ID3 tags
These chaps help categorise your music files on your iPod (I think!). And sorting them out is something I MUST DO, or I go batshit. I can't have REM and R.E.M., I can't have song titles with a ` instead of a ' in the song title. I can't have half-complete song titles, or incorrect information. It all has to be correct, complete etc. I thought from using iTunes as my laptop music player that I'd got the lot sorted out, but when I got an iPod it turned out that in many case there were minor discrepancies. Like having some songs under the album "Never Mind the Bollocks, here's the Sex Pistols" and others "Never Mind The Bollocks, Here's The Sex Pistols". If you don't get it right, the songs appear as two seperate albums, and that JUST CAN'T HAPPEN.

I've always been this way about music. My cassette collection was alphabetical and chronological (in cases where I had several by one artist). I've made several Excel spreadsheets (and once, an Access database) detailing my collection, with fields like Title, Artist, Genre, Year Released, Year Acquired, etc.

I'm sure I'm not the only one!
(McChinaman banned, Fri 2 Jul 2010, 13:18, 15 replies)

:D
Me too! I have to have the tags filled in properly, the files named in a consistent manner and everything in a proper tree structure so if anything happens, I could recreate the tags from the path

Mrs Shamrock, on the other hand, has everything in one dir with no tags and plays lucky dip :D

S
(Shamrock, Fri 2 Jul 2010, 13:27, closed)

see Nick Hornby's book
or the film 'High fidelity' to see how he arranges his vynil collections.
(nimrodihnio making gravy for one., Fri 2 Jul 2010, 13:38, closed)

yup!
*) tags correct/consistent
*) album art present
*) all single tracks have to be replaced by albums with them on if possible
*) mp3\a\artist\album\01 - trackname.mp3

:)
( bluemeat has been best of all the animals since, Fri 2 Jul 2010, 13:46, closed)

where I worked before I went to uni
we had about 13 thousand mp3s. this was before the days of torrents and emule. even napster was only just around.

my mate came up with a bit of software that changed the ID3 tags of them all so the genre was Porn Groove and the comments said "geoff is gay" in order to piss geoff off.

if you ever get any mp3s that have that info, you'll know where they came from.
( Vipros. clever got me this far, then tricky got me in, Fri 2 Jul 2010, 14:16, closed)

Will someone from this thread....
....pleeeeze come round and do mine for me? I've got 16gb of mp3's stuck in a big folder called music. most of them are named 'track 1' or similar, and the artist tends to be 'various'.

I've resorted to just dumping 400 at a time on my ipod using the autofill feature because there's no possibility of making an informed selection, which leads to playlists that go from Cradle of Filth, via Harry Connick Jnr, passing through Peter Cetera and ending on Slayer. You can get some odd looks in the car when you're 100+ dB Iron Maiden track segues into Billie frigging Piper.
(NoveltyCondomHead Clanks Wams., Fri 2 Jul 2010, 14:21, closed)

winamp has auto-tag based on content
It's not 100% but it's worth trying on some tracks to get a starter.
( bluemeat has been best of all the animals since, Fri 2 Jul 2010, 15:06, closed)

^^^ This
And that before it too - I hate the fact my MP3 collection is disordered, but with 100Gb of them and better things to do I need to hire someone with OCD to sort them out for me.
(fridgefreezer inserted a topical reference into his sig on, Fri 2 Jul 2010, 15:25, closed)

Me too
Most organised iTunes ever.
Compilations frighten me though. What to do with them?
(WOGAN'S WIG FIXER, Fri 2 Jul 2010, 16:01, closed)

You put them under "Various"
Then the album, then the song name. That sorts them out. Helps if you have the album cover as well. I don't have that many compilations but that does the trick.

You could even have the song titles as 'Artist - "Song Name"'. I do that for random songs downloaded off Frostwire. Works a treat.
(McChinaman banned, Fri 2 Jul 2010, 17:07, closed)

ID3.2
The new type of ID3 tags allows an Artist field and an Album Artist field

Album Artist : Various
Artist : Madness (for example)

S
(Shamrock, Fri 2 Jul 2010, 23:36, closed)

Itunes and featuring artists
does it wrong! ID3 has fields for artist and album artist seperately but itune doesnt recognise this so i have to tag as "song name (feat whoever)" by "the main artist"


Also tagging remixes is horrible! and so is tagging songs that are on more than one artists album e.g. dance wiv me is on dizzee rscals album and calvin harris AAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!
(tubeman trousers, Fri 2 Jul 2010, 22:16, closed)

Yep yep yep
I even wrote an excel macro to read the entire directory tree and place it all nice and neat in a spreadsheet....

:-(
( Boot I want to know what you meant, Sat 3 Jul 2010, 10:31, closed)

Excellent work
Can I have a copy??
(McChinaman banned, Mon 5 Jul 2010, 1:00, closed)

Pet hate
Artists that add or subtract an article from their name during theit careers.

Smashing Pumpkins became The Smashing Pumpkins around their third album, and so I'm torn between accuracy and consistency. Bastards.
(Ladyfingers is in your wardrobe,, Sun 4 Jul 2010, 16:52, closed)

Yes, yes and thrice yes!
I bought Mahler's Complete Symphonies the other day, which consists of 10 symphonies over 11 CDs. However, to make best use of space and keep entire symphonies on a single disc where possible, the tracks aren't in a consistent order. Added to this, the track listings had obviously been added to CDDB by different people, and there was no consistency whatsoever.

This led to me spending half an hour reorganising them into new albums so that the album and track numbers were "correct", and the track listings and descriptions in a consistent style. However, once I'd done that I decided that the other 3,300 tracks on my computer could do with being standardised to the same level, and spent the rest of the day doing just that.
(Vice Admiral Sir Charles Cockbrush KCB MBE DSO, who is finding it increasingly difficult to log into b3ta.com wants to duck your aunt and kick your puppy, Mon 5 Jul 2010, 9:27, closed)