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Fun Stuff => BAND => Topic started by: alexcharlie on 02 Aug 2005, 15:28

Title: ID3 taggers anonymous
Post by: alexcharlie on 02 Aug 2005, 15:28
Hi, my name is Alex, and I'm addicted to editing my ID3 tags.

Is there anyone out there who has the same addiction as me?  Any tips for programs to use on a mac to facilitate the tagging of MP3s?  I currently have my entire full album collection tagged almost to perfection (6887 songs, 532 albums!).  I'm currently considering going through the collection and filling in the genre field for every album. Any tips or guides to genres out there that i can use?  I intend to add the genres not for myself, but for others who will be DLing from me.  I want others to get the nice warm and fuzzy feelings I get when someone has perfectly tagged their MP3s for me to DL.
Title: ID3 taggers anonymous
Post by: SpacemanSpiff on 02 Aug 2005, 15:44
Okay. You have too much spare time. :p

As for genres, I think we had a very good discussion going on here (http://forums.questionablecontent.net/viewtopic.php?t=6644) about genres. Admittedly they're really stupid genres, but it certainly can't hurt to have some dubcore in your collection, can it?
Apart from that, the problem with genres is: Either you apply genres people agree with - in that case it's really broad (Rock, Pop, etc.) or you go into sub-genres and people who will download from you will think "What an idiot, $Band are certainly not $genre." and you'll never have everyone agreeing with you. Also, making things even worse, there's no guide so you would have to decide for every single band individually.
Of course, this could give us stuff to argue about until the end of time, in case you want to us to discuss about all these bands.
Title: ID3 taggers anonymous
Post by: Kid Modernist on 02 Aug 2005, 15:52
I am addicted to that, as well as formatting all my music the same:

My Music> Band Name> Album Name> Track Number - Band Name - Song Name.mp3

For stuff that I have whole albums for, and then just Band Name - Song Name.mp3 for stuff I have just some songs for under My Music.

http://www.musicbrainz.org is good for ID tagging I believe.
Title: ID3 taggers anonymous
Post by: KharBevNor on 02 Aug 2005, 16:12
I love this as well, especially on my mp3 player, which is tagged to perfection. My on-computer collection is done more patchily.
Title: ID3 taggers anonymous
Post by: My Aim Is True on 02 Aug 2005, 17:45
Quote from: Kid Modernist
I am addicted to that, as well as formatting all my music the same:

My Music> Band Name> Album Name> Track Number - Band Name - Song Name.mp3

For stuff that I have whole albums for, and then just Band Name - Song Name.mp3 for stuff I have just some songs for under My Music.

http://www.musicbrainz.org is good for ID tagging I believe.


having the track number first is awful.

either put the band name or the album name first.
Title: ID3 taggers anonymous
Post by: lastclearchance on 02 Aug 2005, 17:51
I hate genre tagging because it's impossible...but I am addicted to getting the other tags.  Luckily for me, iTunes already puts the mp3s in folders based on artist, then album.
Title: ID3 taggers anonymous
Post by: Storyteller on 03 Aug 2005, 02:50
Ah yes. Although I never tag genres, I do like my songs to display the correct artist and title. Besides that it's a nifty thing to search for the lyrics on google and then pasting them in the comment part of the tag.
Title: ID3 taggers anonymous
Post by: Kid Modernist on 03 Aug 2005, 03:28
Quote from: My Aim Is True
Quote from: Kid Modernist
I am addicted to that, as well as formatting all my music the same:

My Music> Band Name> Album Name> Track Number - Band Name - Song Name.mp3

For stuff that I have whole albums for, and then just Band Name - Song Name.mp3 for stuff I have just some songs for under My Music.

http://www.musicbrainz.org is good for ID tagging I believe.


having the track number first is awful.

either put the band name or the album name first.


Why is it awful? I keep albums seperated by folders, and just right click a folder, "Play in Winamp" and it loads it up like an album. And if I do it on a Band Folder with several albums in it, it will keep them separate still. Works for me.

If you are just talking aesthetic, I prefer 01 - The Beatles - Let It Be.mp3 to The Beatles - 01 - Let It Be.mp3 personally.
Title: ID3 taggers anonymous
Post by: McTaggart on 03 Aug 2005, 03:54
If you're going to listen like that (like I do) you might look into using wxMusik. You set up your music library and then you've got a nice little database with searching, dynamic playlists, a really powerful random function and it's fast and stable as all hell.

...and it's free! (as in beer and (I think) speech).
[/pimping]
Title: ID3 taggers anonymous
Post by: Station on 03 Aug 2005, 17:44
I love to have my id3 tags filled out correctly.  However, I prefer to leave all genre fields blank.  I do not find them useful, ever.  I shun them on principle.  I've got most of my collection tagged correctly, and it's about 3 times the size of yours.  At little personal effort, however.  I use iTunes and the biggest job is putting album art onto all my mp3s.  I probably only have 10% of my songs album-art-isized.
Title: ID3 taggers anonymous
Post by: synecdoche on 03 Aug 2005, 23:41
I am a tagging monster.  Everything is meticulously tagged properly for all the standard stuff, and I add other info into the comments (currently working through the collection for this, but I do have all my can-con listed, which is good for the radio show I do where a certain percentage of songs have to be Canadian) and am thinking about doing record labels next.  

I have all my music organized on my hard drive like so:

Artist - Album/Artist - Album - ## Song Title.mp3

There's nothing worse than getting MP3s that are improperly tagged!  This is one of the few things I am o/c about.  I also use mp3gain to adjust the volume of my mp3s so they are all close-- I used to have one song be at a nice volume, then the next would blow my ear drums away, and then the next would be very quiet.  Argh.
Title: ID3 taggers anonymous
Post by: alexcharlie on 04 Aug 2005, 11:47
I have ALL my ablum art for every album and it is oh so sweet.  It took me awhile to get it done for my collection, but from then on, I've just been adding the art as music hits my collection and its been pretty easy.  I think comments field is a good idea, and I'll probably be going through and putting record labels.  What do you guys think of the composer field?  For a lot of my classical music it makes sense.  I've started to use the composer field for a lot of covers also, putting the original artist there.  A lot of the Hip Hop i download comes with producer credits in the filename, and I'll just transfer that to the composer tag.  I use it also for actual names of groups that are pseudonyms (Prefuse 73 and Iron&Wine for example.)
Title: ID3 taggers anonymous
Post by: synecdoche on 04 Aug 2005, 12:38
Heh heh, I have album art for NEARLY everything (there are five or six albums I couldn't find, and I don't have a scanner).  I kind of wish the iPod photo could be set to display the album art full screen by default rather than the meters and such.
Title: ID3 taggers anonymous
Post by: Addius on 04 Aug 2005, 13:09
I have to admit that I also take correct ID-tagging very seriously. When it comes to what genre a song is I usually just go for what I think is closest. The reason why I try to match genres is that most new DAPs and MPs can sort music by genre, which is quite nifty if you don't know what song to listen to but only what kind of mood you are in.

As for the actual editing, I usually do it "manually" with winamp, song by song. (I'm quite picky with the songs I have so whenever I rip them I always recheck the ID-tags and fix them the way I want)

For the composer field I try to fill in what I can, I got some classical music where it's obvious, and if I feel really anal about some song I might check  who wrote the song but that's not really often.

Since I don't have any DAP which shows album art, nor felt any use for it in my MP I've shuned it since I don't like having non music-files in my music-folders. (Which includes tracklists and such)