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[winterminute]

I'd like to write a plug-in that loads additional metadata about the album/artist/track. I would guess it is similar to Sparta.  Any idea why that tool stopped development?  Seems like a pretty handy tool.  I'm interested in pulling all sorts of data, but my first scenario is to find all "popular" tracks in my collection.  This is easier with newer tracks that I know, but I've got lots of old CDs from my parents collection and I usually go to allmusic.com and to get a sense for what the big hits were, but this is way to slow and time consuming to do for every album.  I figured a MC plug-in would be perfect.

I'm guessing that Billboard has their data under lock and key and only a big license fee will get you access.  Similarly with allmusic, but I bet there are other data sources out there that are free, but I don't know much about them.  Basically, I'm looking for anything that gives you API access (either live WebService or an offline cache) to query for metadata.  Ideally something charting data would be helpful, but I bet one of the social music sites might have a way to figure out how many fans have "love" a given track which might be good enough to judge popularity.

Thanks...

[KingSparta]

Any idea why that tool stopped development?

I Had\Have Other things to do.

That Was Pretty Much It.

[winterminute]

Do you mind giving me a mini-brain dump of your tool?  What did it do?  What data source did you use?  Did you ever release the source code?

[marko]

The data source was truly the best in the business

[mabes]

I'm interested in something like this. In the past I've kept my tagging simple - rock, bluegrass and country, blues and soul, classical and jazz.  I would to maybe expand the rock category, it contains everything from Led Zeppelin to Joni Mitchell. I'm not exactly sure how many categories I would want to use, and exactly what is "alternative" these days?

I'm not going to take the time to manually change genres for thousands of songs, and really I want to keep my existing ones, but add sub-genres, primarily under Rock. Is there any way to automate this process?

[llafriel]

Discogs would be nice for genre and style. It also has api for utilities like this.

[craft]

null

[mabes]

Went to MusicBrainz but it doesn't do genres. Why? Because "doing genres is very hard."

Well, they're right.  I mentioned Joni Mitchell. Does she go in a broad rock and pop category with subgenres? To an extent, but she has a lot of folk in her music. But when I think of her I don't think only of folk, I also think of jazz. So is she folk/jazz? Not really.

And again, what the heck defines "alternative" now?

[dcwebman]

And again, what the heck defines "alternative" now?

That's a very good question. A lot of the alternative rock that I was introduced to about 7 years ago I would consider just rock now.

[mabes]

Maybe now Led Zep is alternative. 

[gappie]

i think most of the time genre only makes sense with music that is a bit older. so that is bebop, or post bop. and only for part of the songs, becuase so many fall between genres. and a lot of genres live shorter than the music. some genres are there always but they get another meaning and some genres just don't make sense, worldmusic anyone  . so i think there are more ways to tackle this. one thing is to remember that genre is not music. just a way to catalogue it. so catalogue it in a way that makes sense for your library. when you own a lot of jazz from different periods it makes sense to split that up in post bop, hard bop freejazz etc. but when you love pop and rock, i guess jazz will do just like worldmusic instead of fado, oriental dub, etc.

indeed, joni mitchell, a singer/songwriter who plays music that could be considered folk, or pop, or jazz.

i recently stumbled over the genre 'freak folk' for joanna newsom. sounded too cool to ignore. wonder who is in the same genre.

 
gab

[JimH]

i recently stumbled over the genre 'freak folk' for joanna newsom. sounded too cool to ignore. wonder who is in the same genre.

Arlo Guthrie? 

Good points on music taxonomy.

[gappie]

Arlo Guthrie? 

heard about him, but never heard him. time to check hem out. 

[JimH]

Alice's Restaurant is a good tune.

His father was Woody Guthrie.  A sort of Oklahoma folk artist.  Great musician.

[John Gateley]

Woody was a big influence on Dylan (who visited him in the hospital as he was dying of Huntington's disease).

For Arlo, you can also try the Motorcycle song...

j

[Griff]

Alice's Restaurant is a good tune

True

But I think he was more noted for "City of New Orleans"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WYjOMIki6qs

[gappie]

great player.. i must have him in some video.. not freaky, but funny and nice. listened to all three suggestions. was wondering about the new orleans song. i know that in dutch  , just cant remember from whom. is a long long time ago i heard that.

thanks
 

[JimH]

Willie Nelson?