Multiple albums in one release or on one CD, recommended tag field names Options

[Fandango]

Hi,

one problem I've come across several times now when tagging music is multi-album releases. Ususally that's a release with a bonus EP either as bonus tracks or as a seperate CD or it's somtimes that the artist considers the second CD of a double CD release to be an independent album.

Over the course of time I have used various homebrew tagging methods to overcome the issues with these misfit releases since I'm not aware that the tagging standards provide for a satisfying solution. Well, I'm not aware of any.

I use foobar2000 as a player which is pretty customizable, tho I'm not quite sure off the bat what its criteria for an album are. Wasn't it changed to be congruent with the active grouping scheme anyway? I think it's still the triumvirat of artist/albumartist, year and album and nothing else.

Anyway, let's get hands-on...

Take for instance a single CD limited edition or re-issue that has an EP as a bonus, four bonus tracks at the end. The thing is, that I don't want to entirely split the main album and the EP up into two independent entities in my music library, my library is strictly release based. So I could just write "<Album title> + <EP title>" to the album tag field, add replaygain to the whole set, the release year and the label name and catalog number and have a good compromise. But the downside is, that I have to know/remember which tracks are part of the album and which are part of the EP, since I have deliberatly spread all regarding information across the whole set of tracks.

But it's not quite perfect. Which mildly annoys me. So I wonder is there another tag field maybe something like "SUBALBUM" that is widely used or is there even a standard one? There are endless solutions that work with the basic tag fields of artist, album and year, but personally I would tend more to add more tag fields.

This post has been edited by Fandango: Mar 25 2012, 15:20

[Soap]

my library is strictly release based.

(In the context of refusing to break a multi-work-single-disc)

I'm only going to mention this, I have no desire to debate the merits of your chosen system, but I see no benefit to this arbitrary decision.

"Release" often varies by geographic or economic region. This seems to me to be a marketing or accounting decision which only serves to furthur the interests of the label, not the artist.

Tagging by content (in this case splitting the disc into two distinct albums through tagging) in order to best attempt to capture artistic intent not only seems more consistent, but also solves this problem neatly.

[pablogm123]

Two suggestions (Homebrew methods) come to mind:

1: Use comment field to specify such case. For example: 1-13, original release, 14-18, bonus tracks.

2: My favourite: Append [Bonus Track] or alike to title field, for example "Blablabla [Bonus Track]".

[derty2]

I have a few albums in my collection which are repackaged by the record label as a 2-for-1 album set.
I view the albums as separate entities which also have a common property.

An example of how I manage this:

Details view of my filesystem:

F:\music\lib\00\popular\percy faith\(1968) angel of the morning\cd. collectables #col-cd-7488_sony #a 54562. part of 2 album set (2002)\01.track.flac

F:\music\lib\00\popular\percy faith\(1971) black magic woman\cd - collectables #col-cd-7488_sony #a 54562. part of 2 album set (2002)\01.track.flac

F:\music\lib\00\popular\ray conniff singers.the\(1959) it's the talk of the town\cd. sony #493046 2. uk. part of 2 album set (1998)\01.track.flac

F:\music\lib\00\popular\ray conniff singers.the\(1960) young at heart\cd. sony #493046 2. uk. part of 2 album set (1998)\01.track.flac

If I drag all the parent folders into my foobar2000 Playlist Viewer, their grouping lines display like this:

Percy Faith   ●   Angel of the Morning   (1968)   ●   Album | CD, Collectables #COL-CD-7488 / Sony #A 54562, USA, Part of 2 album set ©2002

Percy Faith   ●   Black Magic Woman   (1971)   ●   Album | CD, Collectables #COL-CD-7488 / Sony #A 54562, USA, Part of 2 album set ©2002

The Ray Conniff Singers   ●   It's The Talk Of The Town   (1959)   ●   Album | CD, Sony #493046 2, UK, Part of 2 album set ©1998

The Ray Conniff Singers   ●   Young At Heart   (1960)   ●   Album | CD, Sony #493046 2, UK, Part of 2 album set ©1998

As you can see, objects are grouped in my foobar2000 Playlist Viewer as:

Album Artist   ●   Album   (Date)   ●   PRODUCTID

But what is "PRODUCTID" and how is it specified ?

It is a string in the <COMMENT> tag, and in foobar2000, if we go to Properties and have a look at the <COMMENT> tags for both album sets:

<PRODUCTID>Album | CD, Collectables #COL-CD-7488 / Sony #A 54562, USA, Part of 2 album set ©2002</PRODUCTID/>

<PRODUCTID>Album | CD, Sony #493046 2, UK, Part of 2 album set ©1998</PRODUCTID/>

The PRODUCTID string is retrieved from the <COMMENT> tag for display in the Playlist Viewer grouping line using this title-formatting expression:

$if($strstr(%comment%,<PRODUCTID>),'   ●   '$trim($substr(%comment%,$add($strstr(%comment%,<PRODUCTID>),$len(<PRODUCTID>)),$sub($strstr(%comment%,</PRODUCTID/>),1))),)

So... I am sitting back listening to one of the albums playing in foobar2000...
I enjoy this album by this artist very much...
so I look at the details in the Playlist Viewer, and I notice it says "Part of a 2 album set"...
I wonder if I have the other part in my Media Library ???
So I open the foobar2000 Library Search window and type a query using the catalog number as seen in the Playlist Viewer grouping line:

%comment% HAS #A 54562

OK! ...I have both albums! ...I think I might listen to the other one now.

Bye.

[DigitalMan]

I look at multiple disc releases as a victim of the limitations of the playing time of the media they are released in. When CDs are long gone it will seem very odd that someone ripped an album to separate folders, track numbers, etc. based on which disc the tracks were from. However, I do understand the desire to track the original release.

My personal practice - I name them all as the same "Album" name, use the "Disc" field in the tags to specify the media, and I just serially number all of the tracks. If three discs contain 50 tracks, then I have tracks 1-50 with the disc numbers in the "Disc" field. If there are other differentiations in the discs (studio vs. live, bonus tracks, different time period / "era", etc.) I just use the "Comments" tag for that.

YMMV

[Soap]

I look at multiple disc releases as a victim of the limitations of the playing time of the media they are released in.

The OP's scenario is exactly the opposite of what you appear to think it is. OP is talking about multiple releases, one disc. You appear to be discussing multiple discs, one release.

[DigitalMan]

Ah, so it would seem...my bad.

[Fandango]

Yeah, for the scenario that an album is spread across multiple discs there's already the tag fields "disc", "discnumber" and "disctotal" which apart from some differing views on what to use, work quite well.

Hm, it seems there really is no tagging standard for "sub-albums" or multi-albums compilation releases. Personally I would not use the comment field, simply because foobar2000 can use any tag field you want for sorting and therelike. It would make perfect sense to use %subalbum% for instance, and then %album% would be track 1 to n's %subalbum% + tracks n to x's %subalbum%. Then the track name columns could be something like "[%subalbum%': ']%title%". I think I'll try that out.

Now I still have one problem left:

For the %year% tag of the album I use the original release year (i.e. year of the first issue), which somewhat breaks with my release based database agenda, for the date of the actual release I use another tag field and let it be displayed after the album title in parenthesis along with the label and the label's catalog number. Usually that works well, but not so for compilation releases where there are original releases from different years on one CD. foobar2000 would split the album in two if I'd stick strictly to using %year% for their respective original release years. So I'd have to make the compromise and either use the year of the release that is at the beginning of the CD or is the main release and not the bonus release. I would not break my rule and use the year of the compilation reissue as the %year% since that would mess up the sorting in the artist discography. I could think about adding another tag field %original year% and use it similar to the %subalbum% field... hmmm, maybe "$if(%subalbum%,[%original year%' - ']%subalbum%': ')%title%"!

Here's my current "Title / Track artist" column and it works great so far:

CODE

$if($stricmp($cut(%path%,4),http),%path%' - '%title%,$if(%subalbum%,[%original year%' - ']%subalbum%': ')$if(%track%,$ifequal(%title%,%track%,[%track artist%' //'],[%track artist%' // ']%title%),[%track artist%' // ']%title%))

With comments:

CODE

$if($stricmp($cut(%path%,4),http),%path%' - '%title%,        # this is to identify some radio stations which don't have very meaningful title information

$if(%subalbum%,[%original year%' - ']%subalbum%': ')        # my solution for multi-album releases that preserves the release as one entity

$if(%track%,$ifequal(%title%,%track%,[%track artist%' //'],    # if a track has no title I delete the title tag field, in which case fb2k remaps the %title% to the %file name% which is ugly in this specific scenario

[%track artist%' // ']%title%),                                # the track title and track artist
[%track artist%' // ']%title%))                                # the track title and track artist

The reason why I base my music library on releases is that I may have different releases of the same albums and because internet databases like Discogs are also release based, and of course because it's what you buy in one package.

This post has been edited by Fandango: Mar 26 2012, 04:00