Genre Finder 5.0 - Updated 05/08/2012

trixmoto · Post by **trixmoto** » Thu Mar 01, 2007 6:24 pm

This script is powered by

and has changed so much I'm rewriting the description!!

This script queries Last.Fm to try and tag fields in your database. In the settings you can define which fields are populated, and use white/black lists to ensure that only suitable values are used. You can run in track mode (which queries for each selected track), artist mode (which queries for each artist of the selected tracks) or album mode (which queries for each track in each of the albums of the selected tracks, until the tracks in the album have a concensus of values). Hopefully most of the settings are self-explanatory...

To see more details of the white/black list values, see here or use the "Help" button on the "Update lists" option screen.

To see details of each set of changes, see version posts: 1.1, 2.0, 2.1, 2.2, 2.3, 2.4, 2.5, 2.6, 3.0, 3.1, 3.2, 4.0, 4.1, 4.2, 4.3, 4.4, 4.5, 4.6, 4.7, 4.8.

Bex · Post by **Bex** » Thu Mar 01, 2007 6:30 pm

Cool idea! I like it.

You have very been productive lately Trixi. You're spoiling us!

Thanks a lot!

DaledeSilva · Post by **DaledeSilva** » Thu Mar 01, 2007 10:52 pm

sweet... I'm running it on my whole database as I type this.. it will be a few hours...

I know the risk.. but my genre's a pretty screwed anyway.. they need an overhaul

DaledeSilva · Post by **DaledeSilva** » Thu Mar 01, 2007 10:55 pm

just something that popped into my head...

have you built in a failsafe to prevent the user running this script again while it's already running? - because that would increase the last.fm checks to more than 1 per second.

also.. because other scripts can check last.fm..maybe you need a warning note to the user to tell them if there are any other scripts which use last fm, disable them first before running.

Dale.

DaledeSilva · Post by **DaledeSilva** » Fri Mar 02, 2007 2:34 am

wow... what a huge bunch of useless genre's... guess I've got alot of work to do anyway...lol!

trixmoto · Post by **trixmoto** » Fri Mar 02, 2007 4:33 am

@Bex - I've been working hard for a while, but the main project I've been working on hasn't been released yet. It's still being tested, so whilst that's happening I've had time to fulfill some of the requests people have made to improve other scripts.

@DaledeSilva - Last.Fm actually stipulates that you cannot average more than one query per second over any 5 minute period. My script on average takes 1.1 seconds per query (as there's processing time to include) so it should be ok if another script (ie: MonkeyRok) makes a few queries at the same time.

As with any source, I cannot guarantee the quality of the results, although I got some fairly nice results with my test set of data. If you want to keep track of the changes that are made you can open the script file in a text editor and chance "Debug = False" to "Debug = True" near the top. This will create a debug log showing the changes.

durden999uk · Post by **durden999uk** » Fri Mar 02, 2007 8:49 am

Hey trix, I have tried several times in the past to manually tag my files with genre, but have always given up out of frustration over my ambivalence towards the genre of a certain artist/album - in other words, I love the idea of this script!

However, I tagged 5000 tracks and got 502 different genres, leaving me with the bigger task of correcting them than if I was doing it from scratch. The fault, of course, lies with the innacuracies of lastfm, so my quesion is, is there any way the genre can be sourced from a more reliable database; allmusic.com, for example?

trixmoto · Post by **trixmoto** » Fri Mar 02, 2007 9:41 am

I don't think allmusic provide web services like Last.Fm - unfortunately there seems to always be a trade off between quality of the results, and accessibility to them!

easye · Post by **easye** » Fri Mar 02, 2007 9:49 am

durden999uk wrote:Hey trix, I have tried several times in the past to manually tag my files with genre, but have always given up out of frustration over my ambivalence towards the genre of a certain artist/album - in other words, I love the idea of this script!

However, I tagged 5000 tracks and got 502 different genres, leaving me with the bigger task of correcting them than if I was doing it from scratch. The fault, of course, lies with the innacuracies of lastfm, so my quesion is, is there any way the genre can be sourced from a more reliable database; allmusic.com, for example?

You've probably seen this, but just in case you haven't: http://www.mediamonkey.com/forum/viewto ... &start=225

It's not as automatic as this script (e.g. you can't perform mass tagging), but it works well.

Nebbin · Post by **Nebbin** » Fri Mar 02, 2007 9:50 am

Is there an "accurate", or reliable source for genres? In the few times I've checked, iTunes and Allmusic seem just as flawed. (NB: Without extensive testing, this is only a cursory observation.)

I find this the hardest of all fields to fill with any level of consistency. For someone who has enough trouble differentiating between Hip-Hop and R&B, and a HD full of materiel which always seems to sit between the obvious genres, any help is appreciated. Even if I have to edit 80% of the results.

Hey, why don't we lobby the industry to include Genres on the CD labels?

(ok, bad idea... every song would probably have it's own genre then.)

durden999uk · Post by **durden999uk** » Fri Mar 02, 2007 10:11 am

Thanks for the feedback,
@ trix - I was thinking more of a direct access to allmusic, cutting out lastfm altogether, but maybe that isn't possible...
@ easye - thanks for the tip. I had checked it out before, but wasn't in the mood to put the work it at the time. I might revisit it though.
@ Nebbin - the question of accuracy with genre is a tricky one, I think - as you rightly point out, lots of music straddles multiple genres, making the job of accurate tagging difficult. The advantage of allmusic, however, is the consistency - it is put together by professionals, wheras lastfm is user based, so you end up with very odd genres like 'work', 'favarites' (sp.), 'civil war' etc. that are essentially meaningless.

I think MM3 is introducing the ability to add multiple genres; if that feature were combined with the multiple genres aspect of allmusic, then I think I would be able to finally get my genre problems sorted!

Nebbin · Post by **Nebbin** » Fri Mar 02, 2007 10:35 am

hmmm, next time I visit Allmusic I'll have to take more notice. Most times I only visit for track date info.

In your minds, how well do other sources (like Gracenote and Musicbrainz etc.) stack up to Allmusic then? TBH, I don't understand why iTunes is so wonky, especially as it's basically a paid resource.

Spazz · Post by **Spazz** » Fri Mar 02, 2007 11:48 am

durden999uk wrote:Thanks for the feedback,
@ trix - I was thinking more of a direct access to allmusic, cutting out lastfm altogether, but maybe that isn't possible...
@ easye - thanks for the tip. I had checked it out before, but wasn't in the mood to put the work it at the time. I might revisit it though.
@ Nebbin - the question of accuracy with genre is a tricky one, I think - as you rightly point out, lots of music straddles multiple genres, making the job of accurate tagging difficult. The advantage of allmusic, however, is the consistency - it is put together by professionals, wheras lastfm is user based, so you end up with very odd genres like 'work', 'favarites' (sp.), 'civil war' etc. that are essentially meaningless.

Actually, the problem with last.fm isn't that it has wierd genre's, though some people do tag as the wrong genre just to be dumb. It's more that the tag system was never meant to be for genre's, it just worked out that way. It was supposed to be used for keywords to group music they way you want to, for instance, my female vocalists tag crosses many genres, the common link being the lead singer is a woman. The system to query last.fm would be usable if you could add a tag blacklist that it would ignore. Or possibly a whitelist that it would take the highest match against and use that tag.

trixmoto · Post by **trixmoto** » Fri Mar 02, 2007 12:04 pm

@durden999uk - I meant going straight to allmusic, but how? I don't think they let you. You have to do through their "amg.dll" when searching so I can't figure out how to get any results out of it.

@spazz - you are correct, but on my library I found that the highest tag was almost always the genre, as this is what people tend to use the tag for. Maybe less "mainstream" music will have less accurate results?

durden999uk · Post by **durden999uk** » Fri Mar 02, 2007 12:08 pm

I think that's a great idea - if there were some consensus on, say 20, 30, 50 genres, or whatever, which were implemented in the script, it would weed out the odd 'genres' (or, as you rightly say, keywords) that make the script a little too much hard work for something automatic. What do you think, trix, is it possible?

NB - I don't know about anyone else, but I don't want hugely complex genre definitions...I would happily conflate hard rock and heavy metal, and would prefer just Dance rather than Hard-House Heavy Dub (if such a thing exists!). I personally wouldn't need more than about 30 genres or so for my collection.

EDIT - @ trix - I'm afraid I have no idea how it would be done, I'm just tossing the idea about. I will always bow to your superior MM knowledge, so if you say it can't be done that's enough for me