Tags And Capitalization Question Options

[jasnic02]

Here's a problem that has really been bugging me. I want to know how everyone else handles capitalization in their file tags and filenames. I have read the guide that cddb suggests, which is different than what musicbrainz.org wants, which is different than what freedb wants, which might all be different to what everyone else wants. I am trying to add this to a perl script that I use for all my encoding and I want to get it right this time!

Do you uppercase the first character in all the words? Do you leave certain words like 'a', 'an', 'the', 'of' lowercase? Any others you leave lowercase? I have looked at English rules for capitalization for song titles and it gets real confusing. For instance, prepositions that are less than five letters long (at, by, for, etc) or lower-case, but only when followed by a noun. How do you script the exeptions for that?

What if the song has the artist 'Featuring' another artist? Or 'With' another artist? Do you append that to the track name instead of the artist field? Do you use the abbreviation 'ft.', 'ft', 'Feat.', 'feat.', 'Feat', 'feat', or 'With', 'with'?

If the disc is part of a 2-disc set do you use (Disc 1) or (Disc 1 of 2) in the album field?

So far, I have been capitalizing all the words .. using 'ft' and appending it to the track title instead of the artist field.

Please let me know how you handle this! There must be some sort of standardization or something that most people go by. If not, there should be!

The things I worry about ...

This post has been edited by jasnic02: Jul 4 2003, 20:31

[Boredom801]

Here's a problem that has really been bugging me.  I want to know how everyone else handles capitalization in their file tags and filenames.  I have read the guide that cddb suggests, which is different than what musicbrainz.org wants, which is different than what freedb wants, which might all be different to what everyone else wants.  I am trying to add this to a perl script that I use for all my encoding and I want to get it right this time!

Do you uppercase the first character in all the words?  Do you leave certain words like 'a', 'an', 'the', 'of' lowercase?  Any others you leave lowercase?  I have looked at English rules for capitalization for song titles and it gets real confusing.  For instance, prepositions that are less than five letters long (at, by, for, etc) or lower-case, but only when followed by a noun.  How do you script the exeptions for that?

What if the song has the artist 'Featuring' another artist? Or 'With' another artist?  Do you append that to the track name instead of the artist field?  Do you use the abbreviation 'ft.', 'ft', 'Feat.', 'feat.', 'Feat', 'feat', or 'With', 'with'?

If the disc is part of a 2-disc set do you use (Disc 1) or (Disc 1 of 2) in the album field?

So far, I have been capitalizing all the words .. using 'ft' and appending it to the track title instead of the artist field.

Please let me know how you handle this!  There must be some sort of standardization or something that most people go by.  If not, there should be!

The things I worry about ... 

The English language as a whole can be confusing so I just err on the side of caution and capitolize the first letter in every word. Also, if a song's featuring/with/or performed by (or anything else like that), I put it on the song title, abbreviating 'Feat. <artist name>'. Albums, I do 'Disc 1', not the '1 of 2'. No, I've noticed there isn't a standardization, and I agree there ought to be.

[Canar]

Probably the best way to do a lot of it is to use a tagging format that handles more information than ID3v1.

I have several tags using APEv2 that handle stuff ID3v1 can't. Here are the ones that correspond to your problems:
FEATURING - A tag just for featuring information.
DISC - The disc number in the set.
DISCS - The number of discs in the set.

Then, you can format however you like, inserting tags as needed. That way each person is able to have their own settings. I display featuring tags as "feat." on my screen, and "Ft" on my portable, where I remove all caps, then capitalize every letter that comes after a space.

As for the prepositions/scripting thing, make a wordlist. Ignore the "preceding-a-noun" requirement unless you have access to some high-quality english language parser/interpreter. I do all my tags automatically from FreeDB, then I tweak them as necessary. Because I'm doing archival using MPC q6, I only plan to do it once on all my stuff, so I may as well do it right, no?

I also collapse and expand meaning, depending on situation. For "with" style collaborations, I'd list the second artist in my "featuring" tag. For "vs." collaborations, I use two "artist" tags, with a "collaboration type" tag set to "Versus". One's hierarchical, the other egalitarian. I attempt to interpret which meaning is implied and reproduce it.

With proper tagging and a good, flexible tagging system, you can solve most of your problems.

My main gripe with APEv2 is that it is impossible to specifically link two values. For example, in a DJ mix, there are often several different Artist/Title values in one file. It isn't possible to link them without adding extraneous information to either key or value. It would be nice if there was some way to explicitly associate several values together.

[Jebus]

I don't use any of those special tags for disc #s, featuring etc. because they frankly don't get displayed in any players (I know, Foobar can, I mean portables).
I capitalize every first letter to avoid that issue.
Generally I try name a track exactly what it is called on the disc. If it is called for instance:

Starf*ckers, Inc. (Version)

then says "remixed by Chris Vrenna" inside the album, then I just name it as above. If it actually says:

Starf*ckers, Inc. (Remixed by Chris Vrenna)

then i title it as such. I don't get the consistency I would like, but at least songs are titled as the artist intended.

Similarly, for "composer" i always put exactly what it says in the jacket, separated by /s. Could be formatted like:

Morrissey/Marr
Depeche Mode/M.L. Gore
Placebo
Billy/James/Jimmy/D'Arcy

again depending on how the artist decided was best. I always order them in the order listed in the booklet as well. If it doesn't have a composer listed (very rare) I just put the artist name.

I used to try and fit everything to my own format, but I always ended up going back and changing my mind on things as I encountered exception after exception. It is easiest to just list things the way the artist did.

This post has been edited by Jebus: Jul 5 2003, 20:14

[ScorLibran]

Here's what I've been doing so far, but my digital extraction and encoding process is going through *major* changes right now, since I'm new to HA and new to the really good DAE tools. So the way I do things next week will probably be different than the way I'm doing things right now, but here goes...

I use EAC (calling freedb) to tag my compressed files. I've been taking the easy way out by using menu item Database > Transform Actual CD Information > Upper All First Characters. I know this isn't the gramatically correct way to do it, but it's fast and easy, and I've been focusing more on finding compression methods transparent to my ears than on tagging. Once I get more "settled" then I'll standardize my tagging scheme a little more.

As for artists that are "featured" on a track, I don't use their name in the track name...only in the artist name. My format is, for example, "Chad Kroeger/Josey Scott" as the artist, instead of the more descriptive "Chad Kroeger featuring Josey Scott". Again, one method for all is easier for me than doing it a different way for different albums.

If a CD is part of a multi-disc set, I append the album name with a comma and "Disc #", such as "Physical Graffiti, Disc 1" (if freedb doesn't already list it this way).

As for standardization that is correct for everybody for all of these points, I don't think there is one. There is, I'm sure, a grammatically correct way to capitalize, but how to list featured artists or disc numbers would be entirely up to each person, with no way really being right or wrong (as long as each tag is generally accurate).

My $0.02...

[Omni]

From my old college textbook (Yes! I still keep it around!) The Confident Writer: A Norton Handbook, 2nd ed. (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1988), p. 487:

Begin the first and last words of a title with capitals, as well as all other words except articles, conjunctions, and short prepositions (four letters or fewer):

Much Ado About Nothing
"The Fall of the House of Usher"

The above is easy to follow. No problem. The dilemma arises when trying to make the decision either to be grammatically correct or to respect the arists/publishers lack of respect for correct grammer.

For instance, this Yanni CD I have here is entitled "DARE to dream." Now, do I do the correct thing and title it "Dare To Dream," or do I title it like it's written on the CD? On this I'm split. I tend to respect the artist's wishes in regard to the CD title, but with respect to the the track titles, I usually make them grammatically correct.

Omni

[Canar]

As for standardization that is correct for everybody for all of these points, I don't think there is one.  There is, I'm sure, a grammatically correct way to capitalize, but how to list featured artists or disc numbers would be entirely up to each person, with no way really being right or wrong (as long as each tag is generally accurate).

The point I was trying to make is that the best solution is to use a tagging format that will allow you to insert every datum into its own field, rather than having to composite several data into one field. That way the end-user has the greatest flexibility.

However, there are next to no players out there that allow you this flexibility.

[ScorLibran]

However, there are next to no players out there that allow you this flexibility.

True. In the meantime, I just have to manually intervene after I encode by changing an artist name or track title. A pain to do this for between 10 and 20 tracks for most tag editors, so I use one program that makes changing the tag info on all tracks on an album fairly painless (get ready to cringe...), Windows Media Player 9.

I don't let its FhG codec touch my files, not even using it as a player (for me, that's what dBpowerAMP is for). But, I can dump a directory into it's "media library", then open an artist/album folder, and change the artist or track names for the whole album more quickly than I could by opening and closing the tag of each file manually. For example, to change an artist name for all files in an album, you can just change the name of the artist "directory" in the media library once, and it'll update all tags accordingly. (I'm using ID3v2 tags, if it matters.)

It's tagging features are not "configurable" (to allow the kind of flexibility you refer to), but being able to do batch tagging operations to enforce tag value naming standards for each album is nice.

Luckily only a small fraction of my CDs even require this attention.

[MachineHead]

I cap everything. Proper it is not, but everything in my library is the same then. Couldn't care less about artist integrity. It's on my machine and they ain't never gonna see it anyway.

I use Media Center's 'Clean File Properties' library tool and pick the fields I want done. Usually just the Artist, Album and Name. Not the actual filename, but what is displayed in MC. This can be done if needed though. It's fairly quick, 223 files just took about 10 seconds. I do this mainly with the files I get from Emusic. Only thing it is really missing is a spell checker. But that is an easy fix if I happen to see something that needs attention.

[BadHorsie]

Here's a problem that has really been bugging me. I want to know how everyone else handles capitalization in their file tags and filenames. I have read the guide that cddb suggests, which is different than what musicbrainz.org wants, which is different than what freedb wants, which might all be different to what everyone else wants. I am trying to add this to a perl script that I use for all my encoding and I want to get it right this time!

It seems that everyone has his own namingscheme for this.

Do you uppercase the first character in all the words?

Yes.

Do you leave certain words like 'a', 'an', 'the', 'of' lowercase?  Any others you leave lowercase?

No.

What if the song has the artist 'Featuring' another artist? Or 'With' another artist?  Do you append that to the track name instead of the artist field?  Do you use the abbreviation 'ft.', 'ft', 'Feat.', 'feat.', 'Feat', 'feat', or 'With', 'with'?

"Bugs Bunny Feat. Donald Duck" or "Mariah Carrey With Cable Guy".

If the disc is part of a 2-disc set do you use (Disc 1) or (Disc 1 of 2) in the album field?

Album_Name CD1
Album_Name CD2

i use this rules for my own rips and it's not bad. there are many people who use the same tracknames like on the media. but there are many recordings which have completely uppercased, or completely lowercased tracknames. so it's not a good idea to use them i think.

like Frank Klemm said about genres: "5 people, 6 albums and 7 genres". i don't use genres for my rips. nearly every album today have a new music style.

BadHorsie

This post has been edited by BadHorsie: Jul 6 2003, 14:02

[getID3()]

Throwing my tagging variant into the mix:

Track titles:

• Initial Capitals On All Words, ie Dare To Dream
• Remix/edit/version info appended in parentheses, ie Nice Song (Radio Edit) or Upbeat Song (Hex Hector Club Mix)
• Keyword (Live) appended if recorded not in studio, ie Another Song (Live)
• If song is from another work, keyword "from" (lowercase) and source in double quotes, ie Circle Of Life from "The Lion King"
• Medley components are seperated with tilde, ie Christmas Medley (Jingle Bells ~ O Tannenbaum ~ Sleigh Ride)

Artists:

• Comma-seperated, with last artist &-seperated, ie:
  * Bob Dylan
  * Bob Dylan & Pink Floyd
  * Bob Dylan, Pink Floyd & Yanni
• Featured artists seperated by keyword "feat." (lowercase, period), ie Bob Dylan feat. Pink Floyd, Yanni & Kenny G
• Versus artists seperated by keyword "vs." (lowercase, period), ie Bob Dylan vs. Pink Floyd
• Names with initials do not have periods, ie J S Bach
• Name qualifies spelled out, not abbreviated, ie Tito Puente Junior

Album titles:

• Initial Capitals On All Words, ie Album Of Theirs
• Volume information is specified with keyword "Vol. ##", ie Greatest Hits Vol. 2
• Disc ? of ? information specified with keyword "CD#" (no space, no total-disc-in-set info), ie Best Of Zamfir CD2

Genre:

• Attempt to stick to 147 "standard" ID3v1 genres as much as possible, but am compiling my own list of other standard genre names.
• Genres assigned on per-track, not per-album basis

File naming convention is basically:
\Approximate album genre\Artist Name - Album Title\Artist Name - Track Title.ext
for example:
\Disco\Beegees - Greatest Hits CD2\Beegees - Stayin' Alive.mp3

Straight double quotes in title tags are replaced with “fancy” quotes in file names. Other illegal filename characters are replaced as follows:

CODE

   titles :\/*<>|
filenames;-~-[]

edited: formatting

This post has been edited by getID3(): Jul 6 2003, 18:40

[/\/ephaestous]

Track titles:
- All caps except for a, an, the, of.
- For Remixes I add (Remixed by ...) at the end.
- In Live tracks I add (Live @ ... ) at the end.
- For covers I add (Artist's Cover) at the end.
- Multiple artists are separated by commas and the last one with &.

Album Title
- All caps except for a, an, the, of.
- If it's part of a set the Disc is added to the album name, with Roman numerals
For example: 1962-1966 - Disc II
- The name of the Album is enclosed in brackets.

Genre
I don't use it.

Naming Scheme
Single artist:
Artist - [Album - Disc] - Tracknumber - Title
Example:
The Beatles - [1962-1966 - Disc II] - 04 - Day Tripper

Multiple artists:
Various - [Album - Disc] - Tracknumber - Artist - Title
Example:
Various - [Rock The Night - Disc I] - 10 - Santana - With A Little Help From My Friends

[Canar]

What would be really nice is a hierarchical listing of genre, that way you can be as specific or as general as the music calls for.

[ScorLibran]

Slightly off-topic...

Speaking of tags and genres, I just now ripped Queens of the Stone Age "Songs for the Deaf" in EAC, and when it downloaded the freedb tag info, the genre said "Stoner Rock"!?!? I laughed so hard my side hurts.

Back on topic...

Concerning info about special mixes, and special characters in a song title to signify, for example, "bonus track", I generally leave them as they come. For example, "Discotheque [hexadecimal mix] [edit]" I left alone. This is usually how they appear on the CD case anyway, so I just think of it as the accurate, "intended" song title.

When I first started ripping, I had a bunch of Fatboy Slim remixes that were labeled that way (as well as Beastie Boys, Lo Fidelity All-Stars, and others). I started trying to "clean them up", then decided it was more trouble than it was worth. Not that I couldn't come back and change one later anyway if it really bothered me.

For soundtracks, I add the reference to the album title as in "Heavy Metal [Soundtrack]". The standard "...Music from the Motion Picture" just takes too long to scroll across my car's head unit display, and is sometimes too long to be entirely displayed in the "album" field on my PC. For example, "Lexx: The Series [Soundtrack]" looks better to me than "Lexx: The Series, Original Soundtrack from the Sci-fi TV Se..."

As for genres, they don't mean much to me. I don't sort or seek based on genre. I use my own dynamic playlists, and find my music by artist and/or album only. I do laugh when I rip a CD that's in the "Stoner Rock" genre, though...

[dewey1973]

Here is what I do...

1. download info from freedb via EAC
2. look up the album at allmusic.com
3. make sue the artist, album, and year are correct
4. use allmusic.com's genre (choosing the one I fell fits best)
5. compare the track titles to the cd cover
6. change all feat. and similar abbreviations to the full word
7. I usually put these in parenteses after the track title unless it is a "various artist" album
8. if it is a various artist album I make sure all listed artisit are in the artist field.
9. use Database>Transform Actual CD Information>Lower All Characters
10. use Database>Transform Actual CD Information>Upper All First Caracters
11. check for and fix any odd capitalizations (these result from roman numerals, extra spaces, strange pintuation, etc.)
12. double check against the CD cover to keep any strange capitalization the artist intended.
13. rip
14. change artist information for "various artist" CDs (for example I change sountracks from Various to Original Soundtrack and musicals from Various to Cast Recording)

Here are some examples...

Title: 1STP KLOSR (The Humble Brothers Featuring Jonathan Davis)
Artist:  Linkin Park
Album: Reanimation
Year:    2002
Track: 19
Genre: Alternative Metal

Title: Rearranged / Timbaland (Featuring Bubba Sparxxx)
Artist:  Limp Bizkit
Album: New Old Songs
Year:    2001
Track: 07
Genre: Rap-Metal

Title: FNT - Semisonic
Artist:  Original Soundtrack
Album: 10 Things I Hate About You
Year:    1999
Track: 02
Genre: Alternative Pop/Rock

Title: 83
Artist:  John Mayer
Album: Any Given Thursday (Disc 2)
Year:    2003
Track: 05
Genre: Alternative Pop/Rock

[CyberInferno]

For instance, this Yanni CD I have here is entitled "DARE to dream."  Now, do I do the correct thing and title it "Dare To Dream," or do I title it like it's written on the CD?  On this I'm split.  I tend to respect the artist's wishes in regard to the CD title, but with respect to the the track titles, I usually make them grammatically correct.

I didn't realize there were others that had this same dilemna. When I last ripped my CD's, I quarreled with myself about making the song titles all lowercase if that's how they appeared on the back of the CD, or capitalizing them to my liking. In the end, I decided to capitalize my way unless it appeared that the capitalization was specific. For example, the new Ataris cd, called "So Long, Astoria" has the title track in lowercase. It's the only song that is put in lowercase, so I assumed it was intentional and made the one song lowercase. It is a problem, though

[jasnic02]

Well, this has definitely been helpful for me. I am glad to see that others have the same problem I do .. although I do wish there was some sort of 'tagging etiquette' or something I could out there I could go by. Anyway, what I have decided to do for now is this:

1. Capitalize the first letter of every word (leaving words like DJ and MC uppercase).
2. Dropping the 'of 2' from (Disc 1 of 2) and going with just AlbumName (Disc 1).
3. I am going to add any featuring artists at the end of the track name as TrackTitle (Feat ...) or TrackTitle (With ...). It makes browsing through the artists easier for me when there is one entry for each. Any additional artists are track-specific so it makes sense to me to have them there.
4. Genres - Well, since I don't rely much on the genre field for browsing or playlists I try to be as general as possible. Instead of Metal or Alternative I'll just choose Rock.

I just finished ripping my 700+ cd's and now I think of this stuff. Luckily, this is close to what I have been doing in the past so there won't be many changes to make. The choice I have made for capitalization makes scripting all this a bit easier .. less exceptions.

Slightly off-topic - does anyone know of an interface (preferably via perl) to EAC's cddb.dat file? I have made changes to the tags (corrections and stuff) since ripping the cd's and I would like to incorporate those changes from the tags back into the cddb.dat file so they will be correct if I have to re-rip. I have dumped the cddb.dat file out to a local cddb location and I can manipulate the database that way, but if there was a way to modify the cddb.dat file itself it would save me some time. Thanks!

[rpop]

Sorry if I missed something or wrote something that's already been said, but I'm accessing the internet from a cybercafé where the resolution is 640 x 480 and there's nothing I can do to change it

@Omni
I'd say correct it to Dare To Dream. After all, some albums have all song info written in ALL CAPS; you wouldn't tag those albums LIKE THAT, would you?

As far as an album on multiple CDs is concerned, I don't think adding Disc 1 and Disc 2 is a good idea (except in rare cases, where the two discs were meant to be separate). For example, if you have a concert split on two discs, that was done because of the limitation on the length of the disc, and would have otherwise surely been put on a single disc. The same applies to some double CD albums and compilations.

Also something to think about: if you were recording an album from a tape to a computer (stupid idea to begin with), would you tag half the MP3s with <albumname> (Side 1) and half with <albumname> (Side 2)? My guess is you'd probably just use the album's name, and the same should be done for CDs IMO.

[fileman]

... but then you have again to make a decision (is the splitting intended, or just because of lack of space on one disc?) - and these kinds of decisions are hard to script.

I also think there should be some kind of "etiquette" for tagging - perhaps we can make one at HA?

For me it's important to have genre tags. Sometimes I want to listen to some music when going to bed - so I just choose some genres (excluding metal and other loud stuff), load them into the playlist and activate shuffle. This would be more time consuming when having no genre tags (although they aren't always "right", they're better than nothing). There should be a "law" that artists have to specify the genre on every album
That's again a problem: some band change their style so much over the years, that it's impossible to set the same genre tag every time!

Regards, fileman.

[Sebastian Mares]

I don't care about standards, so I always capitalize all words except "feat.". I have never come across "with" or "meets".

If the title is too big to fit in the ID3v1 tag, like "This Is A Very Long Title Which Won't Fit Inside The ID3v1 "Title" Field", I usually write it like this: "This Is A Very Long Title...".

Also, I always use "Dream Dance 4 (Disc 1)" as an album name for example (if the album consists of more than 1 CD).

This post has been edited by Sebastian Mares: Aug 12 2003, 13:26

[ScorLibran]

Holy thread revival, Batman! This thread takes me waaaaay back to my earliest days at HA...six whole weeks ago. It's nice to know forum search is getting used.

As far as an album on multiple CDs is concerned, I don't think adding Disc 1 and Disc 2 is a good idea (except in rare cases, where the two discs were meant to be separate). For example, if you have a concert split on two discs, that was done because of the limitation on the length of the disc, and would have otherwise surely been put on a single disc. The same applies to some double CD albums and compilations.

That's a point I hadn't thought of. I had been keeping all of my double CDs seperate, only because that's "the way they came" and I never give it a second thought.

I guess some could be combined and others couldn't. For example, thinking through some of my collection: Pink Floyd ~ Ummagumma...no (one live, one studio), Pink Floyd ~ The Wall...yes, U2 ~ The Best of 1990-2000...no (one hits, one b-sides/mixes), Scorpions ~ The Mercury Years...yes.

And what about box sets? I've got this big 7-disc 70's compilation box that could just as well be one "album". And the same with the Led Zeppelin boxes. It'd be nice to have a little more consolidation.

Then again, there's still the philosophy of "maintaining exact source format" including number of discs, regardless of the reason they split up the music in the first place. Hmmm...more to think about...

[bfourney]

I've begun to come across these issues lately and rather than start a new thread I figured I'd revive this one.

Issues at hand:

1. Do featured artists belong as part of the song title, artists name, or maybe under the comments field? How should it be formatted? Usually I have been putting this info in parenthises after the song title but what happens when this information gets ingredibly long or the song title includes parenthises such as -

Atlanta (Remix) (feat. P Diddy, Jermaine Dupri, XYZ Group & Etc.)

or

Atlanta (Remix feat. P Diddy, Jermaine Dupri, XYZ Group & Etc.)

it can get complicated and incredibly long on rare occasions (rap CDs are notorious for this). What about Compilations and Anthologys? Should the featured artist info go under the artist name or track name? My logic tells me that it should fall under the track name. Ideally there would be an Artist tag Heirarchy, but I guess that isn't feasable.

2. How to name bonus tracks? For now I've been putting an Asterisk before the track name, but it could just as easily be -

*Mumbo Jumbo

or

Mumbo Jumbo (Bonus Track)

or

Mumbo Jumbo [*]


3. What about hidden or untitled tracks? If a track is hidden after a long pause do you extract it seperately as another track even though technically it was originally part of another?

Take for instance the hidden track on Nirvana - Nevermind that starts something like 10 minutes after the last song is over. Or for instance the extra track on Creed - Human Clay that isn't in the liner notes etc.

4. How do you define what goes into what Genre? I suppose this is more of a personal thing, but how do you decide? What if something falls into more than one Genre? What if you only have one disc with a unique genre, do you create a new genre just for it? Ideally I suppose you could have one song belong to more than one genre or a main genre and a sub genre.

5. What about compilations? Do you define the original album and year to each track? An Individual Genre to each track?

6. For multi disc sets I pretty much have my own standard. I don't put the discnumber in the album field because like fileman said it is all the same album. I keep the original tracknumbers (so if disc 1 has 12 tracks song 5 on disc 2 is still track 5, not 17). I seperate the filenames so track 1 on disc 1 would be -

1-01. Intro

and track 1 on disc 2 would be -

2-01. Searchin'

Done this way I have one folder for multidisc sets with cue and logfiles for howerver many discs were ripped.

It seems iTunes will be my player of choice soon and it supports a discnumber tag.

This post has been edited by bfourney: Oct 29 2003, 21:11

[CyberInferno]

I believe the "standard" as far as featured artists is concurrent with your intuition, in the song title. I imagine the logic behind this is that if you sort your music by artist, the track stays with it's appropriate main artist. As far as bonus tracks go, I cannot say. It always confuses me when bonus tracks have titles after a freedb query, and multiple freedb submissions have the same bonus track name. They must be listed somewhere.

I have my own question, but I didn't want to revive this thread myself, so thank you for doing so. My question is, how do you treat artists who change their names? I'm not talking about really significant changes, where clearly you would want to use the artist's name on the CD. I'm talking about instances such as "New Found Glory" changing their name from "A New Found Glory" because some music stores listed them under "A" and some listed them under "N," and people were having problems finding the CD's. Their first release, "Nothing Gold Can Stay," was released under "A New Found Glory," but every successive cd reflects the new name. So should I have different artist names even though it's the same artist? The same goes for Blink-182. They've gone on and off with the hyphen and capitalization of "blink" in the name. Here's the progression (as indicated by CD insert and cover):

• Cheshire Cat - "blink-182" clearly indicated on CD label and cover
• "Blink 182" (written in all caps through the artwork, but cited as capitalized in the CD insert in the "all songs written by..." portion)
• Enema of the State - "all songs arranged by blink-182"
• "The Mark, Tom, and Travis Show (The Enema Strikes Back)" - "blink-182" on CD cover
• "Take Off Your Pants And Jacket" - "blink-182"

So should I label "Dude Ranch" as "blink-182" (clearly the predominant form), or should I label its insert indicates? And what of NFG? Thanks!

CyberInferno

This post has been edited by CyberInferno: Oct 29 2003, 23:17

[sshd]

English being my second language I have often wondered about the capitalisation.

The record labels offers little help on album covers -- almost every title is in UPPERCASE. I guess one could adopt those uppercase titles as the official capitalisation, but in all honesty I should prefer proper English grammar.

Capitalise first, last and important words.

Verbs are always important. Length has little to do with importance.

Take "with" as an example:

Gone With the Wind.
The Man with the Golden Gun.

But for practical purposes, I run a small script that use the following rules:

1. Capitalise every word.
2. Decapitalise the following: 'a', 'an', 'and', 'as', 'at', 'by', 'for', 'from', 'in', 'into', 'of', 'on', 'or', 'the', 'to', 'vs.', 'with'

It usually works to my satisfaction.

[Pio2001]

I capitalize all words exept articles, conjunctions, and short prepositions (four letters or fewer).

The problem is exactly the same in French. My granfather, who was a teacher, says that there is no absolute rule about capitals in titles, and that the author is free to choose the convention that suits him/her best.