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[locust]

Will there ever be anything like this in the pipeline to tag our mp3s & flacs? Just like get movie & tv info..

I normally use discogs to tag my music slowly and painfully. I just stumbled upon the Dicogs API v2.0 They have monthly XML Dumps of all releases. Even as a third party plugin this would be amazing, I've had many a nights sitting up tagging my music feeling like my hand is going to drop off and yet it's never ending. I'm a bit apprehensive of using other programs to tag my music with metadata from the internet and would much rather if it were possible within MC..

The responses are in JSON format so it should be relatively easy to pull the data from unlike html scraping.
As far as I can tell it is free to use from the CC0 — “No Rights Reserved” licensing that it uses.

I don't know too much about this stuff and all the legality issues that comes bundled with, but this seems to me to be a key feature that should be in MC at some point?

[JohnT]

What kind of advantage do you see over the existing audio metadata engine?

[lepa]

Pressing info, composer, players on that album/track, is an album compilation, album, single etc.

Currently I use foobar2000 to get discogs metadata for my vinyl rips but it would be nice to have this in house.

[locust]

I see variety as the main advantage YADB is good for grabbing metadata but for me personally it has only ever worked a couple of times, so much that I don't even try any more, on the other I have rarely seen metadata that discogs does not have. AMG would be better as it has moods etc but I understand that it costs a fortune to use.

If I am right as in it is free to use then personally I don't see anything to lose only gains. I don't know how complicated and how many hours you guys would have to put into this to make it work. But from another standpoint as I see it, Media Center is about perfect audio above the rest of it's capabilities. TV & Movies already have adequate meta data scraping features, which I have never had any problems tagging them with relevant meta data whereas music is a lot more diverse than tv shows or movies could ever be and one source of meta data doesn't seem to cut it.

If you like the idea and it projected hours to implement isn't too absurd. It seems like a small sacrifice to bring a huge improvement IMO. I don't know if this is the case but I can't imagine I am the only customer to have put in countless hours of manual tagging, if this truly is the case and I'm not just blowing a lot of hot air, then a hopefully small sacrifice of hours on your end could lead to countless hours saved on the customers end.

I'm quite interested in this and would greatly appreciate hearing your opinion on the matter..

Thanks JohnT

p.s bit jealous of your motorised standing desk, wouldn't mind one of those myself, (for true comfort a pressure plate switch embedded in the seat would be cool, probably only set to bring the desk back down when you sit, I could imagine it would get annoying raising the desk every time you stand)

[kstuart]

Cassangelo wrote: "YADB is good for grabbing metadata but for me personally it has only ever worked a couple of times, so much that I don't even try any more, on the other I have rarely seen metadata that discogs does not have. "

That is exactly my experience also.

[MrC]

So after reading your post, I went and looked at the Discogs API - easy enough.  I figured I'd write something to pull the data.  Also easy enough.

Then I went and looked at the Genre and Style metadata for several albums by "The Cure":

     Rock
     New Wave, Post-Punk

     Electronic, Rock, Pop
     Alternative Rock, Synth-pop, New Wave, Psychedelic Rock, Pop Rock

     Electronic, Rock
     Alternative Rock, New Wave, Shoegaze

     Electronic, Rock
     Alternative Rock, New Wave, Post-Punk, Synth-pop

To my eyes, somewhat random and not very useful.  I moved onto the next thread.

[Frobozz]

Crowdsourcing metadata for things like genre and style is going to be inconsistent.  Everyone entering data are going to have different classifications and very little of it will be consistent.  For consistency you need the data run controlled by an editor that enforces rules and standards.  I don't know how much editorial enforcement discogs does things like genre and style.  They could obviously do more to enforce consistency in the genres and styles.  For consistency of artists, album titles, and song names, I do find discogs to be more consistent than sources like FreeDB.  And MusicBrainz is also more consistent than FreeDB.  MusicBrainz also does much better for classical than FreeDB.

AMG (all music/media guide) has much better consistency, but is not free to scrape data from.  I don't know the licencing terms they offer.  Probably not an option for JRiver even if the AMG access was offered as a separate subscription at additional cost.  I usually rip my classical music with dBpoweramp just so I can get access to the AMG metadata.  AMG has consistent data for classical music and saves me time.

Discogs does have better data than other general sources.  Discogs doesn't have the best data, but it is consistent enough and generally better than FreeDB.  It would be useful as an option for a data source.

[kstuart]

So after reading your post, I went and looked at the Discogs API - easy enough.  I figured I'd write something to pull the data.  Also easy enough.

Then I went and looked at the Genre and Style metadata for several albums by "The Cure":

     Rock
     New Wave, Post-Punk

     Electronic, Rock, Pop
     Alternative Rock, Synth-pop, New Wave, Psychedelic Rock, Pop Rock

     Electronic, Rock
     Alternative Rock, New Wave, Shoegaze

     Electronic, Rock
     Alternative Rock, New Wave, Post-Punk, Synth-pop

To my eyes, somewhat random and not very useful.  I moved onto the next thread.

Genre and style are always subjective, somewhat random and not very useful.  That is why I only use about a half dozen genres, and no sub-genres.

Despite this, the discogs data is better than any other I have found, although I have not done an exhaustive comparison.

[locust]

Genre and style are always subjective, somewhat random and not very useful.  That is why I only use about a half dozen genres, and no sub-genres.

Despite this, the discogs data is better than any other I have found, although I have not done an exhaustive comparison.

I agree, I don't think amg's metadata would be good enough to conquer genre and style metadata either. A utopia of genre & style metadata would be on a track by track basis even then it is subjective and I don't think there is anywhere on the net that can get accurate metadata for genre & style for each track.. I generally use genre & style, to show what might be on an album..

For genre & style, they aren't at the top of the list of metadata I would want they are at the bottom. Track names, publisher, cover art all come way before genre & style.  Having more avenues for music metadata scraping would only relieve the burden of manual tagging not eradicate it. As for the subjectiveness of genre & style, I think it would still make it a little easier, by just removing the one's you think don't suit a particular release.. One could even make a view scheme that looks for genre & style metadata that aren't on one's approved list for easy searching & removal.. Other than the genre & style caveat, all other areas of this seem that they could be very useful.. Even with the flaws of genre & style, that metadata still may prove to be useful to some with the small hinderance of some manual tagging.

Just had a look at the cure metadata on AMG and we get the same as discogs if not worse than discogs..

Pop/Rock
Alternative/Indie Rock, Post-Punk, Goth Rock

Pop/Rock
Alternative Pop/Rock, Alternative/Indie Rock, Goth Rock, New Wave, Post-Punk, Punk/New Wave, College Rock

[MrC]

An old thread comes to life.  For various reasons, I ended up writing a Discogs tool to grab data from Discogs given a Discogs ID.  See the work in progress in action:

   http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=86465.msg594479#msg594479