

[Tom Guernsey 2,286]

1 hour ago, Tydirium said:

Just wondering, what do you all use for the year field: the year the album originally came out (even if it’s a later, remastered version), or the year the CD itself actually came out? Lately I’ve been going with the year of the actual CD release, but am currently dealing with the frustration of not being able to find a clear answer for when a particular CD was released. (No year anywhere on the product, and conflicting information across the web.)

For soundtracks it’s always the year of the film even if it’s a new recording or an expanded release. I feel that’s the most useful date. For classical it’s usually the year the album was released but I’m not that fussy as I care less about year for that. For musicals it’s the year of that particular cast recording.

25 minutes ago, bollemanneke said:

I've spent the best of two days changing some metadata and am just sick to death of it. Might chuck it all out. Let the record show I'm actually considering deleting every duplicate performance of every single thing in my library just to have a normal structure. Blessed are those who don't listen to classical.

Don’t delete the duplicates too rashly but perhaps just consider deleting those you don’t play or don’t like. I found I had some versions of certain works I bought years ago that I don’t enjoy so much or are perhaps older Naxos releases when their output was a bit more variable!

 

However my advice on metadata is to just pick a particular composer and tidy up all of their listings. I enjoy tidying my library but it does definitely become tiresome after a while but if I can get an entire composer’s output all neatly up to date in my current preferred style it’s much more satisfying than just grinding through everything!

[Marian Schedenig 8,200]

3 hours ago, Tydirium said:

Just wondering, what do you all use for the year field: the year the album originally came out (even if it’s a later, remastered version), or the year the CD itself actually came out? Lately I’ve been going with the year of the actual CD release, but am currently dealing with the frustration of not being able to find a clear answer for when a particular CD was released. (No year anywhere on the product, and conflicting information across the web.)

 

The year of the original release - or for classical music sometimes the year of the recording, which may be off by a few years from the release date, so things still get confusing; I should probably use the recording year for everything, but then many soundtracks would be off by a year from their "established" year, which would be at least as confusing.

 

If I get a new edition of a score/album/recording that I already have an earlier version of, I still put the same year, but include the release year (or sometimes the release label) in the album title in parenthesises, so I can tell the versions apart.

 

Reasoning: I could sort the albums chronologically and get a listing that correctly represents the "creation" (recording) chronology.

[Chewy 2,391]

4 hours ago, Tydirium said:

Just wondering, what do you all use for the year field: the year the album originally came out (even if it’s a later, remastered version), or the year the CD itself actually came out? Lately I’ve been going with the year of the actual CD release, but am currently dealing with the frustration of not being able to find a clear answer for when a particular CD was released. (No year anywhere on the product, and conflicting information across the web.)

 

The FLAC format uses Vorbis tags, and the one for that is DATE. I try to put there the full release date (in ISO format, e.g. 2023-01-16), not only the year.

[OneBuckFilms 323]

For film scores, I have a general Style I apply to my metadada.

 

Just for a little context, I use Windows Media Player and have it apply folder structuring and naming based on the tags, and use MP3Tag to fine tune the tagging and apply the artwork. I also use it to play back music from my laptop over headphones.

 

For complete score releases, I always name an albul for the film it applies to, and ensure the "Album" contains the complete score from beginning to end, combining multiple disks into the album.

 

I then keep separate albums for different groups of Alternates, named for the film with " - Alternates" and " - Album Versions" depending on what is on the disks.

 

The OST or Original Albums are named "<Film Name> - Original Soundtrack" if present, and I ensure I have the LP or CD album cover (often from SoundtrackCollector.com).

 

When the full score includes "Film Version" etc. I simply have the track title.

[Tom Guernsey 2,286]

One of my weird metadata quirks is that for the film presentation of an expanded score I never put if it’s a film or some alternate version in the track name. The track titles for the main body of the score are always just the track title, unless there’s a really good reason for include them. I do occasionally wonder if maybe I should put them if it’s a different version, but I like the tidiness of having the film presentation with just the actual track titles and leave putting designations for tracks in the bonus track section.

[OneBuckFilms 323]

I think you should just stick to the cue names or track names for the main score.

 

The fact that the album versions or different mixes are in separate albums usually provides differentiating context.

 

 

[bollemanneke 3,349]

I've cracked the classical conundrum: just copy-paste from Presto.Artist will be composer, album artist are performers. It'll keep me occupied for a few days.

[Tom Guernsey 2,286]

58 minutes ago, OneBuckFilms said:

I think you should just stick to the cue names or track names for the main score.

 

The fact that the album versions or different mixes are in separate albums usually provides differentiating context.

 

 

Exactly. Plus when I’m listening to the score as presented I’m not bothered if it’s actually an alternate. I can get that info in the liner notes. 

[Richard Penna 3,694]

Any current anality in my file tagging is done for one single reason: so I can find stuff in PowerAmp.

 

For a lot of pop artists I have a bunch of tracks that aren't part of an album - singles, demos, remixes, etc. If I leave their metadata as it is, I'd end up with about 20 'albums' containing one track each, making listening to them in the car impossible. If I tag them all with a self made album, makes no difference to my PC listening, but I can then load them as an album for driving.

[OneBuckFilms 323]

I find tagging things up in my archive as very zen, and allows me to quickly find the music I want to hear at any point.

 

I'm something of a collector, but I'm not a hoarder, I curate the collection.

 

Broadly, I have a set of rules (guidelines really) when it comes to titles:

 

1. Only one release of any given score.
2. When possible/practical, ensure I get the definitive / complete version of the score.
3. If there is a previous release, pass it on via a donation or a sale / trade at a used CD store so that another individual can discover the music.
4. If a previous version is signed, treat as an exception.
5. If a previous version contains significant material absent from the new definitive release, treat as an exception.

 

 

[Tallguy 3,398]

Someone mentioned that their setup is MusicBee for desktop and PowerAmp for mobile. Amen! If I can find a player that will either let me nest playlists like the iPod used to or even at least sort albums by a sort tag I'll switch in a heartbeat. (More on this in a moment.)

 

(I keep thinking I'll switch to MediaMonkey but there is some reason I switched and I can't remember.)

 

I don't do anything TOO weird. Obviously the bulk of my collection are scores. Which is still not TOO much of a problem. If there is a split like David Arnold / Kevin Kiner I'll usually make a decision and pick one. If it's a song or something obviously a different artist / composer I'll tag the track with the Artist and the album overall with the Album Artist.

 

Unless there is some compelling reason I'll go with track names that are on the cover. Sometimes I'll go crazy and tag with MusicBrainz.

 

The biggest issue I have is there are certain albums I want sorted specifically. The worst offenders are Star Trek, Star Wars, James Bond, and to a lesser extent Indiana Jones. I have all of these albums tagged like "ST am2 Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (LLL)". In this case it will sort in the Star Trek section / TOS era / Movies / Second movie. I'd really rather it display (and scrobble, but I'm getting ahead) as Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (LLL) but oh well.

 

I've gotten into the habit of tagging particular deluxe releases with the label. Usually this will suffice. I don't usually buy a straight release more than twice. I NEVER tag an album with Deluxe or Expanded or Super Nifty You Have to Have This!

 

Where this is starting to be kind of an issue is scrobbling. The easiest way to sync my playcounts is with scrobbling (I'm using Last.fm). And my custom album names can sometimes play hell with this. But most of the time not. It just scrobbles to my personal album name and keeps accurate track of it there. I sometimes have an issue where it thinks that it knows better for a track name and scrobbles to a previous edition. I think I only have one track that does this on the latest Star Trek: The Motion Picture 2-CD set.

 

In the waning days of when I had a working 100GB iPod and iTunes, I used to take massive CDs (like the 15 CD Star Trek set) and break them into playlists and then sort the playlists into sub folders. The iPod handled these WONDERFULLY. I could have a Star Trek playlist with EVERYTHING. And then a Star Trek / TOS Box list. Then a Star Trek / TOS Box / The Doomsday Machine etc. And everything would be sorted as I wanted and was convenient enough for display, etc. I don't want 47 playlists all displayed flat. It's ugly AND unusable.

 

And because I'm THAT kind of user (there have to be three or four of us) I could make playlists for albums with subfolders for album sides! I could EASILY go to Star Wars (LP) / Side 2. Or if I wasn't in the mood for that just Star Wars (LP).

 

I keep thinking that I want to code my own player as both a great to have app and as a nice thing to put on a resume. And I'm going to call it Sides. And it will sort and display albums and tracks and genres all these nice ways. Maybe someday.

[Richard Penna 3,694]

I'm finding a new obsession at the moment which I wonder if anyone else has - an inclination to want to find a high-res copy of an album's cover art before I've even considered whether I'm going to buy it. I think it's because it's the only thing you're not guaranteed to receive with a download and obviously not with a CD purchase.

 

I've had a 1500x1500 version of The Way of Water for somewhere approaching a year now, in anticipation that one day I might listen to it properly and buy it, and I've got covers for two albums I'm strongly looking to buy, plus Dragons 3 waiting for its album. It's actually a nice way for me to keep track of scores/albums that are on my list.

 

Apple Music is a reliable source of 1200x1200 versions of most things (with some URL fiddling in a few cases) with Spotify as a backup or the label's website in some cases.