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Using the right software?

Posted: Thu May 31, 2018 6:53 pm
by charmingnathan
Hello all,

I've used Media Monkey to catalogue my digital music library, running into thousands and thousands of songs.

I've decided to start an online streaming service in order to air these songs to the outside Internet!

To do this, I shall be using a Pop-Up Player, in which the artist, title, and artwork of the song will be shown.

However, a good percentage of these songs will be from unsigned artists and bands, whose work are probably not on any of the known databases, which I know most Pop Up players tend to use.

Having spoken to a developer, he questioned whether Media Monkey was the best software to use for this particular task, stating that the artwork was stored within the .mp3 file, and therefore severly restricting its use. He said ideally, the artwork should be kept on a separate folder on my server for retrieval.

Your thoughts please, and if in agreement with this person, which software would you recommend? I certainly don't fancy grabbing all the artwork from those songs already catalogued!

Thanks for any help you can offer.

Cheers.

Re: Using the right software?

Posted: Fri Jun 01, 2018 10:21 am
by Lowlander
I personally prefer embedded Artwork as this way you don't loose the connection between Artwork and music file. Most software/hardware support this.

MediaMonkey can also work with external Artwork files, but this means you'll be more organized for best results and cross-app/hardware compatibility. You'll need a folder for the music files on the same Album and store the Artwork in the same folder. You'll also need to properly tag the Album and Album Artist field.

Tools > Options > Tags & Playlists has the setting how to save Artwork if using MediaMonkey to tag the Artwork. If you just save the Artwork in the Album folder make sure scan file directories for Artwork is enabled under Tools > Options > Library.


Useful Addon to move between embedded and external Artwork: http://www.mediamonkey.com/forum/viewto ... art+tagger

Re: Using the right software?

Posted: Sun Jun 03, 2018 3:53 pm
by Peke
Hi,
It all depends on the way you wanna use MMW. As Lowlander said there is number of plugins that manipulate Album art and Metadata info, even exact one do not exist one can be created o serve needed info to streaming service. All it depends what you want to do with the service and what would be the main case usage.

Basically everything can be made and customized in MMW in order to make it work.

Re: Using the right software?

Posted: Tue Jun 05, 2018 11:48 am
by charmingnathan
Thank you Peke and Lowlander for your interesting replies.

I suspected there would be a way of storing artwork outside of how I had been doing, presumably the 'default' way of storing the artwork within the .mp3 itself, but...

One thing that neither of you mention within your answer and the options you suggest, is how difficult/easy they are to apply?

As I said in my original post, I have hundreds of thousands of songs, which have taken me (admittedly, on and off), over three years to catalogue, so I don't particularly want to have to repeat that exercise!

For example, once I have setup the alternative method of storage (depending on which that shall be), is there anyway to automate this process to re-catalogue the entry so the artwork is external, for example?

The bottom line, for the purposes of streaming, the artwork has to be stored externally to the .mp3 file.

Thanks for your help.

Re: Using the right software?

Posted: Tue Jun 05, 2018 2:46 pm
by Lowlander
charmingnathan wrote: Tue Jun 05, 2018 11:48 amFor example, once I have setup the alternative method of storage (depending on which that shall be), is there anyway to automate this process to re-catalogue the entry so the artwork is external, for example?
Yes
Lowlander wrote: Fri Jun 01, 2018 10:21 am Useful Addon to move between embedded and external Artwork: http://www.mediamonkey.com/forum/viewto ... art+tagger