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[justsomeguy]

Just wondering if anyone knows a way or a service that will allow you to tag individual tracks in a greatest hits CD with the year the original track was released automatically.  I'd like to have an Album Year and a Track Year field seperate.  Obviously I could do this all by hand but I have a large number of Greatest Hits albums and this would be a very tedious process to do manually.

[justsomeguy]

I guess I should have looked a little more before posting.....

It looks like the TADB lookup in MC looks up dates of individual tracks of the full album.  I tested on a greatest hits album and it seemed to update the tags with the actual track date instead of the date the greatest hits album was released.  This is what I was looking for but not how I thought the lookup would work.  I figured if I selected an entire album to lookup that it would return the album date but it doesn't seem to do that.  Can I assume the lookup will always return the track date and not the album?  Also if it is looking up the individual track is it ignoring the Album name?  I would have thought that since it it getting the track date that it would retrieve the original album name as well but it leaves my Album tag set to "Greatest Hits".  I'm not complaining because this is pretty much what I was wanting, just trying to understand exactly what determines the lookup results.

So it look like I can probably accomplish what I was looking for originally but raises the question, if I wanted to lookup the full album release date how would that work?  Also is there a way to specify what tag to update with the returned results?  My Greatest Hits albums already have the album date and I'd like to have the returned track date store in a custom field.

[justsomeguy]

OK, after playing with this some more I seem to be getting inconsistent results.

Some tracks will get their album tag updated with either the original album the track was part of or some other random compilation album the track was part of.  Yet others leave my set album tag as is ie:"Greatest Hits" (I'm assuming because the match it found had the same album name) but will change the year to the original date the track was released not the greatest hits album.

Obviously there may be several possible matches to a look up.  How is it decided which one to use?

Any idea's ?

Thanks

[Scolex]

Something to try.
Create a custom field and then use the "Move/Copy Fields"
feature in tools\library tools to move the album column to the custom field.
I am thinking that if the album is blank it MIGHT grab the original
worth a shot anyway since it would only rake a few minutes.
Another thought have you checked the Album Artist and Album Artist(auto)
tags to see if they are correct for given album I have had those tags mess with me before.

[rick.ca]

I tag all my tracks with the [Year] of original release and the year the album was [Released] (a custom field). For regular albums, [Year] (which should be reliably obtained using Look up track info from online database) is copied to [Released]. I've never found an easy way to get accurate original release years for compilation albums.

The most effective method I've found so far, as strange as it seems, is using LyricWiki. I use a Link to search for the Artist on LyricWiki. That normally goes to a page summarizing all the artist's albums (including track lists) in chronological order. I then search that page for the track name (usually by cutting & pasting it into my browser's page search box). The first hit is the first album that includes the track—the year of which is what I'm looking for. I suppose I might be getting a later year for some tracks originally released as singles, but I'm not that fussy.

It's possible to use a search link for Artist/Track on Discogs or MusicBrainz, but I don't see any way of zeroing in on the earliest release for either of them.

[tunetyme]

I've wrestled with the same problem.  I use AMG and select the greatest hits album and click on the individual songs to get the dates.  It's a tedious process but it works.

Tunetyme

[rick.ca]

I use AMG and select the greatest hits album and click on the individual songs to get the dates.

I used to use AMG, but that means first finding the correct album release and then clicking on every track. That would probably still be more efficient than my current method, if only the AMG site wasn't so often so very slow.

[vagskal]

Thanks for the LyricWiki hint. I had not thought of that.

I find that the safest way, if you do not have the CD, is to search for scans of the CD back cover or booklet (using http://mega-search.net, for instance). Unfortunately the year information is not always available in the booklet. Then I have to resort to the methods others have mentioned. If it is a compilation of songs from the 50's or 60's I tend to use Discogs because they list many singles as well together with information on the song length. Especially during that period many songs were released in different single and album versions perhaps released in different years, or several singles with different versions.

Unfortunately MC does not currently read or write the standard TORY (original release year) ID3v2.3 MP3 tag (or the ID3v2.4 equivalent TDOR) that my Squeezebox server supports so I have to use external software to add that tag.

[justsomeguy]

Thanks for the feedback.

I have been looking at the Discogs site.  After playing around with different searches it seems most of the top results returned were the correct Artist-Track or at least the original album containing that track.  the results page is also fairly consistent from search to search.  I have in the last couple days been playing with using excel and vba to pull the results page into an excel sheet then using some logic to parse out the first 10 results checking for a year in each (which almost all results contain).  I then check these results for the earliest found year.  I also check that each result I consider for my accepted year contains at least the exact artist name, I ran into a few results that for whatever reason the returned result didn't even contain the artist name, so obviously I don't want that year used.

I just ran a test on 100 random tracks and only had 2 that it didn't find a year for (both of which were because of spelling errors in my tags).  Of these 100 they were all tracks from the 90's and all received years that appeared to be correct, I haven't gone through one at a time to check each result but they look like they are all mostly right.  I didn't get any years like 2000, 2001, 2002 ect..... which I would expect if it was getting results from "best of" or "compilation" albums.

I'm still tweaking it a little but so far the results I'm getting look like it will give me what I need with few errors.  If anyone is interested in looking at what I did let me know, I'll send you a copy to play with.

[tunetyme]

I am interested.  Send it to me.  Thanks!

[justsomeguy]

I am interested.  Send it to me.  Thanks!

PM me your email address and I'll send it to you....

DISCLAIMER:
I am by no means a professional programmer and any "real" programmer that might look at this code may laugh, but it gets the job done for what I want (any feedback is welcome however). Also there is no guarantee that this won't make you computer start smoking and possibly explode.  That said... It works fine for me. If there are any bugs you find though, let me know.

Instructions on how to use:
1) In MC create a playlist containing the tracks you want to lookup. List must contain ARTIST and NAME columns.
2) In MC goto File -> Export Playlist...
3) Enter a name and location for your exported playlist. Change the Format to "Text File (delimited)", Set to "Only Visible Fields" and press OK.

Now open the "Track Year Lookup.xls" file. Make sure to enable macro's to run inside excel.
1) Click "Open External List" button and select the exported playlist you created in MC. When the list is loaded into excel it will add a "Found Track Year" column to the beginning of the list.
2) Select a Starting Row and Ending Row as well as a Search Delay (Search Delay pauses for the specified time between searchs so not to hammer the web server to fast.  The delay is adjustable, don't set too low to avoid possibly having your IP blocked by the web server).

You have buttons to allow you to save lists to separate sheets to allow working on multiple lists and going back to a list at a later time.
Be sure to save the excel workbook before closing so not to loose your searches.

This is still a work in progress for me. In my exported playlists I include the full filename with path and at some point plan to use this to allow me to then update the actual file tags with the Found Track Years. I have never done tag manipulation in VBA so if anyone has any suggestions on where to start it would be appreciated.

[rick.ca]

I am by no means a professional programmer...

For a non-programmer, you've done an excellent job. I've only tried it on one album, but that worked flawlessly, returning perfect results (according to the original release years I already had).

I have never done tag manipulation in VBA so if anyone has any suggestions on where to start it would be appreciated.

You don't need to save it directly to the file tags (if that's what you mean). Just create another playlist that can be imported back into MC. That might have to be in MC's MPL format, which is similar to XML. I tried the following little test, and it worked fine...

Code: [Select]

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes" ?>
<MPL Version="2.0" Title="The Cars Greatest Hits">
<Item>
<Field Name="Filename">D:\Audio\Rock\New Wave\Cars\1985 Greatest Hits\01 Just What I Needed.mp3</Field>
<Field Name="Year">1978</Field>
</Item>
</MPL>
So, polish it up and release it in Third Party Plug-ins, Programs, and Skins. You'll be a hero!

[justsomeguy]

Thanks Rick for the positive feedback.

I had already added and export to the program. Currently it creates a txt file identical to the way MC exports it.  In MC under import playlist, txt appears to be a valid filetype, however it doesn't seem to treat it as a playlist and just gets added to the library as an actual txt file. Should that work or maybe I do need to create it in MPL format? I have been using a tagging program that will import a txt delimited file and allow you to map fields to the proper tags and that was the way I was planning on doing it originally. I would prefer to keep it all in MC as much as possible though. So maybe I'll look at doing it in MPL format if MC won't handle the txt file.

[rick.ca]

Should that work or maybe I do need to create it in MPL format?

I found the same thing—I think it has to be MPL. And not having to use a third program is, of course, preferable. I'm assuming this is "easy" to do in VBA, even though I haven't a clue how to do it myself. To be flexible, I suppose it needs to generate the required format file based on the current "WorkingList," and include a file save dialog so the user can name it appropriately. 

[justsomeguy]

Rick, can you tell which version of excel you are using?  Just wondering because I wrote this in 2010 and wondering if everything works as expected in an earlier version.

I've added a fair amount to it since the version you tried and seems to be working well. I'm planning to release it in the third party programs section shortly (after I write up a short description/instructions) but was wondering if you would mind taking a few minutes to try the new version if I send it to you just to make sure I didn't miss anything glaring?

[rick.ca]

Rick, can you tell which version of excel you are using?

2007. On saving the file last night, I did get a compatibility warning that values had been saved outside the sheet boundaries of the earlier versions. I wondered about that (i.e., the problems it might create for users of earlier versions, but I didn't investigate further. I saved it in 2007 format. Other than that, it worked fine in compatibility mode, and works fine now in native mode.

I did my own test of 100 tracks selected from "Very Best of" albums. My analysis of the results has been rather rushed, but I think I can see a few issues. I got 15 errors, most of which are the result of a year being retrieved from an unrelated release. It seems you're using a simple search, and that won't always respect which part is the artist and which is the title. I think most or all of those error would be eliminated by doing an advanced search. The search link I've been using to check the results seems to work okay...

Code: [Select]

<Link version="1.2">
<Item Name="Name">Discogs</Item>
<Item Name="Filter">[Media Type]=[Audio]</Item>
<Item Name="Action">2</Item>
<Item Name="Base URL">http://www.discogs.com</Item>
<Item Name="Search URL">http:////www.discogs.com//advanced_search?artist=[Artist]&amp;track=[Name]&amp;btn=Search+Releases&amp;sort=year%2Casc</Item>
</Link>
In a few cases, it didn't get the year, even though it was in the first search result. In a few others, the release with the correct year wasn't in the first page of search results. There's nothing you can do about that, but it's less likely to happen when using the Advanced Search. Results can get messed-up from parenthetical comments like (Live), (With...), (Featuring...), but maybe those errors wouldn't happen either if Advanced Search were used.

[rick.ca]

but was wondering if you would mind taking a few minutes to try the new version if I send it to you just to make sure I didn't miss anything glaring?

Oops, missed this. I probably won't have any time until next week. Hopefully the comments I've made are of some help. In any case, I think you should post it and let others test it.

[justsomeguy]

Updated version released here http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=61935.0

Try it out and give me any feedback you may have.