Tagging multi disc compilations etc.

[Uluen]

I'm cleaning up my FLAC tags and have a few questions:

I have for example:
John B - (1999) Catalyst (Disc 1) Liquid
John B - (1999) Catalyst (Disc 2) Solid
John B - (1999) Catalyst (Disc 3) Vapour
I tagged those as "Catalyst [3 Disc Limited Edition]", with DISCNUMBER 1,2,3 and ALBUMARTIST "John B".

(Liquid)/(Solid)/(Vapour) was added to each disc track title.
Is this the best way to do this?

What about albums with two performers?
Youssou N'Dour & Neneh Cherry - (1994) 7 Seconds (Single)
Should I just tag artist as "Youssou N'Dour;Neneh Cherry" or do I need to set ALBUMARTIST as well?

And albums containing tracks with guests, do I need to set ITUNESCOMPILATION and COMPILATION to "0" and ALBUMARTIST to "Jane Doe" for it to not be listed as a compilation?

Also, I have a 30 CD reggae box (Trojan - A Jamaican Story (2001)) containing 3x10 discs with subtitles like "DJ (Disc 1), DJ (Disc 2), DJ (Disc 3), Producer Series (Disc 1) etc., any tips on tagging this?

[Moonbase]

The good way I use (and a benefit to the community, too) is to follow the MusicBrainz Style Guidelines, search (or enter/edit) your collection(s) there, and use MusicBrainz' Picard Tagger to do the actual work of tagging and moving the files to their final destinations in your folder structure.

I find this a well thought-out system, since humans talk and decide about what is to be tagged how, and come up with a usable set of tags. MusicBrainz also use a unique "acoustic fingerprinting" system (using MusicIP's MusicDNS) so files can be identified from content, and tags corrected.

Even if you find this not to your taste, you might at least want to check Picard’s tag mapping and Mp3tag’s tag mapping to find out which tags are already in everyday use and how they are used.

FLAC tags are often referred to as "Vorbis Comment". Be aware that the foobar2000 community often uses "ALBUM ARTIST" (with a blank) instead of "ALBUMARTIST".

For MP3s (or any files tagged using ID3 information), it might be worth having a look at the defined ID3v2.3 tag frames and their meaning.


Re your questions:
"John B - Catalyst" I’d probably tag like

ALBUMARTIST=John B

ALBUM=Catalyst (disc 1: Liquid)
DISCNUMBER=1/3

ALBUM=Catalyst (disc 2: Solid)
DISCNUMBER=2/3

ALBUM=Catalyst (disc 3: Vapour)
DISCNUMBER=3/3

(plus other tags) if following the MB Guidelines. This actually the way it is already in the MB database.

This has the adverse affect of not being able to group all three discs into "one" using SC (since the album name is different).

If you wanted that (using FLAC as an example), you’d be using

ALBUMARTIST=John B

ALBUM=Catalyst
DISCSUBTITLE=Liquid
DISCNUMBER=1/3

ALBUM=Catalyst
DISCSUBTITLE=Solid
DISCNUMBER=2/3

ALBUM=Catalyst
DISCSUBTITLE=Vapour
DISCNUMBER=3/3

Same applies to the "Jamaican Story":

ALBUM=Trojan: A Jamaican Story
DISCSUBTITLE=DJ (disc 1)
DISCNUMBER=1/30

ALBUM=Trojan: A Jamaican Story
DISCSUBTITLE=DJ (disc 2)
DISCNUMBER=2/30

and so on.

I do hope SC will support usage/display of DISCSUBTITLE (or ID3v2 "TSST", APEv2 "DiscSubtitle", iTunes MP4 "---:com.apple.iTunesISCSUBTITLE", Windows Media Audio "WM/SetSubTitle") in a later release.

Hint: You are not totally stuck with what is in the MB database. If you prefer the second version (same album name plus DISCSUBTITLE) instead of the appended "(disc x)", Picard can be made to output those tags instead, using what they call "TaggerScript".


Re: Albums with guests

Using "In Extremo - Kein Blick zurück (disc 2)" as an example, MB and I consider this a "compilation". I have

ALBUM=Kein Blick zurück
ALBUMARTIST=In Extremo
ALBUMARTISTSORT=In Extremo
DISCNUMBER=2/2
COMPILATION=1

ARTIST=Blind
ARTISTSORT=Blind
TITLE=Ave Maria
TRACK=1
TOTALTRACKS=8

ARTIST=Götz Alsmann
ARTISTSORT=Alsmann, Götz
TITLE=Singapur
TRACK=2
TOTALTRACKS=8

and so on. It’s shown in SC as one disc by "In Extremo", having several track artists. This is how it should be. (Setting an explicit album artist, "In Extremo" in this case, should override any "Various Artists" assumptions.)

[Uluen]

Thanks a lot, Moonbase, you gave me some great hints.

[Moonbase]

You’re welcome, hope it works out to your liking!

[Mick Seymour]

I do hope SC will support usage/display of DISCSUBTITLE (or ID3v2 "TSST", APEv2 "DiscSubtitle", iTunes MP4 "---:com.apple.iTunesISCSUBTITLE", Windows Media Audio "WM/SetSubTitle") in a later release.

Is there a feature request open for SC to support additional commonly used tags? If so, I'd like to vote for it.

[verypsb]

Still hoping that setsubtitle will be supported in the very near future!