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[perry59]

So I made some smartlists for certain decades, like 60's, 70's etc. based on the "date" of the track.
for the most part it works pretty good but then I noticed songs from the 70's showing up in my 80's playlist.
Wasn't hard to track down the problem, a lot of "best of" albums will get stamped with the date they were released, while many of the songs they contain came out earlier.
So edited the smartlists to use the "date (released)" tag which I think is an MC field, not necessarily a "standard" tag. Of course then my playlist was empty because none of my files have that tag. So I told MC to "update tags from library". It said it did so without errors. So I examined these files with dbPoweramp and Mp3Tag and found MC wrote garbage into those tags. Grrrr.
So then I edited files with Mp3Tag, added that tag and filled it in. I then went back into MC and told it to "update library based on tags", then it imported bogus dates (see attachments) why does this not work?
I thought maybe that is just not a good tag to use (not standard?). So I went into Mp3Tag and looked at extended tags, the closest thing I could find was a tag called "origrelease". so I tagged some files with that, went back into MC and told it to update library based on tags.
That tag will not even show up in MC, so I can't show it as a column on my file pane or anything else. It will show up on a "tag dump" though.
I just want to tag my files with a release date so I can get my playlists right, why wont this work?!?

[RoderickGI]

So I examined these files with dbPoweramp and Mp3Tag and found MC wrote garbage into those tags. Grrrr.

MC didn't put garbage into the tag. It put a number that represents a date into the tag, and you didn't tell dbPoweramp or Mp3Tag that it was a Date tag. Hence, they showed the unformatted data, while MC showed the formatted data, because MC knew it was a Date tag.

Try this;
In any Audio View you like, add a column for [Date Imported], which should always have values in it for you to see. Right next to that add an Expression Column, perhaps name it "Raw Date Imported", then for the expression enter [Date Imported,0], which means show the raw data in the field. Now compare the two columns. Both are using exactly the same source data. The "Raw Date Imported" is showing the raw number that represents the date and time. The whole number represents the day, and is that many days after a reference start day, and the decimal represents the time, as a fraction of a day. The "Date Imported" column is showing the formatted data.

The number used to represent dates in all applications is base on day zero being 31/11/1890. You can see a perfect example in one of your images. You entered a DATE(RELEASE) of 1973 in mp3tag, which you didn't tell it was a Date tag, so it just stored the number as is. When that tag was viewed in MC, which knew that the tag was a Date tag, it displayed it as 5/26/1905... which is exactly 1973 days after the reference (starting) date used for Date tags.

Check the day count on https://www.calculator.net/date-calculator.html?today=12%2F31%2F1899&ageat=05%2F26%2F1905&calctype=diff&addendday=1&x=53&y=11.

The "Release Date" is a very common tag in most applications. MC usually works out what the date is during import, or metadata updates, and puts the value into its [Date (release)] field, even if the field is named something else, such as "Date Released", or "Release Date", etc. Stop trying to manage tags outside MC with other applications. It will be less confusing.

I'm sure if you Googled around you would find lots more information. MC isn't broken. It is working correctly, and as per the standard conventions.

[perry59]

MC didn't put garbage into the tag. It put a number that represents a date into the tag, and you didn't tell dbPoweramp or Mp3Tag that it was a Date tag. Hence, they showed the unformatted data, while MC showed the formatted data, because MC knew it was a Date tag.

Try this;
In any Audio View you like, add a column for [Date Imported], which should always have values in it for you to see. Right next to that add an Expression Column, perhaps name it "Raw Date Imported", then for the expression enter [Date Imported,0], which means show the raw data in the field. Now compare the two columns. Both are using exactly the same source data. The "Raw Date Imported" is showing the raw number that represents the date and time. The whole number represents the day, and is that many days after a reference start day, and the decimal represents the time, as a fraction of a day. The "Date Imported" column is showing the formatted data.

The number used to represent dates in all applications is base on day zero being 31/11/1890. You can see a perfect example in one of your images. You entered a DATE(RELEASE) of 1973 in mp3tag, which you didn't tell it was a Date tag, so it just stored the number as is. When that tag was viewed in MC, which knew that the tag was a Date tag, it displayed it as 5/26/1905... which is exactly 1973 days after the reference (starting) date used for Date tags.

Check the day count on https://www.calculator.net/date-calculator.html?today=12%2F31%2F1899&ageat=05%2F26%2F1905&calctype=diff&addendday=1&x=53&y=11.

The "Release Date" is a very common tag in most applications. MC usually works out what the date is during import, or metadata updates, and puts the value into its [Date (release)] field, even if the field is named something else, such as "Date Released", or "Release Date", etc. Stop trying to manage tags outside MC with other applications. It will be less confusing.

I'm sure if you Googled around you would find lots more information. MC isn't broken. It is working correctly, and as per the standard conventions.

I do not see any way in dbPoweramp or Mp3Tag (or MC for that matter) to declare how a field or tag is to be interpreted, (date/number/string/.etc)
I'm assuming that the (other) taggers are considering all tags to be strings. Seems like it would be more intuitive if MC did the same.
Any ways, I don't want to have to calculate dates from day one, I just want to plug in a year and have all the software I use see the same thing.
That being said, I abandoned the "Date released" tag and began using the "year" tag and it seems to work as expected, if I change the year in MC or some other tagger, the file and the MC library updates as I expect. It will be correct for nearly every album I have except "best of" type albums that have songs with different release dates.
No biggy, my playlists will still contain the years that they should.

[RoderickGI]

I do not see any way in dbPoweramp or Mp3Tag (or MC for that matter) to declare how a field or tag is to be interpreted, (date/number/string/.etc)

You may not have seen it, but it is there: "Options > Library & Folders > Manage Library Fields... > {Select a field} > Data Type".

I have no doubt at all that the other taggers know what data type each tag is. It is built into software based on the loose standards that govern tagging, if it isn't specifically defined, as in MC. As I said, Google (for tagging standards) and you would find lots more information.

I'm assuming that the (other) taggers are considering all tags to be strings. Seems like it would be more intuitive if MC did the same.

Well, everything is stored as strings, since that is all they can be. But they are interpreted according to their data type.

Any ways, I don't want to have to calculate dates from day one, I just want to plug in a year and have all the software I use see the same thing.

Did you try the View changes I suggested? Have you ever entered a calculated number for a date you entered into MC? Of course you don't have to calculate dates from the reference day. MC does that. You enter a date, MC calculates the correct number to represent the date, and stores that number. Any time you view a date field, MC retrieves the number and formats it as a date. Just as is done in Microsoft Excel, and many other applications, including the other tagging software you use.

That being said, I abandoned the "Date released" tag and began using the "year" tag

Your choice. Just don't start changing the Year on individual tracks within a "best of" type Albums, because then they may not show as all one Album any longer. Date Released does add more information, and works as intended.

[perry59]

You may not have seen it, but it is there: "Options > Library & Folders > Manage Library Fields... > {Select a field} > Data Type".

Yes, I had kinda forgotten about that! It does show how the fields are formatted, which is nice, I wish other taggers would do that.
I see that "date (released) is considered a date and something like "1973" is not a full date anyway, just a year which is really all I want. So that tag is not going to be appropriate for what I want anyway. The "year" tag is an integer so when I put something like "1973" into that field with a different tagger it still displays like I want. I don't know if the other tagger is considering it a string or an int, but obviously MC has no issue with it.

Did you try the View changes I suggested? Have you ever entered a calculated number for a date you entered into MC? Of course you don't have to calculate dates from the reference day. MC does that. You enter a date, MC calculates the correct number to represent the date, and stores that number. Any time you view a date field, MC retrieves the number and formats it as a date. Just as is done in Microsoft Excel, and many other applications, including the other tagging software you use.

No, I had not done that yet, but I have no doubt it will behave as you described.

Your choice. Just don't start changing the Year on individual tracks within a "best of" type Albums, because then they may not show as all one Album any longer. Date Released does add more information, and works as intended.

True, but that is what I intended to do.
I do realize tagging individual tracks with a date (or year) may make it appear that they do not belong to the "best of" album, but they will still be in the folder that constitutes that album. I could live with that.
but I may revisit the date released tag (since that is what it is intended for), I really didn't want the day/month in there and may just stick january first in all of them.
Thanks for your help

[RoderickGI]

I really didn't want the day/month in there and may just stick january first in all of them.
Thanks for your help

You can enter just a year value in the [Date (release)] field and MC will just display the year. For example, putting 1973 into the field just displays 1973, but is stored as the value 26665, which is, in fact, the number for January 1st, 1973.
If you enter 01/01/1973 it is stored as 26665.0000011574084056. It works really well.

You're welcome. I hope you get it working the way you want.