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Topic: Tagging artist's names with "The" in their name (Read 7011 times) previous topic - next topic
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Tagging artist's names with "The" in their name

Searched and searched, but came up empty. So...

Is there any consensus on how to tag (specifically mp3) artist's names with "The" in their name? Not just for the id3 tag, but also for the filename.

The Smiths
Smiths, The
???

Reason I ask is because I started to clean up my files and started to rename my Windows folders so they would be in alphabetical order ("The" messes it all up obviously), but noticed that even though the individual mp3 id3 tags contained "The" up front (hadn't changed them yet), WMP9 disregarded "The" and put my files in proper order (in the player, not in Windows Explorer)! Cool.

BUT...do other players also disregard the beginning "The"? Specifically Foobar, Winamp, and dbpoweramp? (I'm probably going to move to one of those soon). And what about hardware mp3 players? (getting one of those soon too).

Basically I want to view ALL my mp3s at once in alphabetical order and don't want "The" to mess with the order.

All files are named "artist - track title.mp3" btw.

Thanks for the help. Sorry if this needs to be somewhere else, I wasn't sure where since tagging crosses audio formats.

sym7

Tagging artist's names with "The" in their name

Reply #1 –
I never use "The" in the ID tag info and filename either. Just the main name of the artist: The Rolling Stones is Rolling Stones in my data base
MPC: --quality 10 --xlevel (v. 1.15s) (archive/transcoding)
MP3:  LAME 3.96.1 --preset standard (daily listening/portable)

Tagging artist's names with "The" in their name

Reply #2 –
Quote
I never use "The" in the ID tag info and filename either. Just the main name of the artist: The Rolling Stones is Rolling Stones in my data base

And so, would The The then be "The"? Or "The, The"?
 

Tagging artist's names with "The" in their name

Reply #3 –
at least one of the large online databases (freedb, i think) has the policy that you should drop the "The" altogether, so "The Beatles" just becomes "Beatles".  Personally, I *hate* this--I find "Beatles, The" immensely preffereable to "Beatles".. especially since you could concievably have two bands with identical names except for the "The" ... (i dunno, like if you had one band called "Meek" and another band called "The Meek"--here the "The" is critical because it changes Meek from being an adjective into being a substantiative (i think i got that right))..

incidentally, the same database, IIRC, mentions that you should obviously keep the "The" if it is the only word in the field, or if it is not at the beginning...


i guess it would be nice if all players/explorers whatever, ignored the "The", so we could see the name in its unaltered form, but i also think that seeing it shoved to the end is helpful to remind us, the humans, what letter it's actually being filed under..

ever so slight problems come up with fields that already have commas in them, or if you ended something in ", The"

i.e  Postmodern Soundscape, entitled:  "Heaving and Waiting for It, Now, Soon, The"

(yes, i made that up)

or something like:

"The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly"  what does this become?? (because you might want to sort by title!!)  "Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, The"  just looks weird, so i would use a semicolon:  "Good, The Bad, and The Ugly; The"  if i insisted on moving the The, or I would just leave it as the original, filed under "T"... but i would be entirely against dropping the "The" altogeter...

finally, i woudl note that, in something like windows explorer, sometimes it's better to sort things other than alphabetically--for instance sorting albums by release date, so instead of:

Life With the Lions - Unfinished Music #2
Unfinished Music, No. 1 - Two Virgins
Wedding Album

you get:

1968 - Unfinishe'd Music, No. 1 - Two Virgins
1969 - Life With the Lions - Unfinished Music #2
1969 - Wedding Album

or, still better, instead of

Final Fantasy II
Hanjuku Hero

you get

1988.12.02 - Hanjuku Hero
1988.12.17 - Final Fantasy II

but only if you use that date format (which is why i advocate that format!)

you can do this with composers' birth dates, too, or their death dates, if you feel that is more appropriate (their big works are in their last years, often) and you could even do it with bands, using some special date, like their first album, the birthdate of the oldest/youngest member, their first concert, the day they were 'officially formed'  but i haven't gone that far yet (but i think it's great for "composers" and individual artists (frank zappa, john lennon, vanessa carlton, etc.))


you can also read an extensive post by me (Adam Golding) and some comments by others in a thread on the emusic forums entitled how do you organize your files?  which is a question i'm still in the process of answering...

ps. note that i no longer use index-based extraction which i mention in that thread..

pps. i hope someone else here is as 'into' this as *i* am, lol...

Tagging artist's names with "The" in their name

Reply #4 –
Windows Media Player sorts things alphabetically, IGNORING "The" in band names. Other media developers: are you listening?

Tagging artist's names with "The" in their name

Reply #5 –
i would vote for "The, The" if you are moving the The in the other names..

Tagging artist's names with "The" in their name

Reply #6 –
I should add that i never move "The" or other 'special' words like "A" around if i'm putting something else, like a date, in front of them, since the whole point in moving the The is to help sorting...

this is why in school they told you to do bibliographies with last name first, and to do your foot notes with first name, then last name--because only the bibliography is actually being *sorted* by name--at least that's my guess; i'm sure my teachers all just assumed the choice was arbitrary, but this seems like a good reason for the choice...

Tagging artist's names with "The" in their name

Reply #7 –
I agree the "Artist, The" convention is what I use.

By the way, when I tried to use Windows Media Player some time ago (V9 I believe) it used the AllMovie.com database which I found inconsistent.  It created three sets of Cure albums, the "Cure, The" the "Cure" and then the "The Cure" even though my tags were consistent, WMP tried to get too smart and used the database version instead of my tags.  Pretty annoying, actually, which was one of a few reasons I'm using Foobar2000 now.
Was that a 1 or a 0?

Tagging artist's names with "The" in their name

Reply #8 –
Quote
Windows Media Player sorts things alphabetically, IGNORING "The" in band names. Other media developers: are you listening?

iTunes does this too.  I really like this feature, might be nice to see in foobar2000...

- Matt

Tagging artist's names with "The" in their name

Reply #9 –
I never tinker with artist/band names in my tag info.  Too many things to manage as it is...no time to design special naming conventions. 

In addition to WMP, Winamp also ignores "The" and "A" in it's sorting of artists and albums.

In my collection, "The Beatles" is "The Beatles".  My home system sorts it under "B", and my car sorts it under T".  So be it.  Long as things are consistent on each platform, I'm happy.  I don't need consistency across platforms.

If I did, I'd still stick with original artist names, and have all "The ..." bands sorted under "T".  For the same reason I capitalize all first characters in artists/albums/track titles instead of following "grammar conventions".  Simplicity.

Tagging artist's names with "The" in their name

Reply #10 –
well i usually leave downloaded files alone--this scheme is mainly for my own rips, or for a set of files i'm paying particular attention to, and would thus want in chronological order/whatever...

as far as capping every word----man there is nothing *uglier* that seing "And" instead of "and" in the middle of a phrase... "The" can sometimes mean somethign different than "the" in the middle of a phrase.. (which is why i'm sort of against capitalizing the first word in sentences, so we can have that same subtlety on the first word..)

Tagging artist's names with "The" in their name

Reply #11 –
Quote
as far as capping every word----man there is nothing *uglier* that seing "And" instead of "and" in the middle of a phrase... "The" can sometimes mean somethign different than "the" in the middle of a phrase.. (which is why i'm sort of against capitalizing the first word in sentences, so we can have that same subtlety on the first word..)

I agree entirely.  Which is why I don't do it. 

I don't have time to spend more than a couple of seconds on each tag field, and no extra moments to consider "proper capitalization", or the use of "The" or "A" in the first position.  Not because I have an extraneous amount of encoded music to tag (about 6500 tracks), but because with my work and all my other activities, time is precious.  Efficiency of work is my top priority in my all my audio encoding activities.  Not that other people are "less efficient", but more that I tend to spend too much time, myself, on considering naming and capitalization standards if I let myself go that direction.

Tagging artist's names with "The" in their name

Reply #12 –
In foobar, you can customize how things are sorted. By default, It sorts by straight alphabetical order, but you can have it sort the proper way by replacing %artist% in the sort string with:

$replace(%artist%,The ,)

I personally prefer to preserve the actual artist's name the way it's supposed to be and use a custom display or sort string to change it.

Tagging artist's names with "The" in their name

Reply #13 –
Well good. At least everyone knows what I'm talking about!  I can ramble and don't even understand myself sometimes!   

@Digitalman
I use Freedb to tag via EAC or CDex. They seem to put the "The" out front.

@PhileasFogg
I agree. I would never just drop "The"! It just doesn't seem right to me. I am a picky person though.

@ScorLibran
Thanks for the Winamp heads up. I HATE installing software only to delete it shortly after because it doesn't fit my needs.


Well, I like to use just Artist - trackname for various reasons, so release date doesn't help me. I still need to decide on this issue, and I guess there is no real consensus.

Maybe I'll just rename the *folders* "Artist, The", but leave the tags alone since Freedb and most mp3's that I've gotten online (like from the old mp3.com) seem to tag "The Artist".

Always an interesting discussion here, thanks!

Tagging artist's names with "The" in their name

Reply #14 –
Future (maybe current?) versions of the Rio Karama firmware will ignore "The" and "A" (and their French and German equivalents) when alphabetizing artists.
I am *expanding!*  It is so much *squishy* to *smell* you!  *Campers* are the best!  I have *anticipation* and then what?  Better parties in *the middle* for sure.
http://www.phong.org/

Tagging artist's names with "The" in their name

Reply #15 –
Quote
Quote
Windows Media Player sorts things alphabetically, IGNORING "The" in band names. Other media developers: are you listening?

iTunes does this too.  I really like this feature, might be nice to see in foobar2000...

- Matt

Foobar's had it since the beginning.

Tagging artist's names with "The" in their name

Reply #16 –
Quote
And so, would The The then be "The"? Or "The, The"?

Actually, this is the only artist name in which it makes no difference either way! 

Tagging artist's names with "The" in their name

Reply #17 –
I keep the "The" in front of the band name ... no problem either.

If I need something like "Crusaders, The" instead of "The Crusaders" for portable or car stereo, I will copy the appropriate folders, mass-rename them with Total Commander and Re-Tag using some foldername-based mass tagger ... this will take me some 2 minutes so I just don't care.
The name was Plex The Ripper, not Jack The Ripper

Tagging artist's names with "The" in their name

Reply #18 –
Quote
Winamp also ignores "The" and "A" in it's sorting of artists and albums.

My ipod keeps "The" but ignores the "A" and I despise it for it causes an artist such as A Perfect Circle to appear in the "P" section. Drives me insane.

Tagging artist's names with "The" in their name

Reply #19 –
Funny this topic came up now since I just recently decided to alphabetize my collection correctly.  So now I put all articles (A, The, An) at the end of the artist or album name separated by a comma.  Example: Exies, The; Perfect Circle, A; Goofy Movie, A.  I like how iTunes and Winamp ignores "The" at the beginning of artist and album names but it is still incorrect to put "The, A, An" etc at the beginning of a name or title.  Also, iTunes and Winamp may ignore "The" but Windows does not.  So any artist with "The" at the beginning of their names will be grouped with the T's in Explorer when you view your file folders.  I used to just drop the "The" from artist and album names but now I include it at the end of the names because to me it looks better and is grammaticly correct.

Along with adding "The, A, An" to the end of my artist and album names I have started using the last name, first name method for artists.  Example: Springsteen, Bruce; Lavigne, Avril; Mellencamp, John.  This keeps the artists more organized in my opinion.  This way you don't have all the John's grouped together, etc.

I just do correct alphabetization with artist and album names.  I find doing the same for each individual song name is not necessary because usually the song's file name begins with the track number so it is alphabetized by the track number.  iTunes uses track numbers in the file names as well.  Plus how often are you going to alphabetize an album's songs by alphabetical order anyway?  Plus editing THAT many songs (3000-5000) is a bit too much work for me.

Tagging artist's names with "The" in their name

Reply #20 –
IMO, is best to respect the original name of an artist or group, and in my tags and directory I have "The Rolling Stones" and "The Beatles".

A little problem with "The Communards" (Jimmy Somerville & Richard Coles): two album and two different names... with and without "The"!!
1986: Communards - Communards
1987: The Communards - Red
ambiguous people? 

Tagging artist's names with "The" in their name

Reply #21 –
I know of one name that refers to two separate groups, depending upon whether or not "The" is used: Mars Volta.  "Mars Volta" is a different group from "The Mars Volta", or so I've been told.

Having said that, I made 5 decisions about naming a long time ago.  I perhaps regret some or all of them for various reasons, but here they are:

1) I will drop "The " altogether from the beginning of the artist's name, to help in sorting and shortening.

2) I will move "The " (and "A " and "An ") to the end of the song's title, as described by other people in this thread, to help in sorting and shortening.

3) I will change the capitalization so that words like "of" and "in" are not capitalized and other words are.

4) For shortness (aiding in visibility on portable devices), I will shorten " and " to " & " wherever it appears.  I also shorten "featuring " to "w ".

5) For shortness, I will remove periods from many abbreviations, such as changing R.E.M. to REM and U.S.A. to USA.

I've also recently changed "Creedence Clearwater Revival" to CCR, "Emerson, Lake & Palmer" to ELP, and "Electric Light Orchestra" to ELO.  I may likewise shorten others (e.g., CSNY) due to usability issues with portable devices.  And I'm even thinking of changing the format from "Artist - Title" to "Artist~Title" to save 2 characters.

Tagging artist's names with "The" in their name

Reply #22 –
Ironic timing for this thread to appear, as I was just tormenting myself over the same question.  Places I looked for guidelines include submission guidelines to CDDB.  I found the following URL to be somewhat helpful: Submitting edits or new entries to the database

Dave

Tagging artist's names with "The" in their name

Reply #23 –
BigWelshSteve, actually it does matter:

The
The, Fans of The
The, The


not sure where windows would put other names that didn't have the comma..

Teqnilogik: i agree wholeheardedly about last-name first, and I even think i advocate converting "The Raymond Scott Quintette" to "Scott Quintette. The Ramond" (weird, i know, but in another way *so righhht*)

ardee: i really hope you've been using a rename program to do that: I found Bulk File Renamer to be a (free) godsend as far as renaming lots of files--not sure but you might be able to make it move the "The"s and "And"s around for you...

also, as far as portable devices, you might just run a file renamer over the files right before burning them..

symbiont7:  i also tag with EAC, and i use the naming scheme Artist\year - CD\%N - track title etc. and rather than change every cd from "The Beatles" to "Beatles, The" I let them all go into "The Beatles" and then just change the dir in the end.  I don't sort by tags so having The Beatles in the artist tag is not a problem for me, and it allows you to see the tag as the representation of the 'real' name, and the dir as just a sorting index



incidentally, i remember seeing stuff in Helium2 to do with 'sort order' where for every field you could specify a sub-field which told the database how to sort the entry.. heavy stuff