Maintaining a Digital Music Collection

haha same thing happened to me when I switched to macbook
Ratings are pretty key for me. I use them like Alex upthread and let smart lists then decide what gets on the ipod

hey nickb, you might be interested in this -

http://musicbrainz.org/doc/Classical_Style_Guide

thanks tracer, that looks useful

the feat. bit looks wack though e.g. Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra feat. conductor: Herbert von Karajan)

it makes sense if you consider the conductor a member of the group of artists performing the work, but not one that is always part of that group

musicbrainz has a mechanism for joining artists though, either with the word "feat." or otherwise - itunes can't do this iirc

http://musicbrainz.org/doc/Style/Titles/Featured_artists

i would actually be psyched to move to a music player on my computer that allowed me to use more fields than itunes does

oh i see

how do all you lot deal with classical music?

The u+k thing for me -- which musicbrainz happily agrees with -- is that as a rule (to which there may be exceptions, granted) the composer, not the performer, goes in the "artist" tag. This is purely pragmatic for me, in that apps, players etc always have been so artist-centric and ignorant of the "composer" tag.

How do people tag the year when the track was created over two or more years? Start or completion?

i usually contact the artist and ask them how they feel about abortion

Yeah, sorry for my completely inappropriate post there.

haha, sorry. work liquid lunch. don't you just go by release date / the date the work was published? do you have an example where this is a problem?

i had one the other week, was created in 1952 but worked on and released twice more in different years. some electronic thing...

Bruno Maderna - Musica su due dimensioni (Music in two dimensions, 1952, rev. 1957 and 1963)

yeah, that's the weird part about thinking of individual tracks as tied to a physical release. if you obtain it over the internet as a single track unaffiliated with an album, which release does it belong to? who kno

Are people here happy to have year tags as release dates when it comes to compilations? Should you go through a greatest hits and tag each track correctly?

xp: f. hazel
There's some hairspitting, but not much. Generally artists either neatly fit into some category (shoegaze, disco, tape-music composition) or they'll fall through the sieve into a catch-all subgenre like pop (non-spec) or modern composition (non-spec). Admittedly, I define things like "dream pop" or "art pop" fairly broadly. It works.

My listening tends to be pretty genre specific (and anti chart music), so the catch-all categories are generally populated with things that could be labeled with a subgenre (like "singer-songwriter") in fields I follow so little that they don't merit their own folder.

xp: release dates
For historical compilations, I use the last date of commercial release of any included piece. So my Blood & Fire reissues still get played in a 70s shuffle, etc.

i go through and tag each track with its original release year

if it was released on a single in november of one year and an album the following january, i don't really care which; close is good enough

how do all you lot deal with classical music?
i guess people who put the composer into the artist field instead of the performer are not really into classical music. i have started that way but i have changed as a. it is wrong and most important b. if you get the metadata from a music database website the composer goes into the composer field and the performer into the artist field. too much of a hassle changing that. the same goes for the order first name, surname which i used in the beginning in the artist field. everywhere it is first name and then surname.

^ I do that (composer in artist field), but will also put the conductor in the title somewhere (e.g., Pierre Boulez for some of Ligeti's works).

In many instances, the composer/performer are the same (Xenakis, Pierre Henry, Francois Bayle, Mimaroglu, etc.)

ID3 spec says the artist field should contain "Lead artist/Lead performer/Soloist/Performing group"

http://www.id3.org/id3v2.4.0-frames

though you're still left with the question of what to do with something like this..... http://www.amazon.com/Johannes-Brahms-Sextet-Piano-Trio/dp/B0000029LE

i spent about 4 months off and on going through the genres on my itunes library, what a waste of time. I did feel some sad sense of accomplishment when I was done though.

i would actually be psyched to move to a music player on my computer that allowed me to use more fields than itunes does

My #1 request is to have some sort of aliasing for tracks that both appear on an album and a compilation.

Couple years ago, I did email sj✧✧✧@ap✧✧✧.c✧✧ with an outline for something I called "iTunes Pro" that would address features that would help librarians, radio stations, and just anyone with more than 10,000 tracks in their iTunes library. Never got an answer, but I still hope for this someday. I would even pay for it!

Never got an answer, but I still hope for this someday

Sorry to break it to you but I don't think Steve Jobs is going write you back.

Seriously though, I agree with this 10000% It's my number one issue. I have lots of compilations that are essential to me, and those same songs show up on other albums. I don't want to remove one or the other.

The only reason this does make sense is in the strange scenarios where you're dealing with different mixes or mastering jobs where maybe it does make sense to have two different copies of the same song. But mostly no, I'd rather just have the best copy and have it once but have it show up both ways.

Thirded. Anyone got invites for iTunes pro?

i usually put in the record label instead

for record labels with a specific style this is what i do.

Sorry to break it to you but I don't think Steve Jobs is going write you back.

I did say it was several years ago (and when Jobs would occasionally email back people)

I remember that. You also said "but I still hope for this someday" which could as easily apply to the waiting for a response, if you have my sense of humor.

i guess people who put the composer into the artist field instead of the performer are not really into classical music.

Not true, for the record. It probably gets truer if modified to "don't really follow the classical music world" or similar, granted.

i have started that way but i have changed as a. it is wrong and most important b. if you get the metadata from a music database website the composer goes into the composer field and the performer into the artist field

It varies, though -- as I mentioned, musicbrainz uses composer as artist.

It's really just a pragmatic thing for me, as most players and apps don't support the Composer tag well, if at all -- and going by the composer *feels* like the right route for me to look up a work.

the other thing about classical music is that it more or less covers common ground, there is hardly any new classical music composed these days. therefore the importance of a performer of a classical piece is much more pivotal. the classical world is all about different interpretations of a set canon. the innovation is minimal, it consists of a new way to approach an old work. in pop/rock music innovation is key (or maybe was key until a couple of years ago). these days we live in a world where almost everything has been tried already. that's another reason why everybody turns to rearranging the old stuff.

Yeah that is kind of what I was talking about with "into classical music" vs following its scene. Again, pragmatically the composer-as-artist thing works for me: I have quite a lot of classical works, and do care about getting a good recording of a given work, but rarely do I obtain different recordings of the same work. If I purchased every Beethoven symphony cycle that arrived or something, I agree that it might be better to index by performer.

no matter how many settings i change i can't get winamp to play properly gaplessly from my new external drive. itunes, however, is fine. i don't want to break ten years of stubborn tradition!!

So is maintaining a digital library going the way of the 8 track? I've been thinking about the idea of less-is-more and paring down my unwieldy digital library that I carry around (as opposed to stream, where I can access everything so long as I have cell coverage). Like listening to a best-of or anthology serves my time and the artist better than going through albums. (That is, if album listening still happens too.) But paring things down, especially for artists who have either a spotty track record or who have really large catalogues, can get to the heart of the matter. But then there's the idea that deep tracks can become favorites over time even if (or because) they're not the singles.

What say you lot?

Applying the "less-is-more" approach to a digital music collection seems analogous to the regular culls that I used to make to the vinyl collection. While trading away records will free up both cash and physical space, there's also a psychological benefit in not having the clutter. Interestingly, cleansing the hard drive of the recordings that are merely nice to have (as opposed to those that I'll feel inclined to listen to) has the same effect despite there being no change in the physical footprint. Apparently accumulation of both the physical and the virtual brings its own burden.

I disagree re: the cleansing aspects of culling a digital collection. As long as something fits on my hard drive and is not totally execrable I want to keep it.

But it's increasingly difficult to sift through growing data banks and consider whether each track has retained its value, and not become execrable to you since you first stored it.

At least, that's my current time sink.

Get rid of it. seriously.

The time spent with, and emotional attachment to that which remains will be far more rewarding.

I have to regularly remind myself I am a music fan, not the worlds designated archivist for music that i might be interested in..

so maybe admitting that I used to have it, never listened to it, so junked it, isn't the crime I might think it is..

Hamildan OTM

the problem i have is consistency. file naming and organization conventions i don't care that much about, and i've got them pretty well sorted anyway. what i do want is for everything be tagged and, ideally, leveled consistently. but when you've got more than 20,000 files, it's a little late to go back and square the corners.

anyway, i am thinking it's getting to be time to clean house a little. i understand what gerald means about deep tracks slowly becoming favorites, but i've got entire albums that i haven't enjoyed (in some cases haven't even listened to) in years. what's the point of keeping them around? they don't wind up on my ipod or in any of the playlists i regularly listen to, so it's not like i'm gonna change my mind about them anytime soon. and new stuff comes in all the time. why in god's name am i keeping all those horrible fucking residents albums?

Storage is cheap enough that there doesn't seem to be much of a point in deleting stuff. This isn't like physical media which takes up space. Actually going through my hard drive finding stuff to delete is more trouble than it's worth.

This isn't like physical media which takes up space. Actually going through my hard drive finding stuff to delete is more trouble than it's worth.

Exactly... it's just showing up in your media folder, not taking up room in your house.

there's an applescript which will delete whatever the currently playing track is and my plan is to set my entire library on random for like a month and just zap everything i don't likr

"likr" = a stronger version of "like" obv

I have to regularly remind myself I am a music fan, not the worlds designated archivist for music that i might be interested in..

Massive cosign.

Word. I wonder if it's an age thing - I went through years of angst after seeing things in a shop and not picking it up, only to have it takes years to find it again. That is simply not a factor anymore.

But my original question, which I suppose is broader than just maintaining a digital collection, is whether it's ultimately preferable for most artists to go with a smaller compilation rather than a large catalogue of albums. I suppose that depends on the relationship one has with each artist, but from a broad too-much-music-too-little-time perspective, I think it is a more practical approach.

I have to regularly remind myself I am a music fan, not the worlds designated archivist for music that i might be interested in..

OTMFM. This should be a motivational poster.

Perhaps related:

http://jonathanbogart.tumblr.com/post/29027261044/this-is-a-link-to-hundred-song-album-on-spotify

Interesting...

http://www.grammy365.com/news/recording-academy-launches-give-fans-credit