More > JRiver Media Center 18 for Windows

The Music and Me

<< < (3/4) > >>

MrHaugen:
I don't think there's a one fit all solution, but it should be possible to make a system that could work much better than todays system. Several years ago I started the task of rating my then 15 000 tracks (now up to 20 000). I had a goal of 200+ each day. Usually I just skipped to 3-6 positions in the track to see if I remembered it or if I thought it sounded cool or not. I rated them like this:

1 - Intros and other crap - To mark things that should never be listened to. In some cases filtered away from play lists
2 - Music that I do NOT like - Others might still select it if they like the artist
3 - Music that I do not care about - Might be the favorite track of a not highly liked artist
4 - Music I might like to hear in the future. My explore category.
5 - Good music
6 - Instant hits and classics

Hence my years long fight of introducing the half star rating system like in iTunes, so I could get rid of my 6 number system custom fields.

In addition to rating tracks, I also started rating artists and albums with relational fields. Artists was fast. I just rated my all time favorites 6 and downwards from that. Album ratings was based on a perception of how good the album was. It got a 6 if most of the tracks was really good, even though it could have a 2-3 really low ratings. Now, I will probably look into getting the average sum of the albums instead. But after the track ratings are done, this is really fast to do anyway.

After the rating tagging was done, I started researching genres. I found the originating genres, how was sub genres of what main genre category, and I wrote it all down how it was connected. Sure, this is also based on personal opinions, and there's no consensus on what genre each artists or album belongs to. But I tried my best. I ended up with about 15 genres and 120 sub genres. Those Genre and Sub Genres is applied on a pr album basis. I did not have the stomach for another track based tagging.

The result was very good. I could create a lot of cool smartlists based on my exploratory mood. I could specify the genre and add 4 star ratings and discover new music. I could add the Electronica sub genre with only 5-6 ratings with low BPM values for a consistent low beat Electronic playlist with smooth easy listening tunes and so forth.


After I had tagged my musig with ratings and genres, each album added was pretty trivial. Ratings are based on personal taste. So I think it will be almost impossible to have a system for this. But genre are more static. I started thinking of what COULD be agreed upon and put in system. What I missed mostly with my system, was a way to say that "Today I'm very psyched. I want very high energy music while I do some preparations for a party". Or "I'm feeling a bit down now, let me hear some easy listening nuts while I'm browsing the web on my couch". Or the "I'm going for a jogging workout. I need some fast cool music with beats". Such things are called moods or styles. Some sites have plenty of such tags. The problem having to much of them is that nobody will agree on what mood or style a track should be categorized with.

That evening I started a project in Visual Studio. I created a VB plug-in, web service and a database for styles and moods. It was a bit to ambitious for a person with IT bachelor degree with little programming knowledge. The project got to a halt (I just had a lot on my plate, and now it might be to late to pick it up again), but the goal was a good one imo. Something similar might be done by JRiver, so all of us can benefit from such a system. Here's the link to my grounded beta project: http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=42293.0

What I tried to do was to set a few basic Moods, Styles and similar tags, which the users could tag their own tracks and store in custom fields. The server part (not developed yet) of the plug-in together with the database was supposed to gather the uploads from the users. The server application should work on a schedule to scan for similar Artists and Track names, and then check for similarities in tags. A couple of examples: If 4 users marked it as "Funky" and 1 person tagged it as "Relaxing", it would be marked as "Funky". Similar for Speed or Bass tags. It would be set to the highest number of votes, or set to a middle value, if there was a lot of disagreement. When enough persons upload data for the same tunes, it would eventually be possible to download tracks with some pretty accurate tags. IF enough people used it. There are so many audiophiles using JRiver MC, so I think that should be possible.

Is this the perfect system for such a task? No, probably not. But the idea is in my opinion rather good. If JRiver was to create something similar, with a bit limited values (not in the hundreds like some of those crazy web sites), it would be possible for users to get reliable tag data for their music, and help others getting more out of their music collection. What we need is a programmer to jump to the task, a database, and some moods, styles and other tags we could all agree on covering most of it, without it being to much.


Thanks for reading my wall of text :)

InflatableMouse:
Half-star ratings is one of the most wanted features I think.

My system:
1 - intro's, speech, or otherwise complete crap not even my dog would want to listen to. Not that I have a dog but you get the drift :).
2 - something I'd probably skip if I noticed it playing but oke for background listening.
3 - just good music.
4 - really good music.
5 - goosebumps.

I don't rate artists or albums (wish it would do that automatically based on track ratings) but I try to rate songs when I'm listening on the pc. Problem is I tend to get lost in what I'm doing and then 3 or 4 songs later I realise I've not been rating the songs and can't remember how good the songs were that I listened to (unless its something very familiar but those are already rated. I try to listen to the less familiar stuff too and rate it).

Other than ratings I think I've pretty much completed tagging my collection. I look at the album cover, official web sites, Musicbrainz, Allmusic.com and wiki pages if I am unsure about how to spell something, like an album title or even artist/band names. For instance, people tend to spell "Neil Young and THE Crazy Horse", it's actually spelled without "THE". I exclusively use the original release date or the recording date for bootlegs for albums, never the re-release date or remastering date. I might put it in the comments or something, but I'm often too lazy for that. For MFSL releases I try to put that into the comments. I've scanned all the cover arts which couldn't be found on the internet or which were too low quality, all covers are complete. I don't bother with booklets or insides, just covers. Genres are pretty much complete as well, although I've never been happy with it. Ideally I would want to give a song its own genre if it doesn't match the rest of the album. So many albums contain a mix of genres but for the sake of time and convenience, I've settled with generalizing it. Honestly I'm not happy with it and rarely use genres for playlist because I know it's not perfect.

One thing I'm considering is filling mood and themes manually. Too much work though which is why I keep putting it off.

Tagging is really an ongoing thing which you're never done with. There's still sometimes things I could correct or improve, cover arts that aren't perfect or tags that are not properly capitalized. I capitalize each word, except when the artist/band obviously and deliberately changed capitalization, for isntance when all titles are properly capitalized except for one song or one word, or when one track is randomly cApiTaLiZeD.

I've never bothered with lyrics, country, copyright, producer. Often I don't use composer, conductor or orchestra on classical because it's already mentioned in the title and/or name. If it's not I often can't be bothered to fill it in.

MrHaugen:

--- Quote from: xtacbyme on August 20, 2012, 06:55:31 pm ---Paul T from jaikoz  may be interested in helping out:)
http://www.jthink.net/jaikoz/
i'd pay jriver extra for jaikoz/musicbrainz built into jriver.

--- End quote ---

That sounds interesting. If this system works well, and the tagging is actually useful, it would be very nice to add support for this service. Perhaps an interaction with the application, or a direct interaction with the web services which could only be done with a valid license from Jaikoz? It's certainly simpler than creating something new. The only thing that worries me is that most of those music services have so many different tags, that it's rendered practically useless for building playlists.

pcstockton:
tag as you go.  it's the only way.

-Patrick

rjm:
In my case I gave careful thought to a tag design keeping it as simple as possible. Then I put my head down and worked hard for several months to tag my music. Now that it is done maintaining it is easy and browsing is a joy.

Here is a suggestion that eliminates all the hard work. In the search box type -[Led Zeppelin]. Then select all the files and delete them. You are done.

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page

[*] Previous page