Tagging MP3s with ID3v2 for classical music

[eclassical]

Hello music lovers!

Selling classical MP3s, we sometimes get questions, suggestions, critique, approvals and more for our id3v2 tagging scheme.

I know this is an eternal discussion and the only thing everybody seems to agree upon, is that ID3(v2) was primarily designed with popular music in mind where the key concepts are Artist (e.g. Britney) Album (e.g. Oops!... I Did It Again) and song title (e.g. Can't Make You Love Me).

I've noticed a few problems with this terminology and that of classical music.

Obviously, "Artist" is very vague and hard to apply to classical music. Given, for instance, a piano concerto, who or what is the artist? Is it the pianist? Plausible, but what about the conductor and orchestra? And what about the composer?

We have solved it with somewhat of a compromise. For us, the tagging goes like this:

id3v2
--COMM "$comment"
--TIT2 "$title"
--TOPE "$artist"
--TCOM "$composer"
-T $track
-g "32"
-A "$album"
-a "$artist"

where:
comment = www.eclassical.com - $genre
        where genre is one of:
*Sonata
*Suite
*Stage Works
*Orchestral
*Instrumental
*Concerto
*Chamber Music
*Symphony
*Vocal/Choral
*Cantata
*A Cappella
*Entire work
*Select Works
                                                                                                                                                             
title = the title (same as on web page)
artist = one of:
*performer
*conductor
*orchestra

(artist is a legacy from when id3v2 was created and only had popular music in mind: Artist/Album/title)                                                                                                                 

composer = firstname lastname
track = number on CD (not correct if we have merged tracks because of attacca)
g = (id3 genre 32 - classical)

Ex:
Howells-EC13448-Requiem_1_Salvator_Mundi.mp3:
COMM (Comments): ()[]: www.eclassical.com - A Cappella
TIT2 (Title/songname/content description): Requiem/1: Salvator Mundi
TOPE (Original artist(s)/performer(s)): Vasari Singers
TCOM (Composer): Herbert Howells
TRCK (Track number/Position in set): 1
TCON (Content type): Classical (32)
TALB (Album/Movie/Show title): Requiem aeternam
TPE1 (Lead performer(s)/Soloist(s)): Vasari Singers

Some of our older files have variants of this scheme, but this goes for all new additions to our catalog since a few years.

There are a few questions I'd like to pose:

First of all, what to do with the TALB (album title) for double or multi CDs.

If you add CD 1 and CD 2 respectively, some players will identify two files from the two discs on a double CD as originating from two altoghether different CDs.
Some customers didn't like that, because they argue that all files from both CD1 and CD2 are from the same album. But on the other hand, if the album tag is identical (as we have it today for new albums), then the ordering of the songs (when ordering on tracknr) will be intertwined and that's not optimal either.

The solution would be to sort on more than the album tag, like sorting on the album and title or album and filename. But for CDs with more than one composer, the filenames will sort grouping the composers together with files in the correct order per composer. But the original order from the CD wouldn't necessarily be kept...

Re-arranging the play order in most players is really simple. Just move or drag the files around.

So for our weekly specials, we include a playlist file (M3U) so that playing and burning the files in what we think a logical order can be accomplished (we divide the files so that each playlist contains no more that 74 minutes, so that the playlist also can be sent to e.g. Nero for burning a disc).

So the first question is:

How to tag files from multi CDs, same album or album+CD1/album+CD2 etc?

Other comments on our tagging?

All suggestions and comments are welcome!

Thanks in advance

Rikard Froberg
eClassical.com
(edited a spelling error)

[Keemun]

While this won't answer all of you questions, you might take a look at the Tagging Classical for iTunes thread in addition to the responses you receive here.  Here is what I posted on the subject:

I tag my iTunes classical music files as follows, using the first movement of Boulez's Bruckner 8 as an example:

Name:  Symphony No. 8: I. Allegro moderato
Artist:  Bruckner, Anton
Album Artist:  [blank]
Album: Symphony No. 8 (Boulez/VPO)
Grouping:  [blank]
Composer: Bruckner, Anton
Comments:  Pierre Boulez; Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra
Genre:  Classical
Year:  1996

When I use my iPod, I typically search for music by Artist, which is why I designate the composer as the Artist.  That way, if I want to listen to Boulez's Bruckner 8, I go to Artist: Bruckner, Anton > Album: Symphony No. 8 (Boulez/VPO).  By putting the conductor and orchestra abbreviations in the album name, I can tell which of my eight versions of Bruckner 8 it is.

[eclassical]

While this won't answer all of you questions, you might take a look at the Tagging Classical for iTunes thread in addition to the responses you receive here.  Here is what I posted on the subject:

Thanks for the quick reply!

Hmm, yes. It's an interesting reason for having composer as the artist. But we want to be as generic as possible and not only work well with iTunes but with the largest number of MP3 capable players as possible.

If you have several versions of Bruckner's 8th, how do you distinguish them?

Do you always have conductor/orchestra in the album name?

The album names we have from the labels certainly don't have Work/performer/orchestra/conductor in them always, so I'd have to construct the album tag by adding those things, and if they are already there it would look strange;-)

Mind you, we are tagging our files automatically with a script that reads from our database ;-) There can only be so much intelligence in that script...
Meaning also that our tagging can never be perfect, so I'm looking for a compromise that would appeal to most listeners.

I appreciate further comments!

Rikard

[Mark]

Yes, tagging can be a problem with classical MP3s. Here's what I do, and why I do it:

Album: This field is whatever the album is called. Even if it's a double, triple or 40-CD set. And I add the label in brackets after the title (plus the conductor and orchestra, if the same work appears multiple times on the same label, as is often the case). It's the primary way I search for music, as I usually play a complete album at a time.

Artist: Everyone goes in here. Orchestra first, then choir, then conductor, then soloists. Or simply the ensemble name or soloist for chamber or instrumental music. Why? Because most media players organise by artist. Start tagging by individual artists performing different works on the same album, and your media player will (likely as not), unhelpfully show you what appears to be a dozen versions of the same album.

Genre: In my world, only four exist. Orchestral (includes tone poems, symphonies, concerti, etc), Chamber, Instrumental and Vocal (which includes opera). Just putting 'classical' is no use to me.

Composer: Just the surname here.

Track Title: I keep this incredibly simple. The composer's surname comes first, followed by a hyphen and then, say, 'Symphony No. 3 "Eroica": III', if we're talking about the scherzo from Beethoven's Third. Keys and tempi instructions are of no use to me whatsoever. Ditto, opus numbers.

Comment: I mark all my files with MAO (my initials). Dunno why ...

Year: Why bother with this field? What year is it meant to record? Year of performance? Year of original issue? Year of reissue? Year of remastering? Year of the rat? I see no sense in searching by this field, so it stays blank. Besides which, many MP3s sold have the wrong year of release in this field, so it's frequently unreliable.

Track Number: As it is in the order of the CD. What else?


There are, of course, dozens of other fields, but I systematically wipe all of these using an appropriate tagger. I don't use them, so I don't need them. But I do add album art, as it's useful to search by CD cover in most modern media players.

[eclassical]

Yes, tagging can be a problem with classical MP3s. Here's what I do, and why I do it:

Album: This field is whatever the album is called. Even if it's a double, triple or 40-CD set. And I add the label in brackets after the title (plus the conductor and orchestra, if the same work appears multiple times on the same label, as is often the case). It's the primary way I search for music, as I usually play a complete album at a time.

Thanks for your input!

Just out of curiosity, what player do you use, and how does it sort the tracks if the album is a double CD, e.g. http://www.bis.se/index.php?sokTyp=cdnr&sokText=1701/02  BIS-SACD-1701/02  J.S. Bach - Mass in B minor ?

There are basically two ways of doing the album tag for multi disc albums:

• Tagging each disc as were it a different album (including disc 1 etc in the album tag)
• Tagging each disc as were it from the same album (album tag stays the same for each disc)

With the former, you'll have to search for two albums if you want to play all tracks from all discs in a row. And with the latter, you'd only have to search for one album (makes more sense in a way) but then you end up with several "track 01" because there is one first track on each disc...

This isn't only a problem for tagging, it is also a logistical problem when choosing player and sorting the tracks you want to play.

So this makes me wonder:

Track Number: As it is in the order of the CD. What else?

You'd have several track 01 if the album were a multi disc CD box for instance.

Perhaps you'd be surprised how the record labels solves this with their databases. Every label we deal with, almost, has their own scheme for naming the CDs inside boxes and double albums. Sometimes there can be a difference how they do it from time to time even within the same label...

Some labels have different catalog numbers on each disc, period. Some do the A B ... N trick: cat.no.001A (disc 1) cat.no.001B (disc 2), some have more creative schemes where they change method depending on whether the discs are re-issues and the price is 3 discs for the price of two, then the first two discs can have A and B appended, and the third disc have an altogether different number ;-) etc.

For us, when incorporating several labels catalogs into our own model, it is more or less logistics hell purgatory.

But, back to the question, how does your scheme handle the sorting of the play order for multi CDs?

Regards

Rikard

[Mark]

Put simply, Rikard, I cheat with multiple sets. If CD 1 has 20 tracks, and CD 2 has 15 (or whatever), then I retag the track numbers on CD 2 to run on sequentially. So what was once track 1 on CD 2 becomes track 21 in my system.

As to my media player, I like the interface of Windows Media Player 11 better than that of most others (though, I'm warming to MediaMonkey v.3). I HATE iTunes with a passion! And for retagging, I use eMusic Tag Editor from AbyssAudio.

[eclassical]

Put simply, Rikard, I cheat with multiple sets. If CD 1 has 20 tracks, and CD 2 has 15 (or whatever), then I retag the track numbers on CD 2 to run on sequentially. So what was once track 1 on CD 2 becomes track 21 in my system.

Cheating, no doubt! 

As to my media player, I like the interface of Windows Media Player 11 better than that of most others (though, I'm warming to MediaMonkey v.3). I HATE iTunes with a passion! And for retagging, I use eMusic Tag Editor from AbyssAudio.

Hmm, interesting! I'm no fan of iTunes either, but that's what most of our customers use. Well, at least iPod is the most common hardware player among them, so I assume they use iTunes on the computer.

Most support inquiries regarding playback trouble is also related to iTunes, mostly regarding iTunes sorting the music strangely, or forgetting where the file is(!).

The sorting is related to my original questions here, the alzheimer part of iTunes I have no explanation for.
Rikard

[Gurn Blanston]

Rikard,
I use much the same system as Mark does in terms of numbering tracks. And I really don't care what the original numbering was, I put the tracks in the order I like to hear them. Have you ever noticed how often you will get a CD of, say Composer X - Violin Concertos #1 & 2 and for whatever reason, #2 is first, followed by #1. If you haven't, I will tell you, it's a lot! This is intolerable to my sense of order.

But a Big Box, that I don't renumber. That will be Disk 01, Disk 02 etc. since I don't want a folder with 200 files in it. You can see my tagging system below. I always tag this way, even the tracks I buy from you! 



PS - I rip in WinAMP and tag in MP3Tag.


----------------
Now playing:
English Chamber Orchestra / Graf, Holliger - Krommer Op 30 Concerto in G for Flute 2nd mvmt - Adagio - 02/10

[rickardg]

I use a system very similar to the one posted by Keemun below (I stole a lot of ideas from the thread linked). As someone said in that thread, I don't really care about the CD after the music is on my computer, except I like to tag with cover art because it makes it easier to search for files (yes, yes,  I know I'm contradicting myself). In fact I think one of the great things about using the computer is that you get strong mental links between two works only because they happen to come on the same piece of silvery plastic. I  would also imagine that the original album isn't that relevant for your Special Offers/Recommended and complete single works products. It would be annoying to have the album list filled up with lots of 'albums' with only a few tracks in them.

If I had the energy I would put the year of composition/completion in the Year field. I'd love to be able to tell my player only to show works composed between e g 1780 and 1785.

I don't know how feasible it would be, but perhaps it would be possible for customers to add a 'tag profile' with their preferred tagging style to their account and retag the files on the fly when someone purchases them.

[Mark]

If I had the energy I would put the year of composition/completion in the Year field. I'd love to be able to tell my player only to show works composed between e g 1780 and 1785.

Yet another possible variation (pun intended) on what to include in the 'Year' field.

[eclassical]

Rikard,
I use much the same system as Mark does in terms of numbering tracks. And I really don't care what the original numbering was, I put the tracks in the order I like to hear them.

Hi Gurn, long time! Thanks for the feedback. Yes, the ordering is something that computers and digital files helps us revolt against:-)

Have you ever noticed how often you will get a CD of, say Composer X - Violin Concertos #1 & 2 and for whatever reason, #2 is first, followed by #1. If you haven't, I will tell you, it's a lot! This is intolerable to my sense of order.

Yes, it's mostly because the CDs are limited to 74 (yes sometimes 80) minutes and they have to move things around so that space is used efficiently. Also shows how good it is to purchase or download files instead

But a Big Box, that I don't renumber. That will be Disk 01, Disk 02 etc. since I don't want a folder with 200 files in it. You can see my tagging system below. I always tag this way, even the tracks I buy from you! 

True! As I mentioned above, we use a script to automate the tagging from our database so it's hard not to have to compromise special cases like this away :/

Rikard

[eclassical]

As someone said in that thread, I don't really care about the CD after the music is on my computer, except I like to tag with cover art because it makes it easier to search for files (yes, yes,  I know I'm contradicting myself). In fact I think one of the great things about using the computer is that you get strong mental links between two works only because they happen to come on the same piece of silvery plastic.

Interesting!

I  would also imagine that the original album isn't that relevant for your Special Offers/Recommended and complete single works products. It would be annoying to have the album list filled up with lots of 'albums' with only a few tracks in them.

Actually, that's very true. But we don't usually re-tag files that go into a "entire work" zip file or a weekly specials zip file, so you'd end up with music from several CDs.

At first we thought that we shouldn't care at all about CDs and albums as concepts in our store. Not until recently did we have a table with the album names etc, because we discovered a demand from customers to be able to browse the original album. Our original plan was that digital files would make albums obsolete because with our files you can compose your own CDs or playlists.

We found that people wasn't ready for this change of paradigm (hehe), and we always take influence from what our dear customers say and changed it. It wasn't the best work week I've had when I manually entered all CDs names into the new album table, but it was appreciated thus worth it

If I had the energy I would put the year of composition/completion in the Year field. I'd love to be able to tell my player only to show works composed between e g 1780 and 1785.

This is interesting, sometimes we get year of composition, year of copyright (c), year first performed, and year of publishing (p) from our label partners. Of course, the year of composition is the only thing relevant to the customer,  but I wonder what the year field really was intended for? Just thinking out loud here.

I don't know how feasible it would be, but perhaps it would be possible for customers to add a 'tag profile' with their preferred tagging style to their account and retag the files on the fly when someone purchases them.

That's the best proposition so far! We are a really small company though, so this would take some time to implement. Also, it would mean a pause between the purchase - re-tagging and the time when downloading would be available. Maybe it's over my poor engineering head, but it sounds possible. Thanks!

It would require many people to demand this for its being worth to implement I think,  but the idea is innovative and cool

[orbital]

I generally rip apart the CDs unless they are live recitals.
So if a CD comes with, say, Ashkenazy playing PReludes and Waltzes, the 2 pieces go to separate folders. Preludes for example go to : mp3/classical/composers/chopin/preludes/ashkenazy/ (I put same pertinent information next to performer if it is necessary such as the year if there are multiple performances of the same piece by the same performer). Files are named starting with the track number then the name of the piece: 01 - C Major, 02 - A Minor and so on. The waltzes on the CD go to their own folder with the same file-naming method. When playing them I just tell the player to sort the list according to filenames.

I don't bother myself much with tagging the other information such as Composer, album name, etc. As long as you have them organized under composers and performers, I don't see much use actually. I just right click on the folder and say add to playlist.

Of course it helps that my portable mp3 player is hard drive based and is USB Mass Storage compliant, meaning I can create the same type of folder hierarchy in the player by just dragging and dropping files and folder from my computer.

[rickardg]

In fact I think one of the great things about using the computer is that you get strong mental links between two works only because they happen to come on the same piece of silvery plastic.

Interesting!

Perhaps, but I meant to say I don't get strong links... :-)

At first we thought that we shouldn't care at all about CDs and albums as concepts in our store. [...]
We found that people wasn't ready for this change of paradigm

I know I'm not. Even if I'm not that interested in the CD after it's on my harddrive, it's still what I'm thinking about before it's ripped (or downloaded), and I really do want the cover art.

That's the best proposition so far! We are a really small company though, so this would take some time to implement. Also, it would mean a pause between the purchase - re-tagging and the time when downloading would be available. Maybe it's over my poor engineering head, but it sounds possible. Thanks!

It would require many people to demand this for its being worth to implement I think,  but the idea is innovative and cool

Why, thank you! The state of online music distribution is one of my favourite hobbyhorses, but I'll spare you the rant for now.

Perhaps this is the right time to mention that I'm an almost finished Computer Science student looking for summer work, nudge, nudge, wink, wink... Feel free to email or PM me! :-)

[eclassical]

Interesting!

Perhaps, but I meant to say I don't get strong links... :-)

yes I figured;-)
[ snip ]

Perhaps this is the right time to mention that I'm an almost finished Computer Science student looking for summer work, nudge, nudge, wink, wink... Feel free to email or PM me! :-)

Great initiative. I 've forwarded this upwards in the organization. But, it would as mentioned require some level of demand for this (but it's kind of cool so maybe I'll do some lobbying for it on the next tech meeting).

An idea I just got as an interim solution or alternative, would be a page where one could search for a track one has already downloaded, and get as much text with data as possible, which would at least provide for copy-paste assistance when re-tagging.

Err, we already have that http://www.eclassical.com/eclassic/eclassical?page=track_info_form, but there could be more fields and data on the result page.

We also have a page for looking for cover art:

http://www.eclassical.com/eclassic/eclassical?page=cover_find

Perhaps there should be only one page displaying both cover art and data?

And a future page could perhaps include an ID3v2-tagger that could tag a file locally on the customers PC using the data chosen by the customer. How does one do that in a platform independant way? Flash? Java applet(with permission to write files locally)? I don't like activeX since it's not platform independant (and we service many different platforms).

Or perhaps there is some kind of text file we could create that a third party tagger could use as input? An XML file or so? That seems easy to do. Much easier than tagging on the fly ;-) I'll have to look into that one!

Just an idea.

Rikard