An Accurate ID3 Tag Database? 139
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."
Tag & Rename (Score:5, Informative)
By the way, there is another program that IS freeware that does the same thing with amazon.com, but I can't remember the name
Re:Tag & Rename (Score:5, Informative)
Mp3tag? http://www.mp3tag.de/en/index.html [mp3tag.de]
That's a diamond, IMHO.
Re:Tag & Rename (Score:1)
Re:Tag & Rename (Score:1)
Re:Tag & Rename (Score:2)
Re:Tag & Rename (Score:2, Insightful)
iTunes and Tagging (Score:2)
Re:Tag & Rename (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Tag & Rename (Score:2, Interesting)
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.
Unfortunat
Re:Tag & Rename (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Tag & Rename (Score:2)
The problem you will soon encounter is that even you will not be able to clearly categorize some of your music. There is always stuff in between styles, and depending on your mood-of-the-day you will categorize some of your music more in one or the other style.
It is a weird subjective problem,
Multiple Genres (Score:2)
So if I'm not sure if a song is (for example) Metal or Alternative, I just tag it "Alternative Metal". That way searching for either "Alternative" or "Metal" in iTunes will bring up the song.
I'm not sure what the character limit is for the Genre field, but it's been enough for me to get several tags in there at once, on my more eclectic songs.
The obvious shortfall of this method is that if you SORT by Genre, as opposed to Filtering/Sea
Limited Suggestion (Score:5, Informative)
However, you'll get no genre info there. That's something that's just really, really hard to do well. Especially because of the overlap that some artists have between genres, and how specific someone wants to be. Is VNV Nation EBM? Futurepop? Or just Electronica? How about Dead Can Dance? I think they've hit a dozen different genres over the years, how do you pick one?
For the most part, I've tried to just give up on genre entirely. It rarely says anything of value anyway.
Re:Limited Suggestion (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Limited Suggestion (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Limited Suggestion (Score:3, Insightful)
The real catch is defining your genre set, but that gets very tricky to do in a way that you'll be satisfied with.
Re:Limited Suggestion (Score:2)
Why on earth would you want to use id3v1?
Because I was an "early adapter" (don't you love buzz-words?) and my hardware (the MP3 player in my truck) only supports 1d3v1.
Re:Limited Suggestion (Score:2)
You're wrong: ID3v1 were stored at the end of the file, ID3v2.x are at the front.
This is no longer an issue with IDv2.2(?) and beyond, where each tag's field has a bit of padding just for this reason. Besides, how often do you re-rag a file? It's IMO a real non-issue. ID3v1 is best left alone in the dustbin
Re:Limited Suggestion (Score:2)
V2 tags are variable length and are at the start of the file. But unless you're using an archaic version then V2 tags support padding, and the standard recommends padding to 2K or 4K total. You have to rewrite the file to add or remove the tag entirely, but as long as you don't exceed the pad length you do not have to rewrite the entire file to change or add a few tags
Re:Limited Suggestion (Score:2)
If I have music, I'd like to be able to associate lyrics, cover art, performer names, composers, etc. So if I want a playlist of music with Vanessa Carlton, Counting Crows' "Big Yellow Taxi" will show, for Bono, "Children of the Revolution" off the Moulin Rouge soundtrack will appear, etc.
Perhaps the genre classification is best done with multiple adjectives describing tempo, etc. But soundtrack definitely should not be a genre for music by itself.
Re:Limited Suggestion (Score:5, Informative)
The problem is that very little software supports most of that other than cover art.
Perhaps you should look at id3.org: see the id3v2.4 specs.
The problem isn't the tagging methods, it's the lack of software support.
(That said: obligatory plug -- slimserver supports lyrics, cover art, performer names and composers.... perhaps you need a Squeezebox.)
Re:Limited Suggestion (Score:2)
Re:Limited Suggestion (Score:2)
Re:Limited Suggestion (Score:2)
Untrue. Both V2.3 and V2.4 allow for multiple genres -- the V2.3 standard is a bit ambiguous here -- if you don't include the parenthesized V1 genre number identifier then it's unclear how to list multiple genres (I favor the iTunes method of space delimiting them; others prefer NULL delimiting). The V2.4 standard is explicit -- NULLs between genres (which, of course, iTunes doesn't follow; but their V2.4 implementation is horribly broken anyway).
I'm n
Re:Limited Suggestion (Score:2)
And I totally disagree: anything that's from a soundtrack is tagged in my collection as Soundtrack. Just makes it easier to sort albums.
Personally, I edit the hell out of my Genre tags, trying to keep the list to the minimum, since I never use them for anything, but want
Re:Limited Suggestion (Score:2)
Note that in your example (and in the version in my iTunes), Vanessa shows up in the song name, not the performer. And if I wanted all Sammy Hagar's stuff, his work
Re:Limited Suggestion (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Limited Suggestion (Score:1)
Re:Limited Suggestion (Score:1)
Re:Limited Suggestion (Score:2)
Well, you don't HAVE to tag every single song the same way just because it's the same artist...
Re:Limited Suggestion (Score:1)
At first I thought this way, but the predefined genres are the things that are not helpful. It sounds kind of stupid, but before I started ripping my CDs I came up with a schema for genre before hand that made sense to me. Ok, please hear me out on this.
In my collection there are some varying degrees of Electronica/Techno what have you. Because it one of the biggest parts of my collection and I listen to
Re:Limited Suggestion (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Limited Suggestion (Score:2)
Re:Limited Suggestion (Score:1)
Re:Limited Suggestion (Score:2)
It's not quite as convenient as a iPhoto-style keywords selector would be, but if you've used the particular combination of keywords that you want to enter on another song before, iTunes will auto-complete it. (So if you've typed "Alternative Goth Metal" on another song, iTun
The best source of info is... YOU! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:The best source of info is... YOU! (Score:1)
Re:The best source of info is... YOU! (Score:2)
When I'm done though I won't always want Johnny Cash lumped in with Guns & Roses, so I've got lots more genres separating Classic Rock, Rock, and Alternative. For when I want calmer sounds there's Slow Rock for Stone Temple Pilots' Creep. Also got a catch-call genre of Smooth for Sting, Norah Jones, and stuff I'd like to
Re:The best source of info is... YOU! (Score:2)
The best source of info is... TAGGING! (Score:2)
Re:The best source of info is... YOU! (Score:2)
I do divide by genre, but very broadly, and only w
Re:The best source of info is... YOU! (Score:2)
But I'm lazy!
Although I do agree that classifying music by genre [qntm.org] is a pointless exercise.
MusicBrainz (Score:5, Informative)
MusicBrainz != genre (Score:2)
uhm this already exists in freeform (Score:2, Interesting)
seriously, do people google before they ask slashdot?
Re:uhm this already exists in freeform (Score:2, Informative)
Manually editing, checking is not too bad. (Score:1)
Re:Manually editing, checking is not too bad. (Score:1)
Certainly MusicBrainz isn't perfect: I periodically find duplicates, but it is editable, and there are procedures for combining duplicates into one record.
CDDB Not ID3 (Score:4, Informative)
You can always edit the tracks afterwards, I use the already recommended Tag&Rename myself however there are a number of open source utilities which are just as good especially if you're not using Windows.
Another alternative might be to try Musicbrainz [musicbrainz.org] which identifies individual tracks using some kind of hash of the song itself and might have "better" genres assigned to artists.
Re:CDDB Not ID3 (Score:2)
Are there any guidelines on either regarding keeping the basic album information consistant? By that I mean, some compilatons are listed under "Various", others "Various Artists". Multi CD sets are sometimes "CD1 of 2", sometimes (CD one) - sometimes these happen within the same album! Bands aren't consistant either, some albums return "The Be
Re:CDDB Not ID3 (Score:2)
Tag Scanner! (Score:1)
Alternative & Punk (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Alternative & Punk (Score:1)
(Quod Libet [sacredchao.net] does.)
Re:Alternative & Punk (Score:3, Insightful)
Or maybe it's a fan problem - after all, the Industrial you listen to is better than the Industrial everybody else listens to, so it *has* to have a new genre, right?
Personally, I think there should just be 3 different genres - "sucks", "doesn't suck", and "I'm not su
Re:Alternative & Punk (Score:2)
1) Music I like
2) Music I like that I don't want anyone to know about
3) Music I don't like
That classification works quite well for me.
Re:Alternative & Punk (Score:2)
So everytime CDDB tries to label something "Alternative" I stop it. Originally, I was going to just label music into four categories: rock, rap, jazz, and classical. But in use, that system sucks, because the "rock" genre
on genres... (Score:1)
http://musicbrainz.org/ (Score:2, Informative)
also, musicbrainz has a community moderated thing going on, so mistakes get corrected
AllMusic (Score:3, Informative)
Re:AllMusic - Oh, yeah, *great* (Score:2)
As a previous person asked: "Is VNV Nation EBM? Futurepop? Or just Electronica? "
Well, according to allmusic.com's *great* genre info, they belong in the "rock" genre...
And so does every other EBM and electronica band I looked up.
Sheesh (Score:2)
* Industrial Dance
* Electro-Industrial
* Dark Ambient
They even have a bunch of moods listed:
* Provocative
* Reflective
* Confrontational
* Confident
* Energetic
Re:AllMusic (Score:3, Informative)
If it's for ripping cd's (Score:1)
Updating (Score:2)
Re:Updating (Score:1)
genre is useless (Score:1)
No service offers this - the nearest is AMG who provie multiple styles, genres, moods and instrumentation per artist. As far as I know there is no official automated tool which rips this information.
You'll be better off with your o
Re:genre is useless (Score:1)
I can have something tagged as genre: punk rock, genre2: american hardcore, genre3: So-Cal first gen, genre4: OC, genre5: Oxnard, etc...
Any tag I want to add to a file I can, and as mentioned, there's no size limit. I've found this to actually be really beneficial by tagging songs by my bands with an email address to contact if people want demos, or want to know anything about us. Although I suppos
Re:Genre is not entirely useless. (Score:1)
Or would do if ID3 had a "Progressive Metal" genre....gah! You end up having to decide whether it'd be more appropriate to mark it as Progressive Rock, Metal or Heavy Metal.
The biggest problem with automated tagging is the bizarre and usually limiting selection of genres.
MoodLogic (Score:1)
Re:MoodLogic (Score:1)
Re:MoodLogic (Score:1)
Godfather (Score:1)
MusicMatch (Score:1)
Hey, Ingrid D.J. (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Hey, Ingrid D.J. (Score:1)
You can write a quantum computer emulator but you can't be bothered to spellcheck or self-check your typing?
Re:Hey, Ingrid D.J. (Score:1)
Shell scripts. (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Shell scripts. (Score:3, Funny)
OK... WTF is Gabber? (Score:2)
But I guess I'm just an old fart, because while I've at least *heard* of "Ambient", I don't know WTF "Gabber" is...
Re:OK... WTF is Gabber? (Score:1)
Re:OK... WTF is Gabber? (Score:1)
Must have been before your time.
Re:OK... WTF is Gabber? (Score:1)
Re:OK... WTF is Gabber? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:OK... WTF is Gabber? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:OK... WTF is Gabber? (Score:2)
Very fast music. Has that speedcore, junglist, drum and bass sound to it. Very, very fast - did I say that already?
Genre is overrated (Score:4, Insightful)
Don't bother with ID3 databases, either. Even if one were "accurate," it would not be right for most individual listeners. Here's a small list of the problems I encounter when trying to use tags pulled from a database, even when there are no obvious typos or fuckups...
For non-classical music:
- Genres are wacked (duh)
- Both artist and album names often differ from what the album cover says: shortened or on the other hand made "more informative"
- Year is wrong. I don't give a fuck when the album (or even worse, the greatest hits collection) was first sold. I care when the song was put in its final form (if I can find out)
- Song titles may be shortened, and almost always have gratuitous Caps At The Start Of Each Word whether or not the artist put them there
- Due to changes in the database over the years fields may be switched or missing
For classical music and opera the situation is far worse. I have my own tagging system refined during years of keeping digital music and figuring out how best to shoehorn orchestra/chorus/conductor/soloist(s)/ensembles/mo vement titles/opus numbers/acts/scenes into "Artist," "Song," "Album" and "Grouping" fields. I would hazard the guess that for any serious classical music listener there is no point in a database -- different information is important to all of us and we will all perform the field-consolidation shuffle differently. We can whine about the need for entirely new tagging systems but we are enough of a minority that no one listens, so in the meantime, we have to Optimize Very Highly.
In short, just type the damn information in yourself if you want it to be accurate. There is no other way.
media monkey (Score:1, Informative)
i've been using it for a while. it's also the only thing that can handle my mp3 collection. everything else crashes.
MusicBrainz (Score:2)
MusicBrainz [musicbrainz.org] is a free (libre) CCDB-like database of audio CDs.
mp3dings (Score:2, Informative)
Bah ... (Score:1)
Who cares about musical genre anyway ? Who needs these useless categories, they are just boxes for the mind when real music is just about the opposite ...
Are Black Flag Punk or Hardcore ? Is Ministry Industrial, Punk or ... New Wave ? Are these genre tags including a "Progressive Punk Jazz Mayhem" category for John Zorg ? I say just drop those lame classifications :)
My solution... (Score:2)
Goes like that in pseudo sql:
metal : genre ilike '%trash %' or genre ilike '%metal %' or genre ilike '%hard %'
rock: (genre ilike '%rock%' and genre not ilike 'hard%'), etc etc
classical: genre ilike '%classic%' and genre not ilike '%trash%' and genre not ilike '%rock', etc etc
So 'classical trash' will be listed in metal, classical rock in rock, but classical music in classical... Of courses th
Classical Music (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Re:Classical Music (Score:2)
Re:Classical Music (Score:2)
Open Source Tools - MP3Bookhelper etc (Score:2)
CDex is another fantastic piece of software. It's an open source CD ripper that can automatically check the FreeDB.org database to add tags to your ripped music. http://sourceforge.net/projects/cdexos [sourceforge.net]
Album Cover Art Downloader will, surprise!, download and insert album cover art from Amazon,Walmart, and Yahoo into your mp3s. Did you know you could insert
Renaming (Score:2)
tagging in linux? (Score:2)
Re:Yes I had the same question. (Score:2)
Re:iTunes? (Score:2)