multiple labels/genres for songs

morddu · Post by **morddu** » Wed Jul 25, 2007 1:20 pm

Some songs aren't just "rock" or "jazz" but in fact are "rock/classic rock/party music/cover/dance" and "jazz/west coast/dinner music". I'd really like a way to tag or label my songs with multiple adjectives so that I can easily sort, search and create playlists based on various criteria. The single genre is insufficient, and the 3 "custom" labels aren't well done--too hard to get to, limited to 3 labels and not suited to this type of organization. I don't mind if it's all done interal to Media Monkey and not available on my ipod, etc. Any suggestions?

Bex · Post by **Bex** » Wed Jul 25, 2007 1:38 pm

It's implemented in MM3, currently in alpha stage:
http://www.mediamonkey.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=15384

karimleo · Post by **karimleo** » Wed Jul 25, 2007 3:56 pm

Bex wrote:It's implemented in MM3, currently in alpha stage:
http://www.mediamonkey.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=15384

I use MM3 and not wanting to sound like a complete novice but may I ask how you do this?

Bex · Post by **Bex** » Wed Jul 25, 2007 4:19 pm

Yes, it's almost a secret since no instructions has been given but you simply put the multiple Genres/Artists/Album Artists in the respective field divided with a ; (semicolon).

karimleo · Post by **karimleo** » Wed Jul 25, 2007 4:49 pm

Bex wrote:Yes, it's almost a secret since no instructions has been given but you simply put the multiple Genres/Artists/Album Artists in the respective field divided with a ; (semicolon).

Woah!

That's great, however there's no way round it properly when it comes to Auto Organize.

Bex · Post by **Bex** » Wed Jul 25, 2007 4:58 pm

Haven't tried that. What happens?

karimleo · Post by **karimleo** » Wed Jul 25, 2007 6:09 pm

Bex wrote:Haven't tried that. What happens?

Well if you have a file tagged for example: "Rock; Funk; Folk; Classic" (That shoould be an interesting song

) and hit Auto Organize <Genre> It will want to create a folder called "Rock; Funk; Folk; Classic" for that file.

Bex · Post by **Bex** » Wed Jul 25, 2007 6:33 pm

Yes, that would be expected. But I see some possible disadvantages with it. How would you like it to work?

karimleo · Post by **karimleo** » Thu Jul 26, 2007 1:27 am

Bex wrote:Yes, that would be expected. But I see some possible disadvantages with it. How would you like it to work?

There's probably no way round it except to remove <Genre> from Auto Organize

Mizery_Made · Post by **Mizery_Made** » Thu Jul 26, 2007 2:17 am

IMO, I think it would work best if when Auto Organizing, you had the ability to trim the field. (similar to the <Artist:1> to get the first letter.) You could set something up so it only puts the first value, or set it up so it uses 2 first values, etc. or the whole thing. So you could use something like:

.\<Genre;1>\<Album Artist;1>\<Album>\<Track> - <Artist> - <Title>

thus for a song like:

Rock;Rap\Linkin Park;Jay-Z\Collision Course\02 - Linkin Park;Jay-Z - Big Pimpin'/Papercut.mp3

you'd get:

Rock\Linkin Park\Collision Course\02 - Linkin Park;Jay-Z - Big Pimpin'/Papercut.mp3

or something...

karimleo · Post by **karimleo** » Fri Jul 27, 2007 6:50 pm

I've been playing around with this a little bit more, very nice however tagging is a pain.

It should have some sort of Field Autocomplete to save you typing in each genre in the field.

This would save accidental spelling mistakes and thus empty misspelt genres appearing in the Genre tree.

zlonik · Post by **zlonik** » Fri Aug 03, 2007 3:25 am

Concerning Autocomplete - definetly needed!

But there is a much more serious problem with multi-genre / multi-artists (or all other multiple meaning tags) - synchronistion with portable players.

I myself am a proud owner of serious music collection, MediaMonkey Gold Membership, and a Creative Zen Vision : M. And the moment MM3 got a multi-genre support I started reviewing and resystematizing my library in order to have an album art stored in each mp3 file and an exhaustive ID3 description, wich I defined to me as:
1. Artist Tag - full list of artists involved in a track production, in order to get rid of "feat." in a title tag and a track to be findable by any artist (well, where I feel like it

)
2. Album Artist Tag - a compilation or label title here (like Hed Kandi, or Ministry of Sound)
3. Genre - a list of appropriate genres, describing track. So that, driving a car, I could just select one and hear all the songs in that style
(besides title and album of course)

Example: The "Just Feel Better" song from Santanas "All That I Am" album should contain tags:
1. Artist Tag - Carlos Santana;Steve Tyler
2. Album Artist Tag - Carlos Santana
3. Genre - Pop;Rock;Guitar

But I've been stupid. I've checked the results in Vista in WMP11 - saw it working, decided that it's OK with MTP devices, and started to work. Later, after one third of my library was structured that way (believe me, it cost me a lot of pain) I tried to update my player with refreshed tracks and got garbage. It does not care about Album Artist Tag at all, and multiple artists/tracks are treated like a wicked;very;long;named;artist performing in a uniq;unreadable;long;genre. It killed me.

I’m sure that multiple meaning tags have the future, so it is a correct way to organize library anyway. But I wonder:

1. Is there any portable media player in the wild NOW that fully supports multiple tags? Actually I’ve passed a long way choosing a player to meet my demands – Vision : M satisfied me because I can plug it in my command system in a car, and have its interface fully displayed on screen. Now it looks like I need a player that can output its interface AND deal with multi-tags. Does anyone know such a treasure?

2. Because I find it doubtful to find such player at the moment, I suppose I need some kind of a script that would cut off the tag meaning from the first “;” (s/;.*// - Perl speaking) before synchronization to MTP device. (and even reorganize album artist tag (if exists) to artist, and in this case add artist to title like “artist – title“) It’s a wrong way, but I need to have at least some organization in my Zen to be. So does anyone know such solutions?

Morten · Post by **Morten** » Fri Aug 03, 2007 6:36 am

This is an important discussion imo. This should have high priority from the developers.

emalvick · Post by **emalvick** » Fri Aug 03, 2007 10:46 am

I can see the problems with this, and hopefully it is something that will be solved by PMP developers in the future (hopefully in a way compatible with MM).

Anyway, I don't know about the Zen, but is it possible to browse the player for music via folders (like you would in Windows Explorer)...

Where I'm coming from:

I own an Archos device, and it tends to be slow and the artist list exhaustive. It also can't handle album artists. My solution has been to set the sync options to put music on the player in a folder structure of my liking:...

e.g. Music\A\Album Artist\Album\Track - Title.mp3

The sync file setting looks like this:

Music\Album Artist:1\Album Artist\Album\Track - Title.mp3

Of course your desired structure will be different. The point is that I can now browse the folders on my device as if they are my Album Artist Node complete with letter indexes rather than worry about browsing the artists. In your case, you would have an apparent album artist node without worry about the format of the multi-artist tracks or browsing the artist node.

Anyway, if the Zen can let you browse the folders, this would be a possible work around.

Erik

karimleo · Post by **karimleo** » Fri Aug 03, 2007 4:35 pm

I've been thinking about this a bit and I've come to the conclusion..... THE HELL WITH IT! I hardly ever browse with Windows Explorer so I scrapped <genre> from Auto Organize altogether.

If I want to browse by genre I'll just use the Genre node in MM, after all that is what it's for. Multiple Genre kicks ass! especially for Auto Playlists.