Tagging your MP3s / Digital Music Organization

[kirbypuckett]

I'm just as anal about my digital music library as I am my physical one and I've been looking for some best practice guides when it comes to tagging MP3s, but there isn't really anything definitive. So I'm writing a blog post about the subject, but I'd like to see what some of you VCers do too.

I'm going to paste my current draft below. Right now I'm most curious about: covers, genres, grouping, composer, and a few other random tips / practices you have.

I'm not a neat freak by any means, but I hate clutter! Especially when it comes to music. My CDs and vinyl records are all stored on shelves alphabetically so that I can easily find what I'm looking for. I also treat my digital music collection with the same respect. It really bugs me to scroll through my music iPod and see something like this:

- Rocket From The Crypt

- rocket from the crypt

- Rocket from the Crypt

- Rocket from teh Crypt

So I have spent countless hours making sure the ID3 tags for my MP3s are as accurate as possible, artwork is filled in, typos are corrected, etc... I've recently been thinking about how to handle cover versions of songs and I did a few Google searches for best practices relating to tagging MP3s. Sadly, there aren't any definitive methods to filling out ID3 tags. So I figured I would share my methods.

If you see any mistakes or have any better ideas please let me know so that I can tidy up my library.

First off, I do use iTunes. It's a bloated piece of garbage and the dark-horse amongst Apple's programs, but I have an iPod, iPhone, and an iPad so using iTunes makes life a lot easier.

I'll start with one of the more confusing tags. Artist and Album Artist. I see a lot of people getting this one wrong, but it's actually quite simple. It's a great tag to manage compilation/soundtracks in your library. Label the the Album Artist tag as "Various Artists" and the Artist tag with the artist who performed the track. For example, on the Juno soundtrack:

Name: A Well Respected Man

Artist: The Kinks

Album Artist: Various Artists

Album: Juno OST

Also, be sure to check the "Part of a compilation" check-box when dealing with compilations.

Another way to use the Album Artist tag is when you have a record like Painted from Memory by Elvis Costello and Burt Bacharach. You can put "Elvis Costello and Burt Bacharach" in the Artist field and just "Elvis Costello" under Album Artist to keep the album grouped with other Elvis Costello records.

Because most software doesn't sort by "the" I leave it at the beginning of the name. So I see "The Flaming Lips" and not "Flaming Lips, the" -- I don't know if that's the best way to handle it, but I like the way it flows.

I also don't sort based on last name. I'm not sure why though. So I have "Ben Folds" and not "Folds, Ben" -- That's a good example, because I prefer to see Ben Folds and Ben Folds Five back to back.

Ok, now that we have our artists properly tagged let's take a look at the Album tag. This is a very straight forward tag, just put the album name in there. If it's a Deluxe or Special Edition mark it as such if you have both versions. If the song is from a single I usually label it like this: Say It Ain't So - Single. I'm not sure if that's the best way to handle the tag though.

Try your best not to leave the Album field blank. It can sometimes be difficult to locate music if it doesn't have an album. If you're not sure where it came from search Google, Amazon, or label it with Unknown.

Now onto the Track Name. This one appears like an easy one to tag, but there are a few quirks. Read this for capitalization in relation to song titles. That's the easy part, now the complicated stuff.

- Featuring Artists: For guest spots the general consensus is to put "featuring" after the song title: "Empire State of Mind featuring Alicia Keys" - You can also abbreviate "featuring" to either "feat." or "ft."

- Live Recordings: For live songs, I put (Live) after the track name: "Island in the Sun (Live)". I do the same with remixes and acoustic versions: (Remix) / (Acoustic)

- Cover Songs: This is a hard topic to Google as you mostly get search results based on album covers. I have a lot of covers and I like to know who the original artist is while listening to a cover. A popular method I've seen is: "The Shins - We Will Become Silhouettes (Postal Service cover)"

That's a decent choice, but seeing "cover" every time is a bit redundant. I decided to use brackets to label a cover, that way it stands out from (Live) and (Remix) recordings:

The Shins - We Will Become Silhouettes [The Postal Service]

Genres are interesting creatures, but I've decided to tame the beasts as minimally as possible. I might regret this one day, but I've decided to just use whatever the iTunes store uses. So I only have a few genres: Alternative, Comedy, Country, Electronic, Folk, Hip-Hop, Jazz, Pop, R&B, Reggae, Rock, Soul, Soundtrack, and World . I have a massive library and I'd like to use more specific genres, but there are simple too many. Do I really need to see: lo-fi, chillwave, shoegaze, pop-punk, and so on? I used to use "indie," but what does that even mean anymore?

In my searches I've found that a plethora of people use the Grouping tag to list sub-genres, I am thinking about using that in my library. The Grouping tag was created mainly for classical music, but I don't listen to that genre. Any other creative uses for Grouping? I was also considering entering record labels in that field.

Year is another easy one, just put the year the album/song was released. If it's a reissue or a deluxe version, I generally put the original release year in the field so that if I'm listening to music from 2009 I don't get random tracks from The Beatles too.

Track Number no explanation necessary. I would like to use the "_ of _" section more often though.

Disc Number I only use this field if a record has more than one disc as most albums are 1 of 1 and I don't see the point in wasting all of that time filling the field out. I like using the field so that my album fields aren't cluttered with: "Brit Box (Disc 1), Brit Box (Disc 2), Brit Box (Disc 3), Brit Box (Disc 4)"

Comments isn't a field that I use often. If it's a live recording and I know the date and where it's from I'll put it in there. Sometimes I'll put a few random notes about the song if it's available, but for the most part I leave this field blank.

I currently do not use the Composer or BPM fields.

[exitenglish1208]

i'm really OCD about my library and i hate that my ipod/iphone shows "Rise against" and "Rise Against" as different artists, it happens an annoying amount. one of the worst culprits on mine right now thta i keep forgetting to fix is "Tegan and Sara" vs. "Tegan & Sara"

i dont know how people have libraries full of "track 01" and stuff like that...i have to have album artwork for pretty much everything as well.

pretty good post, the only thing i really do differently is i dont label covers, or at least it's not a big deal to me

[thisisahiijack]

i had a folder of about 1200 albums that were untagged, separated from the main folder, that i was planning on tagging eventually. a few months back i said screw it and just added them to the rest because i don't really care anymore.

[danthemjfan23]

i have a few artists that i have TONS of live recordings for (jawbreaker, alkaline trio, nirvana - just to name a couple), and it started to get kind of hard to search through an artist's albums and find the live sets - or the specific live set i was looking for - if they are listed like this:

24 Hour Revenge Therapy

92-3-21 at 924 Gilman Street

Bivouac

Cat's Cradle - 4/11/96

Dear You

Live At The King's Head Inn 6-6-1993

etc. etc. etc. (no pun intended with the jawbreaker theme haha)... so i started listing all Live sets like this:

(1990-06-28) on WFMU in East Orange, NJ

(1992-03-21) at 924 Gilman Street in Berkeley, California

(1993-05-29) at CBGB's in New York City, NY

putting the year first keeps things organized chronologically, which i really like. having a "0" in front of a single-digit month/date assures this, as well. otherwise you'd have 1992-11-5 listed before 1992-5-5.

putting the date listed first in parentheses also keeps ALL of the live sets grouped together, and all of the albums grouped together afterward. i try to keep everything listed as detailed as possible, including the venue's name and the city/state if i know all of that info. if not, i do a quick google search for missing details.

i have found it much easier to find exactly what i'm looking for since i've gone to this system. the only problem is having album art for all of the live sets. to solve that problem, i'll do some more searching on google and try to find a live picture that was taken at the show in question. if i can't find one, i'll just use a picture of the venue sometimes, or a rare press photo of the band or something. i try not to use the same picture for 2 live sets to avoid confusion and repetition.

[benchwarmer]

yea this drives me nuts! I'm glad that itunes added the "hide album artist" option, it was really messing with my list.

[kirbypuckett]

Dan - I like that for live stuff. I have a bunch of Weezer live recordings, but I don't have them in my library, I might implement that if I decide to copy them over.

[danthemjfan23]

by all means, go for it! i know it's not for everybody, but i personally love listening to live recordings (if it's of a band i'm familiar with). i love listening to stage banter and being able to see a band's personality come through. i love when i have a few shows that were recorded very close to each other (June 6, 8, and 9 of 1993 by jawbreaker, for example) to see how they play with the setlist, and how each show gets a slightly different performance. that kind of stuff really tickles me. i especially enjoy it with bands like jawbreaker and nirvana, since i was never able to see them perform live.

[chiefwahoo]

Do you make all of these modifications in iTunes or before you import them? The accountant in me wants to be as particular as you guys are, but I feel like it's inevitable that iTunes or my computer will shit the bed and when I re-import everything, I'll lose all of that work.

Or do I not understand how all of this works? That's entirely possible.

[danthemjfan23]

i do it once i'm in iTunes. sometimes i'll re-name the folders in my computer beforehand if they're something like

([www.iloveputtingmynamehere.blogspot.com]1996-5-18 live at crocodile cafe)

but usually i don't care how it appears in my computer, as along as it appears the way i want it to in my media players.

[kirbypuckett]

Do you make all of these modifications in iTunes or before you import them? The accountant in me wants to be as particular as you guys are, but I feel like it's inevitable that iTunes or my computer will shit the bed and when I re-import everything, I'll lose all of that work.

Or do I not understand how all of this works? That's entirely possible.

The information is stored within the MP3 file. So if iTunes dies, you'll still have all your hard work.

[destroyingthescene]

another thing that hasn't been mention that i'm also pretty anal about is the album artwork. i try to get the highest resolution and quality to go for each album in my itunes. if i can't find it online i will scan in the CD cover if i own the CD version. i hate having an image a little bit bigger than a thumbnail to go along with an album in itunes, even though i only occassionaly enalrge the window.

I'm with you on this. Every single song I have has album artwork for it, live bootlegs will have a random band performance pic and all are pretty decent quality.

Right now I'm in the process of adding lyrics to all of them too - that one's gonna take a while. I've D/L-ed a few programs to automatically add lyrics to the songs I play but with so many obscure songs it really nullifies the program's effectiveness.

Since a lot of my music is pretty incestuous, I've put effort in filling up the Composer field so I can quickly go through someone's entire collection of work over several bands without creating a new playlist.

[destroyingthescene]

Genres are interesting creatures, but I've decided to tame the beasts as minimally as possible. I might regret this one day, but I've decided to just use whatever the iTunes store uses. So I only have a few genres: Alternative, Comedy, Country, Electronic, Folk, Hip-Hop, Jazz, Pop, R&B, Reggae, Rock, Soul, Soundtrack, and World . I have a massive library and I'd like to use more specific genres, but there are simple too many. Do I really need to see: lo-fi, chillwave, shoegaze, pop-punk, and so on? I used to use "indie," but what does that even mean anymore?

Genre is the one thing that drives me insane. Too many sub-genres or bands that cross over different genres that it literally stresses me out when I try to find the best placement. I've been thinking about using Grouping to deal with the sub-genres but I just don't have time to deal with it so I just grin and bear with the standard genre settings.

[bunnypuncher]

I spent a good week once going through all my music and re-labeling all the genres into specific sub-genres. It really helps me when I'm in a certain mood (i.e. black metal, Southern hip hop, etc.), but don't know what specific band or album I want to listen to.

[philviral]

Not entirely on topic, but I've always been torn about how to handle split albums... in terms of what folder to store in, who to set as the primary artist, etc. I've settled on storing them in a "Various Artists" folder along with soundtracks and such, then I use the "Artist" view in Winamp instead of the "Album Artist." For physical records I've started storing split albums under S, essentially using Split as the artist name. (I store my records alphabetical by artist and album name.)

[danthemjfan23]

digitally, i split the album into 2 albums. for example the matt skiba/kevin seconds split, i would label the matt skiba songs under an album called "split with kevin seconds" and the kevin seconds songs under an album called "split with matt skiba."

for physical copies of splits, normally i just file them with the artist who i like more of the two.

if i ever have an album with more than 2 different artists on it, i file that under "various artists."

[kirbypuckett]

digitally, i split the album into 2 albums. for example the matt skiba/kevin seconds split, i would label the matt skiba songs under an album called "split with kevin seconds" and the kevin seconds songs under an album called "split with matt skiba."

for physical copies of splits, normally i just file them with the artist who i like more of the two.

if i ever have an album with more than 2 different artists on it, i file that under "various artists."

I do the exact same thing haha.

[danthemjfan23]

soulmates <3

[troymess]

I do the same thing about splits as mentioned above...

Also, about tagging: I spent my time manually updating my insanely large library (took me months and months). I added artwork to everything as well. I also let iTunes duplicate releases and I'd delete the old original files leaving the iTunes organized library. It's a great setup and it looks really clean and everything is super organized. I just got fed up finally and decided to put the time into it. I'm really happy I did.

[kirbypuckett]

Here's a question...

I have a ton of Weezer tracks from compilations where I don't have the rest of the tracks.

Should I label those as Compilations and put them w/ the rest of my comps, or just leave them as normal so that they appear under Weezer?

[danthemjfan23]

when shit like that happens for me, normally i'll just throw them in an album called "miscellaneous" under the artist's name.

but usually, that's not an issue for me because the completionist/hoarder in me would rather keep the entire compilation... even if i only like 1 or 2 songs on it.

[casey]

You know whose name is hard to keep standardized? Ted Leo & The Pharmacists. I've gotten at least a dozen variations of that name from different places.

[nicole]

i'm really OCD about my library and i hate that my ipod/iphone shows "Rise against" and "Rise Against" as different artists, it happens an annoying amount. one of the worst culprits on mine right now thta i keep forgetting to fix is "Tegan and Sara" vs. "Tegan & Sara"

i dont know how people have libraries full of "track 01" and stuff like that...i have to have album artwork for pretty much everything as well.

this

[kirbypuckett]

You know whose name is hard to keep standardized? Ted Leo & The Pharmacists. I've gotten at least a dozen variations of that name from different places.

Ted Leo and the Pharmacists

Is what I go with.

[chiefwahoo]

You know whose name is hard to keep standardized? Ted Leo & The Pharmacists. I've gotten at least a dozen variations of that name from different places.

Ha, I was thinking the exact same thing when this thread started. Every single time he makes something available, I swear it's a new variation. Hell, the Shake the Sheets demos he posted weren't even attributed to him/them, it was something made up.

[tooclosetosee]

I am fairly OCD with actual folder structure as well I have my music folder seperate from my wifes music folder and inside it I have all of the artists listed and inside of the artist I have a the year that an album came out. For example My Music -> Strung Out -> [2009] Agents Of The Underground.

About 8 months ago I went through and pretty much deleted a bunch of stuff that I had and downloaded discographies of bands and then fixed the tags using an MP3 tag editor which will let you edit multiple things at the same time. I did a lot of stuff that Kirby said but not quite as OCD. I did go into sub-genre so that I can go to "Punk" which I defined as NOFX, Bad Religion type music or "Punk Rock" as defined as Alkaline Trio or the Lawrence Arms type of stuff. I still need to clean up the genre section a little bit. My Rap/Dance/Party music is pretty much a mess, but it isn't anything I take seriously so I don't care as it's mostly hits and singles. Maybe someday I will clean it up as well as my wifes music.

I also converted to the latest version of Windows Media Player after getting pissed off with itunes enough. I also am a huge Windows Media Center nerd and love playing music through my stereo hooked up to my media center and TV.

Whenever I get new music I put it in a special folder to be cleansed before I put it in with the rest of my stuff and have my shit contaminated.

I am also a dork and used Wikipedia to find out the genre for a lot of stuff, and I even have some bands with different genres based on how their style has changed.