OK, here’s what I did, and am doing--I expect, as you’ll see, that this project will keep me occupied for a while.
The goal was not to implement a scientific method of cataloging. The goal was implement a method that would allow me to use MJ to get what I want, instantly--to be a couple of clicks away from a CD or a handheld playlist that has what I want, when I want it.
Here’s how I used, and will use, the fields given.
Artist: Is artist who performs the song. I don’t have much classical or other music where the composer really figures prominently in my preferences to listen, so I was comfortable doing that. It covers me for soundtracks, compilations, and other slightly odd pieces, of which there turn out to be a bunch.
Album Artist: is who did the album. Mostly this is valuable for the ability to say “Various Artists” for soundtracks and compilations, and thus keep my Artist list lean and mean when I view it that way. If it’s a tribute album, Album Artist is who the album is a tribute to, and Artist reflects who’s doing the various covers. As noted in other threads, including one I started, it’s too bad that Album Artist is kind of undersupported in MJ’s current incarnation and it would be cool to see it elevated to a proper status in future versions.
Rating: Rating is vs. Album. I suppose that if I had infinite time and infinite fields I’d love to do stuff like rating vs. genre, rating vs. artist, rating vs. entire collection, and what have you...but what is, is, and in my collection rating is vs. Artist.
I went through and assigned every track a baseline of 3, so what I’m doing is creating a sort of bell curve for Rating that goes like this:
1: This song blows. It should never have been thought up, let alone given form. This is what the ability to turn off, change stations, fast-forward, and now exclude songs was designed to do.
2: This is a substandard song. Generally I’d prefer not to listen to it, but may have some redeeming value in the context of the album.
3: The status quo, the top of the bell curve, a standard song for this particular album.
4: A fine song, one of the better cuts. Maybe not the best, but a standout.
5: This song rules. This song(s) is the reason that this album was, and continues to remain, owned. Simple as that.
The Rating work is ongoing. I haven’t decided yet if I’m going to hit it systematically or just do it ad-hoc in the course of listening and using MJ.
Genre: This took a couple of passes, but what I ultimately did was use Genre as a broad thing. At first I went through and used Genre to put in every kind of genre-subgenre pair I could think of, then as I made more passes thought that it would be better to just keep it broad and use the other fields as drilldowns to the specifics. In the end, there were 13. My Genres finally became Alternative, Classical, Comedy, Electronic, Electronica, Funk, Industrial, Instrumental, Pop, Rock, Score, Soundtrack, and Vocal.
Custom 1: got renamed to “Album Class”. This was kind of a slushy definition—in some places it got used to more precisely place the album in its categorization; in other instances it describes more of the mood of the album and in other places it puts it more into its subgenre. Like for Soundtrack you have classes of Film and Game, which goes to just classifying the album itself, but in Alternative you have classes like Classic, Dance, Enraged, Ethereal, and Godlike
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At this point, this is as far as I’ve gotten. Already this has done a ton for my listening pleasure, and MJ has gone from Awesome to Priceless in my book. In a couple of clicks I’m out the door in the morning with a fresh disc full of stuff that I feel like listening to. Not only can I drill down to something pretty specific very easily, but with one keyword I can get something more general that’s cool too. Like I can say “Dance” for Album Class and let that be across all Genres, and I’m walking out the door with some hopping tunes.
Future steps: I’ve renamed Custom 2 to be Song Class, in which I intend to get more specific on the song in the same way. Custom 3 right now is Time Class, which will be keywords about the period in my life that I associate each one with. I may think better of that idea as I implement it, as has been the case with other parts of the project. I’m intending Comments to be a repository of delimited keywords for full-text searching, and have these be more toward the use and purpose of the piece—running, lifting, meditating, certain other indoor sports. You know the deal.
Overall, I was surprised at how rapidly the work went. I bit the bullet and just blanked everything I was redoing—Album Artist, Genre, Rating, Custom 1, Comments. Once I had gotten a solid set of criteria down, it was easy to just use the tree to go through by Artist and reclassify everything by Genre, and once that was done it was even faster to pass through again and hit Custom 1, simultaneously redoing Genre. I did the first pass of Genre in just a couple of hours for 30GB of files.
Some interesting thoughts occurred to me about this whole process for inclusion in the Help file, some feature enhancements or maybe even some major concepts for future features…I think I’ll make another thread about those and see what you think.
Overall: MJ ROCKS. Thanks guys. And girls.
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Topic: How do YOU organize YOUR library? (Read 1394 times)