Wishlist in terms of supported ID3v2.4 frames

[MCSmarties]

Based on what I found out about ID3v2 implementation in different taggers (see this thread)
I think MM has some catching up to do in terms of supported ID3 frames!

I would suggest the following changes:

COMM:
- Add "Biography" as defined in MusicMatch Jukebox
- REMOVE Custom fields from here - make them into TXXX frames!
(I'm aware this will be a headache, but better to do it now than later. PLEASE don't bypass the ID3 standard - look at the disaster MMJB caused!)

IPLS: Transfer this info to the new TIPL frame. IPLS is obsolete.

MCDI: store CD Identification (FreeDB ID, can be imported from MusicBrainz)

PCNT: Playcounter. MM writes this info only into the database - add it to the file, too!

SYLT: Timestamped lyrics (eg Minilyrics) should be stored in this frame, NOT in the USLT frame!
(That way, both synchronized and unsynchronized lyrics can be defined)

TDOR, TDRC, TDRL: these replace the old ID3v2.3 frames TORY and TYER.
I would however suggest to additionally still keep the TYER and TORY frames.
Idea: MM could automatically copy the year entered in TDRC into TYER. If TDRC is not entered, TYER would use TDOR.
That would make it easy to have the "relevant" year available for example in portable devices.

TMCL: Musician list (multiple fields)

TIPL: Involved people list (multiple fields)

TIT1: Work title

TIT3: Subtitle.

TKEY: Initial key (invaluable for classical recordings!)

TLAN: Language (must be stated in 3 letter code per ISO-639-2, see here
Ideally, MM could provide a drop-down list of languages and let the user request more lists
(per specifications, several languages can be added to this field)
I think this is a very useful field. For example, it could be used to apply different Capitalization RuLeS for each language.

TPE2: Should really, really be "Band" or "Orchestra. "Album Artist" should be made into a TXXX frame!

TPE3: Conductor

TPE4: Remixed by (covered by)

TPOS: this is part of the ID3v2 specifications! CD of # would be very useful.

TSOP: Artist Sort Order. MM writes this info only into the database - add it to the file, too!

TSOT: Title Sort Order. MM writes this info only into the database - add it to the file, too!

TXXX:
- Include "custom" fields here
- Include "Album artist" here
- I would suggest additional fields for "Style", "Period", "Venue" and "Country"
- Finally, include a field to differentiate between POPULAR, CLASSICAL and SOUNDTRACK music. Call it "Catalog" or "Type" if you will.
My idea would be that MM could use this field to make an "über-node" that selects what columns will be shown for each "type".
Indeed, the "important" information varies between these, in my opinion they are:

CLASSICAL: TCOM, TDOR, TIT1, TIT2, TIT3, TPE1, TPE2...
POP: TALB, TIT2, TPE2, TRDA (or TCOP?), TRCK
SOUNDTRACK: TALB, TIT2, TRCK, TRDA

This would also make MM 100% compatible with the complex and powerful Helium manager
while remaining much faster and more versatile thanks to its scripting functionality!

[MCSmarties]

Here are three examples on how I would *extensively* tag music in an ideal world:

Legend: MMJB is MusicMatch Jukebox, TGF is The Godfather.
The 4 code frames are as defined in the ID3v2 specifications (see link in the post above)

1. An interpretation of VIVALDI'S "FOUR SEASONS: SPRING"

APIC - (Album art)
COMM - (Comments) Comments about the work
........... (MMJB Biography) Biography of Vivaldi
........... (MMJB Tempo) Variable? or leave blank? (there are 3 movements!)
........... (MMJB Situation) Background
MCDI - (FreeDB ID) 9509730c
PCNT - (Play counter)
POPM - (Rating)
TALB - (Album) Vivaldi: The Four Seasons / Silverstein, Ozawa, Boston SO
TBPM - (BPM): COULD put the BPM here but they are absolutely irrelevant.
TCOM - (Composer) Antonio Lucio Vivaldi
TCON - (Genre) Concerto
TCOP - (Copyright) 1990
TDOR - (Original time) 1725 (duplicate in TORY)
TENC - (Encoded by) (put your name here)
TIT1 - (Work) "Le Quattro Stagione" or "The Four Seasons"
TIT2 - (Title) "La Primavera" or "Spring"
TIT3 - (Subtitle) Concerto in E minor, Op. 8/I
TKEY - (Key) Em
TLAN - (Language) ITA or ENG (depending on language used for the title)
TMCL - (Instrument and Musicians) Joseph Silverstein - Violin
TMOO - (Mood) Mellow?
TPE1 - (Soloist) Joseph Silverstein
TPE2 - (Orchestra) Boston Symphony Orchestra
TPE3 - (Conductor) Seiji Ozawa
TRDA - (Recording time) 1981/10/25-??:?? (duplicate in TYER)
TDRL - (Release time) 1990/05/??-??:?? duplicate in TYER if TRDA is empty)
TPUB - (Publisher) Telarc
TRCK - (Track #) 1 (but see notes)
TSSE - (Encoder) (import the information from EncSpot?)
TXXX - ("Type") CLASSICAL
........... (Album Artist) Boston Symphony Orchestra
........... ("Style") Violin Concerto
........... ("Period") Baroque
........... ("Venue") Houghton Chapel, Wellesley College, MA
........... ("Country") Italy (I'd use country of the COMPOSER)
USLT - (Unsynchronized lyrics) [Instrumental]

Notes (what I would suggest):
- I would recommend to always specify the work name in the original language.
- TDOR is date of COMPOSITION, TRDA date of CURRENT PERFORMANCE.
- IMO the composition date is much more important than the date of original performance (which is lost)
- The timestamp format for TRDA, TDRL is YYYY/MM/DD-HH:MM

About movements, I see three possibilities:
- a separate MP3 for each movement. I think that's a bad idea though.
- CUE sheets. Name of the movement can be specified (e.g.: TITLE I. Allegro)
- CHAP or CTOC frames (Additional standard) but I'm not convinced either.

IMO, CUE sheets are the best solution (I *think* that's how Helium's Subtracks work)
I think movements of classical works should be kept together, one file per Opus.
(I'd say this also includes operas but NOT musicals).
Note that the "TEMPO" field is then only relevant in short pieces!

This makes the TRCK (Track #) field a tricky one since on a CD, they usually correspond to movements!
Suggestion: Put initial track # here, then skip numbers until the next work?

Note: I know that the "MMJB custom fields" should really be TXXX, not COMM (that's what TGF did).
But I agree that remaining compatible to existing "standards" is important...


************

2. "WITH A LITTLE HELP FROM MY FRIENDS" JOE COCKER, Live version
APIC - (Album art)
COMM - (Comments) Comments about THIS VERSION of the song (not the original!)
........... (MMJB Biography) Joe Cocker's Bio.
........... (MMJB Tempo) Moderate
........... (MMJB Situation) Party
MCDI - (FreeDB ID) cd11130f
PCNT - (Play counter)
POPM - (Rating)
TALB - (Album) Joe Cocker Live!
TBPM - (BPM) 65
TCOM - (Composer) John Lennon / Paul McCartney
TCON - (Genre) Rock
TCOP - (Copyright) 1990
TDOR - (Original time) (duplicate in TORY)
TENC - (Encoded by) (put your own name)
TEXT - (Lyricist) John Lennon / Paul McCartney
TIT2 - (Title) With a Little Help From My Friends
TLAN - (Language) ENG
TMOO - (Mood)
TOPE - (Original artist) The Beatles
TPE1 - (Artist) Joe Cocker
TPE4 - (Remixed by) Joe Cocker
TRDA - (Recording time) ????/??/??-??:?? (duplicate year in TYER)
TDRL - (Release time) 1990/05/??-??:?? duplicate in TYER if TRDA is empty)
TPUB - (Publisher) Capitol
TRCK - (Track #) 9
TSSE - (Encoder) (import the information from EncSpot?)
TXXX - ("Type") POPULAR
........... (Album Artist) Original Broadway Cast OR Various
........... ("Style") Pop Rock
........... ("Venue") (location of the live concert, if known)
........... ("Country") USA (prefer actually performing artist to original artist)
SYLT - (Synchronized lyrics)
USLT - (Unsynchronized lyrics)

Notes:
- Composer of a cover version is always the ORIGINAL composer
- Lyricist of a cover is the current performer IF the lyrics are substantially altered.


************

3. "ALL THAT JAZZ" from the musical "CHICAGO" 1996 (nB: The "Chicago" everybody knows is a remake!)
APIC - (Album art)
COMM - (Comments) Comments about the musical. Synopsis?
........... (MMJB Biography) I would be inclined to put the history of the MUSICAL here.
........... (MMJB Tempo) Pretty Fast
........... (MMJB Situation) Party
MCDI - (FreeDB ID) 3e114916
PCNT - (Play counter)
POPM - (Rating)
TALB - (Album) Chicago The Musical
TBPM - (BPM) 122
TCOM - (Composer) John Kander / Fred Ebb
TCON - (Genre) Musical or Showtune
TCOP - (Copyright) 1997
TDOR - (Original time) 1975/??/??-??:?? (duplicate in TORY)
TENC - (Encoded by) (put your own name)
TIPL - (Involved People) Character - Cast (for just this song, or for the show?)
TIT2 - (Title) All That Jazz
TIT3 - (Subtitle)
TLAN - (Language) ENG
TMOO - (Mood)
TOPE - (Original artist) (choreographer of the 1975 version)
TPE1 - (Artist) Original Broadway Cast OR the Characters?
TPE4 - (Remixed by) (choreographer of the 1996 version)
TRDA - (Recording time) 1996/11/18-??:?? (duplicate year in TYER)
TDRL - (Release time) 1997/01/28-??:?? (duplicate in TYER if TRDA not known)
TPUB - (Publisher) RCA
TRCK - (Track #) 2
TSSE - (Encoder) (import the information from EncSpot?)
TXXX - ("Type") SOUNDTRACK
........... (Album Artist) Original Broadway Cast OR Various
........... ("Style") Jazz?
........... ("Venue") (recording studio or theatre, if known)
........... ("Country") USA
SYLT - (Synchronized lyrics)
USLT - (Unsynchronized lyrics)

Notes: should the artist of a SOUNDTRACK be:
- the real performer? (here: Bebe Neuwirth)
- a general name "Original Cast", "Original Soundtrack" (here: Original Broadway Cast)
- the name of the character the song applies to? (here: Velma Kelly)

I prefer the 2nd option. Why?
- the real performer in a musical is not well known
- the real performer for a movie has probably released the song elsewhere anyway
- there would be too many largely irrelevant character names in a large database!

Comments? Sorry if I just caused one hell of a headache among the developers of MM...

[Teknojnky]

I thought MM was already 2.4 compliant, it wasn't until I was using the new musicbrainz tagger (which saves as 2.4 by default) that MM did not use 2.4 tags.

[Lowlander]

Full tag support of the latest ID3v2 version has been requested many time and is on the wishlist.

[MCSmarties]

I think "full ID3 support" does not completely answer the issue. I mean, what's your definition of "full support"?

IMO not only should all fields that MM use be compliant to the ID3 standard, (which they mainly are), but support for more frames should also be added.

However, I think implementing ALL defined frames might be a bit overkill and make the program unecessarily bloated.
For instance, I don't think that the commercial frames and all the individual URL addresses are really necessary.

For example, I also think that the ISRC frame could be removed.
Replacing it by MCDI (Music Identifier - the FreeDB ID) would be much more useful (even if no tagger has currently implemented that frame yet).

[jiri]

Thanks for such a detailed analysis. I already knew about some of the issues you mentioned and also some new interesting were rasied. I'm sure many of these will be implemented in the next version.

Jiri

[Platypus70]

Holy Cow, MCSmarties, if all users did research and subsequently made posts like yours, MM3.0 should be The Definitive Media Player...
*tips hat*

[MCSmarties]

Jiri, Platypus70: Thanks for that feedback.
It's nice to see that my research is appreciated!

[dsavereide]

************
Notes: should the artist of a SOUNDTRACK be:
- the real performer? (here: Bebe Neuwirth)
- a general name "Original Cast", "Original Soundtrack" (here: Original Broadway Cast)
- the name of the character the song applies to? (here: Velma Kelly)

I prefer the 2nd option. Why?
- the real performer in a musical is not well known
- the real performer for a movie has probably released the song elsewhere anyway
- there would be too many largely irrelevant character names in a large database!

The first option - the real performer - is what musical fans would use. When you say they are unknown, you really mean they are unknown to you. They are well known to musical fans. The same performers appear in many different cast albums. Also there can be many different recordings of the same show with different casts, as well as non-cast albums by many of these same artists. So they are significant and you want to be able to search for them.

Your statement that the real performer was likely to have released the song elsewhere anyway only applies to pop stars. Most broadway stars generally only re-record the same songs in concerts, or if they have a new arrangement which will differ substantially from the cast album. Collections, of course, might include some selections but I don't see this a general rule.

Album Artist is new to me. For musicals, I've decided to set it to the composer. This is handy when ripping my CDs since I already had musicals organized by composer/album so they naturally go into the right place.

For me, genre tends to be track specific. Most of "All That Jazz" is in fact jazz. Do you call any song written by Cole Porter to be a showtune, even when recorded by Louie Armstrong and is clearly jazz? This is one of the problems I have with genres in general. It seems to be too much trouble to keep them consistant.

[stankovic]

Supporting more native fields of the id3-standard and writing/reading the TXXX-frame would increase the interoperability between several programs that already do that: Godfather, Mp3Tag, foobar...

But that would be only the first step: what about other tag standards (vorbis comment, ape ...) wich doesn't have predefined so many field or not the same fields? There are three solutions:

1. You write non-defined fields in database only (Like Monkey does)

2. You write a tag wich begins with name of the application (Like Helium, JRiver MC)

But i hope that everybody can see that the most elegant solution is

3. the solution Mp3tag, foobar ... choosed: if an tag is not predefined it is written as txxx-frame (mp3) or the frame name is the same as the name of the field (ape, vorbis comment)

[stankovic]

And what i forgot to say in the last post

The opportunity to create any tags (instead of just three custom fields)!

[Teknojnky]

Also wished here...

http://www.mediamonkey.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=17130

[MCSmarties]

dsavereide: Thanks for pointing that out. Yes, I guess you're right - just ignoring the name of the performer because he /she is not well known *to me* is rather rude.

stankovic, Teknojnky: I wasn't aware of this development but I heartily agree with you guys! Vote +1 on this.

Jiri: I haven't tried out MM3 alpha (too chicken for alpha testing) but what's the status on additional ID3 frames support? Is it still on the table?

[gk]

Thanks for your research! Really excellent!

I would love to get rid of iTunes in favor of MediaMonkey or another media manager, except for the fact that I have invested a lot of time inputting 'recording date' info into the iTunes 'Grouping' field (complete chronologically order set of Miles Davis, John Coltrane, etc) - but MediaMonkey doesn't support it and doesn't seem to support any plugin scripts for supporting it either

SIDE NOTE:
my iPod mini just died and I am in the middle of deciding whether to repair/buy new iPod (JUST TO CONTINUE USING MY TIT1 DATA - damn you iTunes lock-in!) or switch to a better device / media manger, and be forced to lose my data...

Do you know of any decent mp3 manager, given the fact that MediaMonkey is lacking, that would allow me to import TIT1 data, to port from iTunes?

[MCSmarties]

gk: If you follow the link to my other ID3 thread (in my first post), you'll see that Helium, The Godfather and MP3 Tag Clinic all support the TIT1 frame.

Of these, I'd say MP3 Tag Clinic should be the easiest to use.
Unfortunately, I don't think they have any mechanism to copy tags from one field to another (but I haven't checked the newest version) so maybe you'll have to do it by hand.

I'm not sure I understand what kind of data you actually have in the TIT1 frame. Is it something like original recording date? You could just copy the information to another frame that MM can read - something you don't normally use, maybe original lyricist? - and then once the file is loaded in MM, use one of Steegy's field copying scripts to move it wherever you want to.

Sorry, that's the best I can come up with...