Minor song naming convention issues

2013-09-22 16:59:54

First thing: I have a lot of spare time so a lot of what I'm talking about may seem stupid. Also I realise with a lot of this there is no right answer but I'd appreciate knowing how other people would deal with these situations!!!

1) Dev released a mixtape called "Dev Is Hot: The Mixtape". It contains some songs by other artists which feature Dev. Would you say that, while Dev is the ALBUM ARTIST, these other songs should not have Dev as their ARTIST? For example: Like a G6 (Feat. The Cataracs & Dev) by Fast East Movement. In this mixtape it should be named as such, rather than "Like a G6 (Feat. The Cataracs & Far East Movement)?

2) Would you always put (X Cover) for a cover song? For example, Nightwish have song called "Over the Hills and Far Away" which is a Gary Moore cover. However, iTunes, discogs, and Amazon do not indicate it is a cover. Only Wikipedia lists it as a (Gary Moore cover). Another example: Shakira has a song called Islands. I don't think anywhere indicates it is an (The xx Cover) which I find odd.

3) How would you name unofficial demos of the same song? For example, Lana Del Rey has a few demos of the same song which were leaked: Lolita  has 4. Would you write them as Lolita (Demo), Lolita (Demo II), etc OR Lolita (Demo 1), Lolita (Demo 2), etc OR Lolita (Demo v1), Lolita (Demo v2) etc?

4) When a song is live, I ALWAYS write (Live). If it is acoustic, I write (Acoustic). If it is live and acoustic, I write (Live Acoustic). Some places write (Live Version), or (Acoustic Version), or (Live) (Acoustic Version) etc. What do you do?

5) Do you have an order for brackets? For example in this fake song: Hello (123 Cover) (Feat. Bob) (Live).

6) Some songs use guest vocals but they aren't necessarily too important. For example, Nightwish have two songs: Kinslayer from the album Wishmaster uses Ike Vil's voice. Another song called Erämaan Viimeinen ‎specifically mentions Jonsu as the featured singer. iTunes and Amazon do not mention Ike Vil but do they mention Jonsu, whereas Discogs and Wikipedia mention both. I don't think many people even know of Ike Vil's contribution but many know of Jonsu, so how do you do deal with songs which do contain guest vocals but in very minor amounts such that most places do not even mention it? [I think the problem is that you'd only know about Ike Vil when Nightwish release the full details of each song such as who played what instrument. Discogs has this information but iTunes doesn't]

7) Would you write (Acoustic) or (Acoustic Version)? What about (Demo) vs (Demo Version)?

Minor song naming convention issues

Reply #1 – 2013-09-22 18:06:00

Generally, i use the exact title on the CD case. Except if it's live:

4. I put 'Live' as the genre. For the album i put 'Venue (City, State/Country)'. If it came from an album (rather than a bootleg), i note the album name in the comment. Title is just the normal title of the song.
When you start collecting whole shows, adding (Live) to each and every title is kind of redundant.

Minor song naming convention issues

Reply #2 – 2013-09-23 15:08:00

1) I would name it "Like A G6" and have "The Cataracs; Dev; Fast East Movement" in the artist tag and have Dev as the album artist.

2) I would put Nightwish as the artist and Gary Moore as the original artist in a separate tag.  For some artists they actually do a cover of a cover so I put the original artist and the covered artist in the original artist tag, separated into a multivalue tag with a semicolon.

3) I wouldn't put any unofficial release in my collection.  I'm not opposed to have multiple versions of the same track share the exact same name, though.

4) I use square brackets for this sort of thing and only put "[Live]" or "[Acoustic]" at the end of the track if that's how it is on the tracklist.  I pretty much just stick to what is on the tracklist for this, just changing capitalization ([TV size] -> [TV Size]) and breaking each descriptor into separate brackets ([Live Instrumental] -> [Live][Instrumental]).  Album title doesn't get Live added to it unless that's part of the official title.

5) Never really thought about it but in that example both '123 Cover' and 'Feat. Bob' wouldn't be in the title tag.

6) I put all specifically listed guest musicians in the artist tag*.  If a song lists blah blah blah on the accordion but doesn't give any specific tracks I don't list it in the artist field.  Liner notes are handy.  I'd love to just have scans of everything and not list all the guests musicians in the artist tag but even some scans don't have the most complete info which is unfortunate.

7) Whatever it says on the tracklist but in square brackets.  If the tracklist says "(Acoustic Ver.)" I make it "[Acoustic Ver.]" and "(Acoustic Ver)" would be made "[Acoustic Ver]".


*This can get a bit crazy like with "Last Living Souls" by Gorillaz.  It ended up being "Gorillaz; Simon Tong; Sally Jackson; Prabjote Osahn; Amanda Drummond; Stella Page; Isabelle Dunn; Al Mobbs; Emma Smith" in the artist tag.

Here are some examples of my tagging:
https://i.minus.com/ibx6FP0t3L4yOm.png
https://i.minus.com/iiopxUEy6J2wQ.png
https://i.minus.com/ibjyYixSODDbDw.png
https://i.minus.com/iLoztOSX4tL5m.png
https://i.minus.com/islv34RkSGYoW.png

Note: My collection is FLAC and I make use of my own tags and multivalue tags in foobar2000.

I'm obsessive about my tags if you couldn't tell.  There are always annoyances, though.

Minor song naming convention issues

Reply #3 – 2013-09-27 05:25:40

I like to keep my tags clean, and neat and only a few fields filled in. This reduces the risk of annoying differences between devices that might see things differently, ie a zune will organize by 'track artist' if present instead of album artist. If I leave track artist blank, no issue, it organizes properly. So basically only artist, album, title, track, genre, year. That's it.

1.I like my music organized by artist and album, so yes, Dev would be the album artist for all of those songs. And of course, blank track artist. 'Like a G6' I would title exactly as listed on the cd case.

2.Only as it's titled on the back of the disc

3.Don't keep demos or leaks as part of my 'collection' even if I've listened to them from time to time.

4.See number 2.

5.See number 2.

6.Since I only use album artist, the only place a guest vocal would be listed is if it is part of the track title. This is where I take some liberty with number 2, because I hate for example a track that is titled 'blah (featuring xx, xxx, xx, xx, xx and xx)', I will truncate this down to just the actual title of the song if it's too long/annoying. And definitely no guests in the tags themselves

7.If it's an acoustic or demo version that's a bonus track added to an official release, I use whatever is listed on the TOC. Otherwise, again I don't keep it as part of my collection.

Minor song naming convention issues

Reply #4 – 2013-09-27 10:00:03

A) aim for consistency.
B) consider what you will use the tags for, and let that guide you.
C) do it in a way that can be (completely automatically) parsed into a different form should you ever want to. one example of this: enclose the extra bits in a different type of brackets that are never used for anything else.
D) consider what will happen if you ever need to convert to a different format with a different tagging standard.

I use whatever it says on the CD case for titles, I use album artist for main artist, (track) artist includes a duplicate of this and/or extra/other artists where appropriate.

I disambiguate album titles where they are non-unique for the artist. e.g. Beatles Rubber Soul [UK] vs Beatles Robber Soul [USA]. I disambiguate track titles where they are non-unique for the album - but that would almost always be done in the CD inlay tracklisting anyway. A live album will have "live" in the album title - I don't add "live" to the track title in this case.

I include bootlegs, DJ mixes, radio recordings etc in my main collection if I want to listen to them. They are, after all, just a special form of artist album or compilation or soundtrack or spoken word, and I already have those covered. Where there are enough to make it worthwhile, I might add something to all of them to make sorting easier. I've never dreamt of tagging whether something was a cover or not.

Whatever works consistently for you and your collection is good. Following point C above will ensure it'll still be manageable as you and/or your collection changes.

Cheers,
David.