I have tried everything I could find.
Yes I use Picard, I have tried Monkeysomething, I had hopes for Tag&Rename, but none can fix my problem.
The problem is that CDs did not exist before the 1980s, and almost all mp3s have come from CDs, and so almost every "Year" field in every MP3 tag is wrong.
I'm pretty sure that the song Rollover Beethoven by the Beatles did not get released in 1996, but put make a smartplaylst for 1990s, and there it is. Just because the CD containing the song was released in 1994, doesn't mean that I need to know it, or have any use having that date in a tag field.
Why hasn't anyone created a mp3 tagger with "Use oldest date available" or a "Use Copyright date" function.
I have been looking for one for about 15 years, and it is looking more and more like I either need to go back to school and learn programming (not really possible at my age, I think), or have a child and push them into programming just to be able to use smartplaylists for anything created before 1990.
Yes, there should be exceptions, for things like "Live" albums, and new duets, but for the other 98% it would be perfect, and I could sit back and listen to a 1990s playlist without hearing the Beach Boys (other than that Kokomo song from Cocktail).
Any solutions?
Am I really the only one looking for this?
With picard you can pick which release it's from. Wouldn't that be an option or are he releases not on musicbrainz?
Perhaps, but for a 17 year old library, that would be a daunting task to be done by hand. I was (and it seems like forever) looking for an automated solution. My ARTIST and TITLE fields are perfect, I was just looking for something that can read both, query say: the freedb database (and maybe something else with accurate copyright dates), collect all the matches, and picks the oldest, and sets just the YEAR field (and optionally that original album title if it's already an available variable). The latest id3 version supports a "COPYRIGHT DATE" field, but I've never seen it populated, and I bet that it's blank in the databases for anything prior to that standard being issued.
In Musicbrainz's Picard you can select the original release date %originaldate to get the first recorded date for the releases for those in the group.
More details here:
http://forums.musicbrainz.org/viewtopic.php?id=3381
Obviously you will have to run them all through Picard and the releases need to be in Musicbrainz.
I looked again at Picard, you're right, they do support originaldate, just not in the linux branch (what I was using), so I tried a test with a Windows version, and it does work in about one out of five cases for The Beatles (the other four gave the same results I had before or kept the 1990 and newer dates. I think the database is just not complete enough to do it yet on everything). I was hoping for something that was designed for the task by someone with the same desire as me, but smart enough to have written it already (something that can cross reference multiple sources). I'll just keep looking, hopefully it doesn't take another 15 years. I guess I'm the only one trying to use Smart-lists for listening to specific decades.
Thanks again.
(2013-08-26, 18:52)MacGyver Wrote: [ -> ]I looked again at Picard, you're right, they do support originaldate, just not in the linux branch (what I was using), so I tried a test with a Windows version, and it does work in about one out of five cases for The Beatles (the other four gave the same results I had before or kept the 1990 and newer dates. I think the database is just not complete enough to do it yet on everything). I was hoping for something that was designed for the task by someone with the same desire as me, but smart enough to have written it already (something that can cross reference multiple sources). I'll just keep looking, hopefully it doesn't take another 15 years. I guess I'm the only one trying to use Smart-lists for listening to specific decades.
Thanks again.
To be honest I would be really surprised if 4 out of 5 of your Beatles albums were missing. Major artists like The Beatles have very complete references.
If you album appears in the list here (ordered by default by the first release date for the release groups)
http://musicbrainz.org/artist/b10bbbfc-c...c3e1d2600d
Then you should be able to to access that original date if you have a album that matches.
I expect you are doing something wrong maybe you are not selecting the right album or the scripting is misconfigured.
Rovastar is right. There is hardly anything that is not in musicbrainz and definitely all beatles albums are in. no doubt!
point us us to the five albums and have a look on the musibrainz web-site.
what you may need is s script in picard to use the original date instead of date. this way, xbmc also captures it. otherwise, xbmc has no way to read the tag.
Here are some that are wrong:
c118ee9a-9cc2-4589-8be2-1d8cc9e6d395
8ed9bdd4-66e8-4b7e-b5d3-59e623d56e4f
93920277-bb3f-4944-a33a-b4a48ee3f7e6
d509911a-e299-41fa-8930-a385d448b74f
0fa10620-049d-360f-9a43-1fa692225dcb
345266a5-aec5-4112-b4c7-b06277c57001
a27a9c24-2c07-4ac5-aa11-aae172d077a7
a49cf0c6-74bb-4e81-a7d7-c1f6bfc9972c
3640493f-d9a1-45dd-b8a7-5a6f152ffb76
Those are the Musicbrainz release IDs:
They are all Beatles albums, but the dates are missing or in the 90's.
My script is:
$set(date,$left(%originaldate%,4))
It only works in the Windows version, the Linux version doesn't seem to support that tag yet.
I looked into PuddleTag, it seems scriptable, but doesn't have anything built in specifically for scraping alternate sources for the oldest dates.
I was just looking for a program that I drop the mp3s in, and if it isn't a live album, it finds the original copyright date of the song, regardless of the date the album might be from.
I checked the first one you specified (c118ee9a-9cc2-4589-8be2-1d8cc9e6d395). The original release date according to musicbrainz is 1973-04-02, which shoudl be correct.
The problem is that the name of that album is "The Beatles 1962-1966". So every song on it should be from the 1960's not 1973.
The original release of that album is no doubt 1973, but none of the songs are from 1973, so a 70's smartplaylist would play them all, but one for the 60's would not.
Missing years is only one problem, inaccurate years in the biggest.
So the albums are in Musicbrainz and have the correct release dates.
Your issue seems to be that you have compilations, etc and you want the individual tracks on those compilations to have the original release year.
Well in that case I don't think there is anything for that. I don't think any online database has that information. So it is not that there is not a tool designed for the task just that the whole infrastructure does not exist.
I would separate your collection in compilations and original releases.
With Musicbrainz Picard you can easily sort your compilations into a separate directory and for the original releases tag in Musicbrainz for the earliest release date.
That has been my problem for 15 years, and apparently I'm the only one that thinks it would be useful because no one has created it yet.
The craziest thing is that the data is there, but the mechanism to retrieve it is missing. The very first song on that album can be tracked in the MB database to an original vinyl release from 1963, but Picard has no automated way to say "ignore current release date and use oldest available by the same artist if not Live". It's strange because I can see no value in a 1994 date being attached to a Beatles song, whereas the 1963 one gives the listener a more accurate idea of how old the song is. The sad part is that there is an ID3 tag for just this data, TDOR (Original release time), but no program goes through the trouble of following the release dates all the way back to retrieve it.
I worry that in the future people will be listening to smartplaylists and wondering if Buddy Holly knew MC Hammer.
No worries, I'll check again in 2028.
At this moment the best suggestion I have for you would be to put in the effort yourself.
Reading this topic, you have some perfectionism attitude, which I can relate to myself though.
The reason that there is no 'please everybody' solution at this moment, is that if you follow up on your personal requirements, and then take them a little broader to suit more music lovers/librarians, you would need to have lots of date related metadata fields on each and every file such as:
composed date (mostly, but not exclusively for classical music)
re-composed, or re-arranged date (mostly, but not exclusively for classical music)
registration date (recording on tape/digital, live radio etc.)
official release date as single track (commercial, promotion, SoundCloud)
release date on an EP
release date as part of an official album by original artist (but this can differ per country/continent)
release date as part of a bootleg or compilation
re-release date (remasters, 'de-luxe' and anniversary editions, etc.)
etc.
I could go on, but I am already getting a headache, but you probably catch my drift?
It would be impossible for any software or cloud-based service to detect and fill all such fields perfectly for the tracks you are submitting.
One day soon it will probably be possible to show all of a song's existing appearances, but you'll still have to be the one who decides what fits your collection and your preferences.
The current id3v2.4 and vorbis implementations are completely extensionable to your heart's content, and there is enough (freely) available software to personalize and use all this kind of metadata.
I would suggest to just start doing this, and enjoy the process!
If you don't enjoy it, something else is wrong ;-)
MacGyver, you are not alone in wondering why this basic functionality is not built into MP3 taggers as the default option. You have a 20-year head start on me, as I just started an MP3 and FLAC collection only a short time ago, but my question was exactly the same as yours: Why is it not the default tagging option to use the oldest date for a song - presumably the date when it was first recorded? When sorting by date, why would I want The Yardbirds, 'For Your Love' mixed in with Metallica, 'Wherever I May Roam'?
For me, the solution was as follows, and it seems to be working fine, as long as an MP3 has an accurate, pre-1980s date specified in the Original/Released Date (ORIGYEAR) field, different from the Recorded Date (YEAR) field.
I open MP3Tag, go to View | Extended Tags, and see if the ORIGYEAR field for a Beatles song has 1965, for example, instead of 2000.
I then click on Convert | Tag - Filename, and enter in this string:
'['%origyear%']' - %artist% - %album% - $num(%discnumber%,1)-$num(%track%,2) - %title%
After playing around on a few test files to verify that it was working as intended, I was able to rename my entire (small) collection with the proper years that the songs were actually recorded, with a few clicks of the mouse.
I then do the same process in reverse, using Convert | Filename - Tag, but using %year% instead of %origyear%.
[%year%] - %artist% - %album% - %discnumber%-%track% - %title%
This reverse process takes what was the Original/Released Date (ORIGYEAR field), and tags the file with that data put into the YEAR field instead.
I think that this should help with 'smart playlists' sorting properly by the actual years that songs were recorded. I don't have an iPod yet and haven't used iTunes yet, so I'm not sure if it will work as you desire.
I'm happy that songs in my compilation albums are finally in chronological order. The end result with the file names are like this:
[1965] - The Beatles - Help! - 1-06 - You're Going to Lose That Girl
Instead of:
[2000] - The Beatles - Help! - 1-06 - You're Going to Lose That Girl
Since my file names include the year, album, disc, track, and title, I don't even have to create separate folders for each album of a particular artist. I can just create one giant folder for The Beatles and the file system automatically sorts everything chronologically - which just so happens to sort the albums naturally, with the album names and song titles crystal clear.