Keyword-tagging (big feature)

[Avanti]

Big wish
A modern and tremendously practical way of catalogue'ing ... well, anything, is by way of tagging - not the normal kind of tags, though, but what could also be called "keywords". This is seen more and more on services like Last FM (indeed a very nice example). The point is to add a number of shared keywords to a song instead of choosing just one genre (e.g. "r&b, soul, live, concert, acoustic, black, woman, singer-songwriter, solo" instead of just "r&b"). That way it becomes possible to cross-relate songs much more freely and to overview a song collection in a more relevant way.

I think that this should and could nicely be incorporated in MediaMonkey (maybe by writing tags to the commentary-field or something...). Such a feature should involve a "tags node" (listing all keywords used), a tags column, a search feature and maybe some other niftities.

This feature would - besides being very practical - put MediaMonkey in a nice position as one of the most progressive media players around.

Thanks

[Guest]

Something this feature should also include: A way of sorting tags by popularity (number of times used). And a little "number of uses"-counter by each tag under the tag-node. (By "tag" I still mean "keyword" )

[Lowlander]

That's what MediaMonkey and all players do. Most tags are keywords and you can form tag clouds and all that fancy Web 2.0 stuff.

Multiple values will be supported in MediaMonkey 3.0 for some fields so that covers your wish.

I still don't get the Web 2.0 hype. It's the same as we've been doing for ages, just by using different words doesn't change the concept.

Ps. Scripts can help create any form of tag clouds required. You could even use flash to create those fancy tag cloud/relationship diagrams like Digg and CNet use.

[Guest]

I suppose multiple entries would fulfull my wish, as long as they would be listed seperately in the explorer tree. I don't know anything about Web 2.0... It is only - and quite specifically - that I wish for a column (or "tag") that says "Tags" and can contain any amount of keywords. This is so obviously useful that I almost find it's brilliant

[Lowlander]

That's why you have all the fields that are already available and the custom. So your keywords have some meaning like Genre, Mood, Artist, etc.

You have 3 custom fields that combined with custom scripts could do nearly anything you want.

[Guest]

What you're saying doesn't help me at all.

First of all, it is only possible to enter one string of text in any field.

Second, the whole custom field-feature is kind of confusing. It is not intuitive in the user interface, limited to three fields with static names and still not browseable in a way that would make this whole thing really usefull.

Also, most importantly, only a minuscule amount of the program's users have the ability or even patience to write an extensive custom script for something like this... I am wishing for a build-in feature. And I still think this could give MediaMonkey a big advantage over other players.

[Lowlander]

Multiple values will be supported in MediaMonkey 3.0 for several fields.

r&b, soul, live, concert, acoustic, black, woman, singer-songwriter, solo

R&B, Soul, Live, Acoustic are all genre's and can be accommodated by a multivalued genre field. The other values could also be part of the Genre field. As multivalued fields aren't implemented yet I can't say how the program will manage these.

PS. MediaMonkey also follows the tagging standards so it can't do something "innovative" if the tag standards don't permit it. I don't know if tagging standards support something like you request as it's basically covered by existing tags. This in order to make sure that MediaMonkey tags are compatible with other programs.

[Avanti]

Multiple values sounds really nice, I am looking forward to that. (To MM-developers: Please incorporate this feature with a nice way of browsing )

I can see that MM should be compatible with tagging-standards, but what about the custom fields? How does that work, and couldn't the programmers just ad a forth "custom field" and call it "Tags"?


(By the way, sorry for not writing my username-handle every time. I should probably create a proper user...)

[Lowlander]

The custom fields are not part of the standard (if I'm not mistaken). They are stored inside the standard comment field, but other software can't read these fields. The developers have chosen for 3 and you wouldn't be the only that would want more. You might find that the MagicNodes script might be able to handle these fields in a way that suits your needs better (not sure as you require multivalued fields).

As for how multivalued fields will be implemented and which field will be multivalued will have to wait till the first test versions of MediaMonkey comes out. If interested you can test and comment on this new feature once this becomes available.

[vivtho]

Rather than simple tags as implemented in other software ... what I'd like to see is a hierarchial tag setup.

For example, if I define a tag as 'Religious', and define 'Gospel', 'Carols' and 'Bhajans' as sub-tags (i.e. below 'Religious' in the hierarchy). If I apply the tag 'Carol' to a song, it would automatically get tagged with the parent 'Religious' tag.

[judas]

Yeah, I like the sub-genre approach vivtho is talking about...only if a single genre could be son to many parents, e.g. salsa should be tropical AND "danceable".

[Lowlander]

This might be possible through scripts. A smarter Magic Nodes that can set up a user defined complex genre relationship. As this would be a per user thing I feel it would a too complex a feature to be included in the standard MediaMonkey.
Also with the probably inclusion of multiple genre's and the other available tags it's probably of use to a few people.