I'm busy tagging my newly ripped music collection and would like some advice about which date to use in the "Date" field. I've made a few decisions of my own but there are some situations that I'm not sure how to handle.
REGULAR ALBUMS
(Examples: Billy Joel - The Stranger, Duran Duran - Rio)
If the individual songs were written in different years, I label each song accordingly. If the individual songs do not have dates, then I'll use the copyright date of the album for all songs.
GREATEST HITS ALBUMS
(Examples: Elton John - Greatest Hits, Duran Duran - Decade, Bread - Retrospective)
The tracks on these albums typically come from another album and if I'm lucky, the songs are each labeled separately with their date. If not, I'll go back to the album that the song came from and use the album date.
COMPELLATION
(Example: Austin Powers - Soundtrack)
This album contains some new songs as well as some older songs. I am labeling each song separately as I do with Greatest Hits Albums.
REMIXES
I've decided to use the date of the remix rather than the date of the original song.
*** Here's the part where I need some advice ***
NEW VERSION OF OLD SONG (1)
(Example: Glenn Miller - In The Digital Mood)
In this case, Glenn Miller's songs from the 30's/40's were re-recorded using modern equipment. So the songs were recently recorded but try to be true to the original. In this particular case, I did some research and am using the date of the original release. This argument seems good until a similar situation comes up as in the following:
NEW VERSION OF OLD SONG (2)
(Example: American Idol 2 - Classic American Love Songs)
This album pretty much goes against my arguement in the previous example. I feel that these songs, while they are newly recorded versions of older songs, they should have the current date. Perhaps because they are vocals and not only instrumentals?
LIVE ALBUMS
(Example: Billy Joel - Songs in the Attic, Paul McCartney - Tripping the Live Fantastic)
Now it gets tricky. Do I use the original date that the song was recorded, or do I use the performance date? These are remakes of the original and even better than my Glenn Miller example, because they are by the original artist. But, they were recently recorded and having that new date could be handy. I'm torn.
Conclusion
Perhaps what I really need are two dates: A copyright date and the date that the song was recorded. For many songs, the dates would be identical, but for those I'm having trouble with, this may help I've resisted adding custom fields and would prefer not to use them. I don't have an MP3 player but if get one at some point and custom tags aren't handled, I don't want to be stuck having made the wrong decision.
So I ask, how are you guys handling these scenarios?
Thanks!
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Topic: Need Advice: What date to use? (Read 1096 times)