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MP3 tags need revamping
Authored by: gidds on Aug 26, '05 02:48:15PM
I guess this is an awkward situation where we've all come up with our own unique solutions.

Mine's to set 'Artist' to whoever I most identify the track with, which will be the band/performer for modern music, and the composer for classical. In the 'Composer' field I put the composer in all cases; I find the duplication for classical tracks bearable. And in the 'Comments' field I put the performer(s): for classical, I list soloists, choir, orchestra and/or director; and for modern music I list the band members and their instruments. (I have to truncate that occasionally due to the 256-char limit, but it usually holds enough to be getting on with.)

I also customise the 'Album' name slightly. Firstly, all my album names are in capital letters, which makes them stand out from the Artist and Track names. And for classical works, I tend to prefix with the composer, e.g. 'BACH: FRENCH SUITES'. In many cases this matches the title printed on the CD; it also puts most of a composer's work together in the album list, and (most importantly) helps distinguish many CDs that would otherwise have the same name, e.g. 'MADRIGALS' or 'SACRED MUSIC' or 'PIANO CONCERTOS' or whatever.

If you want to use a redundant field, there's always 'Grouping'. I use that to identify the source of the track, whether my own CD, a CD borrowed from family or friends, a recording from the radio, a track downloaded from a (legal) web site, etc. Jolly useful.

(I've arrived at this system after a few attempts. For a long while I included the bare details of classical performer or ensemble in brackets after the album title, but this made for hugely long titles, didn't let me include enough, and made an unreadable mess on the iPod and iTunes mini window. It's a shame you can't view comments or other fields on the iPod, but I can't find a better compromise than I have now.)

---
Andy/

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