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Topic: Tricking myself in the need of a ERYear colum (Read 2419 times) previous topic - next topic
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Tricking myself in the need of a ERYear colum

Hi There,

Lately I was thinking that I needed a 3th year column.
I have a lot of compilation songs and for a certain song I had the following situation:

year   original year
2002  1998
It was a compilation cd and I knew the song was from the 80's a normal title artist search on Google learned me that it was 1981 so I thought I need a 3th year column the Earliest Release Year or ERYear column.

A moment later my flaw in this thinking became clear to me.
Year should always be the year the song is released in that form, be it in a compilation cd or a slightly other version and Original Year should always be the first release year.

When we hear a song original/remixed/live etc we often ask ourselves from what year was that song.   We always mean the original
 release date because it's a nostalgic feeling.

So what is the best way to get the earliest release date from a song by a certain artist be filled in ..
Is there a Google scraper?

Kind Regards
Guy


Re: Tricking myself in the need of a ERYear colum

Reply #1
A widespread convention is for %date% to be the same across all tracks of a release (compilation), or else the media library or playlist will create a new grouping branch for each year.

Indeed there are at least three dates on a compilation album. The date in which the album was first compiled and released is the most important (%date%), the date of a track, if published earlier, then the remaster date of the album, probably least important, because the album fundamentally (or at all) doesn't change when reissued. If you were to browse a collection by remaster dates, they would span wide range of years, unrelated to when the music was made.

The 1980s compilation should carry the 2002 as date (a quick search doesn't reveal 1998, but maybe that is correct). The remaining dates should go into other fields. I would look at the artwork and see if it has a (P) year listed for each track, and use that. Maybe the ISRC code from disc could give an indication too. The year when the track appeared as a single or on studio album is probably correct ±1 year. I typically search for it on Google with Discogs or Wikipedia keyword. I am not aware of an automatic method.

If the track is a re-recording, as sometimes happens on compilations, I think the later date should be used to inform you that it is a different performance of the song.

In my collection I use %track date%, a somewhat unspecific label (doesn't tell if it is year of publication or recording), but usually the precise metadata is not available, and the dates are accurate enough. I could imagine even more dates could be used.

Re: Tricking myself in the need of a ERYear colum

Reply #2

In my collection I use %track date%, a somewhat unspecific label (doesn't tell if it is year of publication or recording), but usually the precise metadata is not available, and the dates are accurate enough. I could imagine even more dates could be used.

This doesn't seem to work for me...I didn't found a reference to this pattern here
http://wiki.hydrogenaud.io/index.php?title=Foobar2000:ID3_Tag_Mapping

Anyway I'm interested in the first release date of a song for that group.....
So "Orig Year" should IMHO carry 1981, because the the year has only nostalgic meaning for most of us.


Kind Regards
Guy

Re: Tricking myself in the need of a ERYear colum

Reply #3
Yes, it isn't in those mappings, but those only concern the MP3 format. Neither is "ERYear" there. Use whatever name you like, as long as it doesn't conflict with other fields, and gets interpreted differently by a player. I would choose a longer label that is more descriptive, consists of two/three English words, in case you or someone else reads the tags later. (For me "track" contrasts with "release", the latter obviously being for the whole group, album of audio files.)

Some examples:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

 

Re: Tricking myself in the need of a ERYear colum

Reply #4


Various Artists
Back to My Place Baby

"I Can't Stand the Rain"
Date: 2009
Track Date: 1973

ISRC: GBAFR7310002



https://www.google.com/search?q=%22I+Can%27t+Stand+the+Rain%22&oq=%22I+Can%27t+Stand+the+Rain%22&aqs=chrome..69i57&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

For me it's all about discovering and remembering when a song by a certain Artist was performed

So in the case of " I can't stand the rain" from Tina Turner one needs only 2 dates The date that song was released in that compilation cd 2009 and the date Tina Turner first released it 1984

However Ann Peebles released it first in 1973 and even Seal did a version in 2008 as did Eruption, Lowell George in 1977
I guess when I search the title in Foobar2000 I will get all the version which I own.
Google will tell me the versions as well as you can see in screenshot and MusicBrainz will give me even more dates

So I still think 2 dates are needed:
Artist+title+releasedate=date and Earliest releasedate for that song by that artist= Orig Year

The only question that remains is if %ORIGINAL RELEASE DATE% TORY/TDOR is the actual first date that Tina Turner released this song or does it get the value from Ann Peebles 1973.

Kind Regards

Re: Tricking myself in the need of a ERYear colum

Reply #5
The only question that remains is if %ORIGINAL RELEASE DATE% TORY/TDOR is the actual first date that Tina Turner released this song or does it get the value from Ann Peebles 1973.

If you ask me, TDOR is the first release date of that specific recording. So, not only I wouldn't take into account other artists' versions, but not even other versions by the same artist. For example, the %ORIGINAL RELEASE DATE% of the live version of I Can't Stand the Rain published on Tina Live in Europe would be 1988, and not 1984.
I'm late

Re: Tricking myself in the need of a ERYear colum

Reply #6


If you ask me, TDOR is the first release date of that specific recording. So, not only I wouldn't take into account other artists' versions, but not even other versions by the same artist. For example, the %ORIGINAL RELEASE DATE% of the live version of I Can't Stand the Rain published on Tina Live in Europe would be 1988, and not 1984.


I don't know where 1988 is coming from but Wikipedia as MusicBrainz give me other dates.
MusicBrainz is picky about "I can't stand the rain" AND artist:"Tina Turner"
Picking a first release date for a specific recording in a certain Country goes a little to far for my taste, I even dare to think that those different release date will not be more than a year apart which is more than accurate enough for the majority of people.

Where did your 1988 came from?

The question of how to automatically fill the TDOR release into the field of Orig Year is not yet answered.

Kind regards
Guy Forssman

Re: Tricking myself in the need of a ERYear colum

Reply #7
Where did your 1988 came from?

1988 is the release date of the album Tina Live in Europe. As wikipedia states, "The album is compiled of live performances made between 1985 and 1987". Hence, the performance and thus the recording of I Can't Stand the Rain on that album is not the same as the studio version of the 1984 album Private Dancer, and it was released for the first time only in 1988, with the live album.

I have neither of those albums and I don't know how similar they sound, but it is not uncommon to have totally different versions of the same song by the same artist, maybe because it is a remix or a different edit, or maybe just a different arrangement. The original release date is to me very important for historical/musicological reasons rather than nostalgic and a change in style is often a testament of the evolution of music genres or of the artist's personal evolution (this is especially true for jazz standards).
That's why I think it is important to relate the original release date to the specific recording or performance, rather than the nominal track.



The question of how to automatically fill the TDOR release into the field of Orig Year is not yet answered.

I don't think that can easily be accomplished. I guess you could pull data with some jscript code from an online database like musicbrainz, but would you trust the accuracy of such data? Honestly I wouldn't. When adding new music to the library I always check for the correct historical information of the albums I'm tagging for the first time on wikipedia or other sources. What you can do, beyond that, is set up your configuration in order to make it as easy as possible to check fro cross references in your music library. As an example, attached is a screenshot showing how I check, while listening, for all versions (actually tracks with the same title) of the playing track. I can instantly see all release years of the same title track by the same or other artists, and eventually check for consistency of the original release date.
I'm late

Re: Tricking myself in the need of a ERYear colum

Reply #8
The question of how to automatically fill the TDOR release into the field of Orig Year is not yet answered.
...I don't think that can easily be accomplished. I guess you could pull data with some jscript code from an online database like musicbrainz, but would you trust the accuracy of such data?
I would not, do not, and could not. Musicbrainz is a database for digital recordings released since the early 1980s. Though the OP doesn't want to pick nits (the date in which country a track was released first), when it comes to compilations (be they greatest hits, soundtracks, or various artist collections) sometimes the single mix is included, other times the album cut. In a lot of cases the 'same' studio version of a track can often be quite different in terms of length, channels, dirty lyric content and original release date.

Take a track like The Who's "I Can't Explain":
It was released in December 1964 by Decca in the USA. Which year would MusicBrainz assign it? I assume the Live at Leeds recording date of 1970...But that's not even the correct decade.
Neither an audiophile, nor album snob. Why do ratings threads always have someone saying they don't believe in rating music?
Record Label Icons: 600x600 pngs appropriate for any color background:
freeimage.host/johnbuck/?list=images&sort=name_asc&page=1

Re: Tricking myself in the need of a ERYear colum

Reply #9
At first I thought implementing a tag for the recording year of every track would be neat but for the various reasons mentioned above it quickly becomes way more complicated. My in between solution is to tag it with a decade tag (1970s, 2000s, 2010s,.....). This has its purpose because sometimes I'd like to listen to a genre of music isolated within a specific decade. 1970s rock tends to be something completely different compared to 2000s rock for example even if you dig deeper with specific subgenres. For Classical I limit it to the century like 17th century, 18th century,.... because I'm too lazy to look up each specific year of every classical recording.

I usually distinguish between 4 types of re-recordings of a track: remix, acoustic, demo, live. Each variant I will tag the decade of the first original release unless the rendition in its form speaks more to the decade it's "remade" for. This is also something I do when a different artist covers an already released song, if the rendition is a sufficiently different version more than it will be tagged the decade it was recorded in and not the decade the original version was released.
For example: Elvis Presley - Suspicious Minds (1960s) but Fine Young Cannibals - Suspicious Minds (1980s) because it's the same song but completely different 1980s synth interpretation. A straight up cover version or copy of Suspicious Minds I would still tag 1960s.

Re: Tricking myself in the need of a ERYear colum

Reply #10
Take a track like The Who's "I Can't Explain":
It was released in December 1964 by Decca in the USA. Which year would MusicBrainz assign it? I assume the Live at Leeds recording date of 1970...But that's not even the correct decade.

OT: I just realized I don't have and never heard the original 1964 version of this song.
I'm late

Re: Tricking myself in the need of a ERYear colum

Reply #11
The OP may wanna try playing around w/MusicBrainz Picard, it supposedly will update/correct/add only the tags you designate
Neither an audiophile, nor album snob. Why do ratings threads always have someone saying they don't believe in rating music?
Record Label Icons: 600x600 pngs appropriate for any color background:
freeimage.host/johnbuck/?list=images&sort=name_asc&page=1

Re: Tricking myself in the need of a ERYear colum

Reply #12
The OP may wanna try playing around w/MusicBrainz Picard, it supposedly will update/correct/add only the tags you designate

The Musicbrainz website doesn't track title recording year on its website so I'm not sure where Musicbrainz Picard would get its info then.  Musicbrainz  will provide album date but that's not what OP is looking for.