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Topic: Question about the RELEASEDATE tag (Read 2956 times) previous topic - next topic
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Question about the RELEASEDATE tag

Hello,
I decided to use the DATE field for storing the original year, the year when the album was first released, before it was re-issued or remastered in any form. However, I'm not sure what field should I use for the re-issue or remaster date. Any idea?

There is a tag named RELEASECOUNTRY for specifying the country of the re-issue/remaster.  I also noticed some tagging applications such as Kid3 in Linux have a RELEASEDATE tag as well. I think RELEASEDATE would be an option.

I know there is no standard and I don't think any of the players out there use LABEL, CATALOGNUMBER, RELEASEDATE in any form at all. I think those tags are just for viewing/comment purposes. Right?

If I use RELEASEDATE can that cause certain media players to stop? or the music not to play? or any other playing issues?

Re: Question about the RELEASEDATE tag

Reply #1 –
I use my own tag ALBUMVERSION for what you need. FLAC's tagging scheme is free format, and players should know that and play just fine.

That said, some tags are designed as instructions to the player to affect playback - notably, the Replaygain tags are made as instructions to the player to change volume.

Re: Question about the RELEASEDATE tag

Reply #2 –
I use ReleaseDate for this purpose. For me, it makes more sense to store the original date, and the reissue only if it is reliably known. You can use any fields you like.

Re: Question about the RELEASEDATE tag

Reply #3 –
Quote from: j7n on
I use ReleaseDate for this purpose. For me, it makes more sense to store the original date, and the reissue only if it is reliably known. You can use any fields you like.
Thank you. Do you store the original date in DATE? and the reissue/remaster date in ReleaseDate?

The RELEASEDATE (aka. TDRL in id3v2) doesn't seem to be the best fit:

    TDRL
    The 'Release time' contains a timestamp describing when the
    audio was first released. Timestamp format is described in
    the ID3v2 structure document [ID3v2-strct].

I was thinking about ISSUEDATE, or as porcus uses, ALBUMVERSION. Even though, I don't know if porcus stores only the year in ALBUMVERSION. I would like to store only the year, nothing else.
Does every time an album version is released it is considered an ISSUE? Just asking because I'm not a native English speaker and I have limited knowledge of musical albums.

Re: Question about the RELEASEDATE tag

Reply #4 –
Yes, that's right. In the rare case when the album has a special subitle ("40th Anniversay Edition") I store it in ReleaseName. MusicBrainz has a few fields named Release
  • , and I took inspiration from those.

Good players usually display all tags as a list. The MusicBrainz set is as close to a "standard" as we got. The more we align to these, the greater the chance that software will be preset to use them.

Re: Question about the RELEASEDATE tag

Reply #5 –
Looking at this page: https://picard-docs.musicbrainz.org/downloads/MusicBrainz_Picard_Tag_Map.html
"Release Date" defaults to "Date", and "Date" in Picard is used for re-issues and remasters, so yes the "RELEASEDATE" I think can be used for the remasters then.

1973 - The Dark Side of the Moon [Capitol Records CDP 7 46001 2 · US · 1985]

DATE=1973
RELEASECOUNTRY=US
RELEASEYEAR=1985

That's how you're doing it, right?

Re: Question about the RELEASEDATE tag

Reply #6 –
I also use the RELEASEDATE to exactly this purpose

Re: Question about the RELEASEDATE tag

Reply #8 –
I like seeing all versions, pressings, masters of an album grouped together so that means they all get the same date. To keep them separated and identifiable, I put extra info in the album tag, such as...

Brothers in Arms [MFSL UDSACD 2099]

If it's a remaster, it'd get something like "Brothers in Arms [2015 Remaster]"

Simple. I can always see it. No hunting for tags. The directory the album is stored in gets the same treatment.

Re: Question about the RELEASEDATE tag

Reply #9 –
Personally, I don't use the DATE field as it was unclear which date I was meant to use. I now only use ORIGINALDATE for when it was originally released, and RELEASEDATE for when that particular issue/reissue, etc. was released.

Re: Question about the RELEASEDATE tag

Reply #10 –
Quote from: clintb on
If it's a remaster, it'd get something like "Brothers in Arms [2015 Remaster]"

Simple. I can always see it. No hunting for tags. The directory the album is stored in gets the same treatment.
Me too, except I use curly brackets {}, usually only put the year in there and only for a newer release, like a remaster.
The original release doesn't get any extras in the album tag—with some rare exceptions, because sometimes there are multiple original releases that differ in a significant way (like vinyl, for example).
It's not a perfectly consistent method, but I like to keep the main tags and folder names as clean as possible.
The Date tag for me has only the original release year (with no months and days).

But for every album I put all the detailed info (including label, bar code, format ....) in the Comment tag.

I might still change some things in the future. And classical music has its own challenges...