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Author Topic: Really annoying date data in CD DB  (Read 2094 times)

johnnyboy

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Really annoying date data in CD DB
« on: January 08, 2008, 07:36:19 am »

I'm just going through all the CD's I just ripped and I've found a bunch that have different information for individual tracks on the album.
Like the dates will be different and some of the albums (single artist albums) have even had the artist names different.

If I'm ripping an album, the obvious date I'd expect to get from the DB is the date for the album, not individual tracks on the album.
If I wanted the date for individual tracks I would use the built in track lookup built into MC.

Surely I'm not the only one that thinks that a CD's date is the date of the CD as a whole, not individual tracks?

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John Gateley

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Re: Really annoying date data in CD DB
« Reply #1 on: January 08, 2008, 02:28:32 pm »

The date problem is a known issue, on my list of things to fix.

If you can give me an example of the artist names being different, I'd like to see it.

j

johnnyboy

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Re: Really annoying date data in CD DB
« Reply #2 on: January 08, 2008, 04:04:11 pm »

The date problem is a known issue, on my list of things to fix.

If you can give me an example of the artist names being different, I'd like to see it.

j


Sweet - great news :)

With the artist names, unfortunately I dont know which one it was as I just have a folder named 'unknown' with tracks 15 and 16 in it from one of my albums.
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johnnyboy

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Re: Really annoying date data in CD DB
« Reply #3 on: January 08, 2008, 04:08:44 pm »

An example of a CD that I'd like to be able to notify as having incorrect data though is one I just got:

Ludacris - Word of Mouf.
It's definitely not a rock album ;) lol.
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John Gateley

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Re: Really annoying date data in CD DB
« Reply #4 on: January 08, 2008, 04:11:07 pm »

I need a lot more info: basically a copy and paste of the entire CD data. There are so many copies in the database (including home burned CDs and stuff) it's hard for me to find. Or you can just note the exact time and your IP address (try whatismyip.com) here and I can track it down from that.

j

MusicHawk

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Re: Really annoying date data in CD DB
« Reply #5 on: January 08, 2008, 08:54:36 pm »

>> If I'm ripping an album, the obvious date I'd expect to get from the DB is the date for the album, not individual tracks on the album.

Doesn't this depend on the nature of the album? Sometimes the album is the original release of a song, but sometimes not. After a song ages a bit, it can reappear on all kinds of other albums and formats, ranging from the "Now" series to greatest hits to box sets and special editions and  topical theme albums and other various artist collections. Which of these is the "real date" of the song?

I'd argue that the key date is when the song was originally recorded/first-released, same as the date when a photo was taken or a movie was filmed. This "real" date is the one used by reference works and popularity charts, and connects the recording to music and performer history.

When the song happened to be put into the marketplace on given piece of plastic might be of interest, but it doesn't indicate the age/vintage/history of the track.  They can repackage "The Sound Of Music" 99 times (and probably have) but it's still a 1965 movie.

I always laugh when I do an online lookup and see a song date that is years after the song was recorded, often after the group split up, and even after the artist died.

Just as there are separate fields for Album name and Track name, how about a separate field Album Date, distinct from Track Date?


Sure it would be nice to have a consistent Artist name and Album, but which of the tracks could be presumed correct?

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benn600

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Re: Really annoying date data in CD DB
« Reply #6 on: January 08, 2008, 10:16:52 pm »

But having a unique date for each track can be a positive as well--it could be when the track was originally released.  So compilation discs will be all over the board and regular CDs will have much less variation.  Some regular CDs do contain tracks that were previously released.  Remixes would constitute a new release.

I think it would be nice if YADB had a voting type system so the users could help clean it up.  Either that or tell users to start being more careful when typing stuff in.  Oh, and double check what you enter.  I rarely get a perfect YADB download.  I almost always have to correct a mistake or two + apply my own conventions to the tags.
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johnnyboy

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Re: Really annoying date data in CD DB
« Reply #7 on: January 08, 2008, 10:59:23 pm »

When I'm doing a CD lookup, I want CD information (ie the album date).

If people want individual track details (ie details of when the track itself was recorded) then they should be using the track lookup feature within MC, its not something that should be reliant on the Album info.
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benn600

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Re: Really annoying date data in CD DB
« Reply #8 on: January 08, 2008, 11:49:46 pm »

Interesting and valid point.  I'm not disagreeing--I use your system too--but I see some merit in unique dates for each song...but not as much anymore.
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johnnyboy

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Re: Really annoying date data in CD DB
« Reply #9 on: January 13, 2008, 02:05:58 am »

I've been seeing this ALOT.
Another field its quite common in seems to be 'Genre' and again they're all mixed up genre's with some of the tracks not having one, with varying dates for each track - some of which are claiming 2007 for Romeo & Juliet soundtrack (actual date 1998) etc.

Can you put some kind of server check that just doesn't accept submissions if they have totally mixed data like this or data missing.
The retrieve dialog box for this album is showing me 3 albums and from that box itself, I cant see clearly enough what the difference is and which one actually has a decent set of data for me to use. I tried two of them so far and they were both garbage so I've just done it myself manually.

If the box that showed me the multiple albums would at least show me enough info to let me make a valid choice at least it'd be a lot better :(

Sorry, just been ripping alot of albums and finding alot of rubbish and it gets annoying!! :(
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cwilliams222

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Re: Really annoying date data in CD DB
« Reply #10 on: January 13, 2008, 10:16:20 am »

I have been struggling with this as I have been trying to clean up and greatly expand my music library.

I am having a relatively easy time with most my albums, but am struggling with compliations, greatest hits and the like.

I want the tags for the song to reflect when the song was actually released, not necessarily when the greatest hits album came out (for example) that I ripped it from.  I like classifying and listening to music based on when it came out, so if I am in the mood for 80's music, I don't want to miss a lot of music as the greatest hits album I ripped it from came from the 90s.

I was going to post a question shortly asking if MC had a way/field to track these possibly 2 separate dates for songs:

- date the song was released
- date of the album the song was on (if different).

In reading this thread, sounds like I am not the only one struggling with this issue.

How are these types of situations handled by the MC community?

thanks

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benn600

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Re: Really annoying date data in CD DB
« Reply #11 on: January 13, 2008, 11:30:22 am »

That sounds like an excellent idea.  Unfortunately, I don't know of a way to populate such a field in my library and I've got over 14K songs...100% directly from CDs (FLAC) which we own and have.  But that would be a ton of work gathering all that data.  I never knew of a usable source for that info, either.  That's why I never bothered.
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johnnyboy

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Re: Really annoying date data in CD DB
« Reply #12 on: January 13, 2008, 06:08:27 pm »

The 'correct' way to do it in my eyes with MC how it is, is to rip the Album using the 'Album Info' as looked up from the DB then if you want individual track info, use the 'lookup track info' feature inside of MC to get track specific info which should relate to the track and not the album as a whole.

If you want seperate dates for these two things I'd imagine you'd have to create a second field 'album year', copy all your dates to that field after getting the album info, then let it populate from the track info lookup.
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