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[medvedik]

I just bought a new NAS, so I thought it was time also to perform a big clean-up on my library, more specific on the way i will keep track of all my music and the tagging. Because for now I mainly use it for my music (+50k). And now am asking you guys (and girls) for some opinions for this,

So I was thinking about putting all my files there, and start a new library scanning those files, where no custom fields are in yet.

I like mostly that featured artists are not behind the songs name, but in the "artist" field. But I noticed this gives problems (for instance for mass look-up lyrics with foobar). Where do you put the ft. artists?
And the same goes for "album", where I just want the album name, and not "album name [2005 remastered version]".

I was thinking about using custom fields for the ft artist or versions, and then with expressions make new fields so that there is this a difference between albums. Good way? bad way? I know it will be alot of work, but this doesn't have to be alright overnight. I consider this to be work in progress while i'm listening to the music.

Your thoughts about all this are more then welcome. Thanks

btw, before I found jr mc, I tried out alot of players. Still the best one! I hope in time I will find out all the other stuff too (movies, etc.)

[syndromeofadown]

How i do things...

For songs with featured artists i put the featured artist in the 'lyricist' field
For cover songs i put the covered artist in the 'Copyright' field
For songs remixed by an artist other than the original i put the remixing artist in the 'Grouping' field

All fields are then combined by creating a calculated field called 'Artists' with this as the expression:

Code: [Select]

listbuild(1,; ,[Artist],[Album Artist],[Copyright],[Lyricist],[Grouping])&datatype=[list]

note that i include 'album artist'. you may or may not want it.

I put all featured/remixing/covering artists behind the song name in brackets.
If more than one, they are separated by "; ". Featured always first and covered always last.
Here are some examples of song names:

The Rose With The Broken Neck (ft Jack White)
21st Century Schizoid Man (Ft Robert Fripp; Puscifer; Jeff Fayman)
Deathclub (Remix Ft Wes Borland; Renholder; Matt Skiba)
Where Is My Mind (Pixies Cover)
Holiday On The Moon (Love And Rockets Cover)
Dead Souls (Joy Division Cover)
The Outsider (Renholder Remix)
Parabola (Lustmord Remix)

Here is a song with both remix and featured artists:
Bring Me The Disco King (Renholder Remix Ft John Frusciante; Puscifer)

To find featured artists i have a smartlist that contains tracks with " Ft" or "(Ft ".

To find remixing artists i have a smartlist that contains tracks with "remix " and excludes tracks with "(remix".
note that the reason for the exclusion is that i put remix immediately after the brackets for remix songs that
are not done by an artist other than the original.

To find covered artists i have a smartlist that contains tracks with "Cover)"

To get my song names into the naming system i use, i created a smartlist that included:
feat, featured, ft., remix, remixed, mix, cover, covered, etc
then i manually edited the song names to the way i wanted them.

For compilation albums with artists doing songs together, i separate the artists in the artist field with "; ".
This is the only time i do this. for all other albums types there is only one artist in the artist field.
Some examples of multiple artists on compilation albums:

Album Artist - Artist - Name
Various - Flea; Tom Morello; Brad Wilk - Where The Streets Have No Name
Various - Chris Cornell; Puscifer - (What's So Funny 'bout) Peace, Love And Understanding?
Various - System Of A Down; Wu-Tang Clan - Shame
Soundtrack - Filter; Crystal Method - (Can't You) Trip Like I Do

It is a bit of work but worth it. my library is very clean.
When i select an artist i see everything they have been a part of, all at once.
The downside to using the 'Artists' field is that it is so nice. Its annoying to not use it.
It cannot be replicated on mp3 players and cannot be used with Artist Images in MC.
Though i hope this will change at some point.

I have close to 100,000 songs in my library. this is way too many to do the complete library.
Instead of just working through every song, much of witch i couldn't care less about, i focused on specific artists.
I removed many featured artists from track names because i didn't want them clutering up my library.
The last thing i want is 10000 artists to scroll through.
Just some food for thought. Chew on it. Its delicious.

oh. one more thing i have been thinking about.
It may be possible to create an expression to automatically add the featured artists to a field.

[MrC]

There won't be a definitive answer, since there will be pros & cons any route you take.  So really the best approach will be the one that works for your workflow / usage scenario.  And this takes most of us some trial and error.  And there will be unforeseen consequences even with the best of planning.

Here's are some threads that provide some suggestions:

   http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=57477.0
   http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=66365.0

Some things to consider:

    - will you be transferring / converting files for use on other players?  If so, ...
       - consider which tags will be supported on those devices.
       - consider how multiple values within a tag will be handled, and delimiters (eg. comma, semicolon, ampersand)
    - try to be consistent across your tags, but accept that there will be some unresolvable discrepancies.
    - consider the illegal file system characters and how they will translate to and from tags/properties < -- > directory/file names
    - do you want to be able to view media by Featured artists, album versions (such as Remastered, etc.).  If so, this tends to indicate usage of a separate fields, or consistency in existing fields for ease in pulling this information to provide in views.

I also enjoy the work-as-you-listen approach.  This makes the tedium, well, less... tedious, and helps rediscover old music.

[medvedik]

Thanks syndromeofadown, it's indeed alot to chew on, but I did find it interesting and will try some out by testing it on small scale.

Thanks MrC for the links. Alot more to chew on there. But also interesting food for thoughts. I know there isn't a definitive or "good" answer to tagging, that's why I was asking about how you do it, to get idea's for my collection. I'll certainly look for more on this forum.

For playing music I only use jrMC, others I only use for things MC is less good at. (mass lyric tagging for instance). Not even iPod or iPad or anything like that. I have a cordless headphone, I can even walk in the park in front of my door and still listen to my music.

Mor input is always welcome...

[MrC]

The good news is... you can use MC to help make changes / corrections in the future.  Combining fields with expressions is easy enough, and culling data from a more complex field is usually doable.