An Accurate ID3 Tag Database?

Andy Le Couteur Bisson asks: "Can anyone suggest an ID3 tag database that doesn't label everything from Gabber to Ambient as Electronica & Dance, or worse? I am currently ripping more of my CD collection and it is annoying to have to review and edit almost all of the tags after every session. The odd error or difference of opinion is understandable, but I struggle to comprehend the logic that categorizes The Liberators and Luke Slater as R&B (for the uninitiated they are Techno). I guess I'm looking for a more UK centric database but Googling hasn't helped much, thus far."

uhm this already exists in freeform

[Anonymous Coward]

this service [musicbrainz.org] already exists by musicbrainz [musicbrainz.org], and if you use amarok [kde.org] then you have already witnessed it in action.

seriously, do people google before they ask slashdot?

Re:Limited Suggestion

[Anonymous Coward]

Not to mention the fact that cddb only defined 11 genres originally way back when all of this ripping stuff was a new fad, and everything became either "rock", "soundtrack" or "misc".

Re:Limited Suggestion

[drinkypoo]

The real problems lay in the limitations of the ID3 tag format. Sure, you can put anything you want into some fields (like genre) but the fields have insanely short length limits. How many times have you tried to ID3v1-tag your MP3s only to find out that you have to use ID3v2 because the name of the song or album is too long? Happens to me all the damn time, anyway. But regardless, the tag needed an entirely different format. In particular it should have allowed selection of multiple genres...

Hey, Ingrid D.J.

[Jimekai]

I've been working on this problem for a long time now and the last thing I want to do is to edit individual songs. The best solution I've come up with is to create a folder called "genre" under which I created individual genre folders. I then moved my artists and loose mp3s into those folders. The freeware I used to inspect the artists/paths in my collection is called "Mp3 Explorer". I should point out that I am only interested in the 148 genres of the ID3v1 tag because my BPM based player software uses this to select drum sets and grooves. Of those genres the major headache is the Blues (0), Other (12), Unknown (255 - hex(FF)), and Classical (32 - i.e. ASCII space). During the last year my Winamp front-end has been speaking the track details before and after the song plays to aid me in cleaning up my folders. I've also been using Allmusic.com to check up on artists and my collection is pretty stable now. I am now ready to code a routine to reset these main problem genres to their folder name. When that task is done I'll be able to use a tagger to work through individual folders, looking for anomalies. The freeware Winamp front-end that I wrote, called Ingrid, is a quantum computer emulator that is capable of detecting vary diverse musical signatures. When my collection is clean enough I intend to overlay mood shapes onto those signatures to generate accompaniment using more than just drums, e.g., guitars and piano rolls. http://homepages.ihug.co.nz/~income/ingridx/ [ihug.co.nz]

Re:Tag & Rename

[frosgate]

I have to say that this is IMHO the best application out there for tagging serious amounts of mp3s. I've done over 1,200 full albums with it now, and can't say that I've ever found anything better. For the record, I have no affiliation what so ever with the company who produces this software

In regards to having to do one album at a time, this isn't true. You can change the view to list the contents of all subfolders. Then, you can select which songs from which albums you wish to label as what.

Unfortunately, I still have not found a reliable source for category information for mp3 tags. I end up just choosing myself which category is appropriate. With Tag&Rename though, it's very quick to re-tag a few files, an album, or even dozens of albums.

Re:OK... WTF is Gabber?

[hamishmorgan]

Gabber is a kind of techno/house music, i think its made by Dutch producers mostly. Anyway it is IMHO the most god awfull noise known to man-kind and should be avoided at all costs.

Classical Music

[Triv]

The major place user submitted id3 databases fall flat on their faces is in the cataloging of classical music - some of the schema people use for that stuff is quite simply insane - movement names in the author fields, a lack of comprehensive composition names in the track field (ie, naming the first movement correctly and naming the second movement ii. allegro and that's IT), a total disregard for performers, no standard for capitalization, disparity of composer name formats. There's nothing even approaching a standard for such things and you end up doing it ALL by hand.

Just saying, if all you're worrying about is changing a genre field for every album you rip, will, it could be a helluva lot worse.

I actually wrote a basic guide to get through this particular minefield; it's over here [everything2.com] on E2.