Typically used for compilation albums. . .
(note: lots of edits as I now know "Date (release)" is not the field to use for this)
I've been looking into to populating the recently added "Date (release)" field in my MC Library.I've been playing with (ie creating) Smartlists. I use JRiver more like a 'radio station' rather than a CD player; by that I mean I tend to listen to a number of tracks from a playlist (including random, genre or artist based) rather than a specific album in track order.
I'd like to make some year/decade related playlists, but the only 'Date' I have populated is the normal 'Date' field in MC which is the date an album was released; this is no use for my compilation albums where the actual track release dates don't match the compilation album release date. Hence my need to populate
the "Date (release)" a suitable date field on a track by track basis.
I've been looking into this over the last week and to be honest the whole thing is a nightmare!
Different audio file formats support different tags and as do different standards (ID3 2.3 Vs ID3 2.4). My ripping software (dbPowerAmp) doesn't populate any
"Date (release)" suitable field so I need to add another step into my workflow. I also have to deal with the 1,000s of tracks I've already ripped
What are people doing to automate the process of populating the
"Date (release)" a suitable date field for new as well as existing tracks?
I've been looking at MusicBrainz Picard. It will do the trick, but it looks like I'll have to re-tag my entire collection album by album as it's not matching some of my older MP3 albums very well. It also wants to update multiple fields by default; this concerns me as verifying these changes will take many many days
(but would end up with a more consistent/accurate database but I'm not sure it's worth it at the moment)
Any tips/ideas for better automation out there?
Cheers
Spike