Tricks: subgenres, artworks and discogs... how I enhanced my library
Hi, I would like to share my experience with iTunes, and how I have solved some annoying issues I got switching from Windows+Foobar2000 too Mac OS+iTunes.
Perhaps you may have some suggestion for me, or you could find useful the way I found! 🙂
*THE BACKGROUND*
During the years I ripped a lot of albums and I used Foobar2000 on Windows to organize my music library. Recently I found foo_discogs, a Foobar2000 plugin for tagging MP3s retrieving data from discogs.com. Discogs.com has a lot of high-quality data about artists, releases, labels and albums. Foo_discogs can also retrieve multiple high-quality artworks from discogs.com: the plugin downloads the artwork as a jpg file, with a progressive number at the and of its name, so I set Foobar to display those files, normally placed in the album directory.
I'm an electronic music fan: electronica has a lot of subgenres really useful to find the right music. With foo_discogs I can tag easily my MP3s with a multi valued GENRE and STYLE field, and I also tagged my MP3s with country, label, catalog id, etc.
*THE PROBLEM*
I wasted a lot of time making my library well tagged and organized: switching to Apple I have lost this paradise and I am really disappointed seeing how poorly users can organize the music on iTunes. So bad.
I have read forums, tried scripts, studied solutions and finally I have found a compromise to gain at least two of the most important goals of my Windows/Foobar2000 setup:
1) display artwork downloaded from discogs.org
2) search music using other information as country release, label, style or other genres
The pro of the solution I found is that I can maintain my MP3s well tagged, hoping that some good developer will release in the future a better MP3 player for Mac.
*Important note*
DO NOT USE iTunes to tag your MP3s! iTunes may delete and replace tags without warning. Use the iTunes tagger ONLY selecting multiple tracks and only if you know what are you doing!
*Workaround for artworks*
For displaying the artwork on iTunes, you need to embed it directly into the MP3s. While I don't like this solution at all, I have to admit that embedding artworks has some advantages, as showing covers on an iPod or a deeper portability of the MP3s.
*Customized tags and subgenre workaround*
Since iTunes does not support multiple valued genres, nor can search or browse fields other than GENRE, ARTIST or ALBUM, the only way to find music with customized values (as STYLE, LABEL or SUBGENRE...), is to create smart playlist reading those data from the COMMENT tag.
For example, if you want to find MP3s released from the german Kompakt label, you will create a Smart Playlist looking for tracks containing "LABEL: Kompakt" into the COMMENT field. In order to do this, you have obviously to fill the COMMENT field for any track with the right values. With Foobar2000 you can do this automatically, as described below, and since the LABEL is retrieved from discogs.org, the whole process does not take so much time as you may guess.
*Software requirements*
I use Parallels with a Windows+Foobar2000+foo_discogs instance
Foobar2000: http://www.foobar2000.org
foo_discogs: http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=50523
Jaikoz: http://www.jthink.net/jaikoz/
I need Jaikoz to embed artworks directly into the MP3s files, so iTunes can display it. I didn't find a good alternative, and since I liked the software I bought a license (ca. 10£, €15) - otherwise you cannot save more than 30 files at time.
*THE PROCEDURE*
*1. On Windows: configure your Foobar2000*
Add to your Foobar2000 library the directory where the music is stored (your Mac hard disk, for example). Share the directory with Parallels for using it on Windows. Be warned: if you don't know how Foobar2000 or foo_discogs work, it will take a bit of time learning theirs usage. They are geeky pieces of software, but they are very powerful too.
*2. On Windows: tag with foo_discogs*
Tag your library with foo_discogs: you can use the default config, but remember to set the plugin to fetch all the album arts it finds on the website. The default config of the plugin will download them as album_art.jpg, album_art_1.jpg, album_art_2.jpg, etc. The MP3s will be tagged with a lot of customized fields, as <DISCOGS_COUNTRY>, <DISCOGS_LABEL>, etc. For the subgenres, the plugin uses the STYLE field.
*3. On Windows: fill the COMMENTS tag of any track*
Once you tagged your music with foo_discogs, you get some useful tags (right click on a track, select "Properties"). For example:
Genre : Electronic
<DISCOGS_ARTIST_LINK> : 1200%20Mics
<DISCOGS_CATALOG> : TIPWCD51
<DISCOGS_COUNTRY> : UK
<DISCOGS_LABEL> : TIP.World
<DISCOGS_LABEL_LINK> : TIP.World
<DISCOGS_ORIGINAL_TRACK_NUMBER> : 01
<DISCOGS_RELEASE_ID> : 985100
<DISCOGS_RELEASED> : 2007
<STYLE> : Psy-Trance
Ok, we want that the datas about catalog, country, label, genre and style are accessible from an iTunes Smart Playlist. We have to save theirs values into the COMMENTS field.
To to this, use the Foobar2000's masstagger. If you don't find the masstagger on your Foobar2000, you should reinstall it checking its option during the custom setup.
Procedure:
a) select your tracks on Foobar2000, right click and choose "Manage script" from the "Tagging" sub-menu.
b) click the Add button to add a new action, and select "Format value from other fields..."
c) as "Destination field name" select COMMENT
d) as "Formatting pattern" insert (without line breaks):
$if([%genre%],GENRE: %genre%)$if([%style%],$crlf()STYLE: %style%)$if([%discogs_label%],$crlf()LABEL: %discogs_label%)$if([%discogs_catalog%],$crlf()CATALOG: %discogs_catalog%)$if([%discogs_catalog%],$crlf()COUNTRY: %discogs_country%)$if([%comment%],$crlf()$crlf()%comment%)
e) click "Run" to rewrite the COMMENT field
The result will replace the COMMENT field: if there is already a COMMENT value, it will be placed at the end. The result would be like:
GENRE: Electronic
STYLE: Psy-Trance
LABEL: TIP.World
CATALOG: TIPWCD21
COUNTRY: UK
(Original comment, if any)
*4. On your Mac: embed artworks with Jaikoz*
Open Jaikoz and add your music directory in the edit pane. Select the Actions menu > Local correct > Correct artwork. This will embed into your MP3s ANY jpg found in theirs directory, i.e. the album arts retrieved with from discogs.org and foo_discogs.
Since discogs has very good JPGs, better results are gained if the directory contains only that JPGs and not covers downloaded from other sources.
Once done, remember to save the changes on your files!
*5. On your Mac: refresh your iTunes library*
We have modified our MP3s, changing the COMMENT field and adding artworks: if the files where already in your iTunes library, you need to update it. To do this, use the script you find at http://marv.kordix.com/archives/000860.html to reload the values from the files.
*6. On your Mac: create smart playlist to find music*
For example, you want to search music which style is Psy-Trance, as retrieved from discogs.org in the example above. Create a new smart playlist specifying "Comments contains 'STYLE: Psy-Trance'" (or the style you got from Discogs.org). You should find your tracks there. Often it happens that discogs has multiple values fields, so you will have something like 'STYLE: minimal, minimal techno'. In those cases, create a playlist where comments contain 'minimal techno', without the "STYLE: " prefix. Rembember that the smart playlist will search the whole comment field!
Other example: if you want to find music released in the UK, just search for "COUNTRY: UK", and so on.
*CONCLUSIONS*
I hope now I found my way to be happy with iTunes. iTunes lacks a lot of functionality I was used to have in Windows, and it seems also that a lot of people has such problems too. I would be happy to share other suggestions with iTunes user on how to maintain the musc well organized. If you try the way I described above, please remember to backup your library and your MP3s before doing any change, or try it for only an album in order to be enough experienced with the procedure.
There are a lot of tricks for doing the process faster, but they need a bit of experience with foobar2000. I would be happy to share them too.... 🙂 If there's something unclear, just ask here :P
Perhaps you may have some suggestion for me, or you could find useful the way I found! 🙂
*THE BACKGROUND*
During the years I ripped a lot of albums and I used Foobar2000 on Windows to organize my music library. Recently I found foo_discogs, a Foobar2000 plugin for tagging MP3s retrieving data from discogs.com. Discogs.com has a lot of high-quality data about artists, releases, labels and albums. Foo_discogs can also retrieve multiple high-quality artworks from discogs.com: the plugin downloads the artwork as a jpg file, with a progressive number at the and of its name, so I set Foobar to display those files, normally placed in the album directory.
I'm an electronic music fan: electronica has a lot of subgenres really useful to find the right music. With foo_discogs I can tag easily my MP3s with a multi valued GENRE and STYLE field, and I also tagged my MP3s with country, label, catalog id, etc.
*THE PROBLEM*
I wasted a lot of time making my library well tagged and organized: switching to Apple I have lost this paradise and I am really disappointed seeing how poorly users can organize the music on iTunes. So bad.
I have read forums, tried scripts, studied solutions and finally I have found a compromise to gain at least two of the most important goals of my Windows/Foobar2000 setup:
1) display artwork downloaded from discogs.org
2) search music using other information as country release, label, style or other genres
The pro of the solution I found is that I can maintain my MP3s well tagged, hoping that some good developer will release in the future a better MP3 player for Mac.
*Important note*
DO NOT USE iTunes to tag your MP3s! iTunes may delete and replace tags without warning. Use the iTunes tagger ONLY selecting multiple tracks and only if you know what are you doing!
*Workaround for artworks*
For displaying the artwork on iTunes, you need to embed it directly into the MP3s. While I don't like this solution at all, I have to admit that embedding artworks has some advantages, as showing covers on an iPod or a deeper portability of the MP3s.
*Customized tags and subgenre workaround*
Since iTunes does not support multiple valued genres, nor can search or browse fields other than GENRE, ARTIST or ALBUM, the only way to find music with customized values (as STYLE, LABEL or SUBGENRE...), is to create smart playlist reading those data from the COMMENT tag.
For example, if you want to find MP3s released from the german Kompakt label, you will create a Smart Playlist looking for tracks containing "LABEL: Kompakt" into the COMMENT field. In order to do this, you have obviously to fill the COMMENT field for any track with the right values. With Foobar2000 you can do this automatically, as described below, and since the LABEL is retrieved from discogs.org, the whole process does not take so much time as you may guess.
*Software requirements*
I use Parallels with a Windows+Foobar2000+foo_discogs instance
Foobar2000: http://www.foobar2000.org
foo_discogs: http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=50523
Jaikoz: http://www.jthink.net/jaikoz/
I need Jaikoz to embed artworks directly into the MP3s files, so iTunes can display it. I didn't find a good alternative, and since I liked the software I bought a license (ca. 10£, €15) - otherwise you cannot save more than 30 files at time.
*THE PROCEDURE*
*1. On Windows: configure your Foobar2000*
Add to your Foobar2000 library the directory where the music is stored (your Mac hard disk, for example). Share the directory with Parallels for using it on Windows. Be warned: if you don't know how Foobar2000 or foo_discogs work, it will take a bit of time learning theirs usage. They are geeky pieces of software, but they are very powerful too.
*2. On Windows: tag with foo_discogs*
Tag your library with foo_discogs: you can use the default config, but remember to set the plugin to fetch all the album arts it finds on the website. The default config of the plugin will download them as album_art.jpg, album_art_1.jpg, album_art_2.jpg, etc. The MP3s will be tagged with a lot of customized fields, as <DISCOGS_COUNTRY>, <DISCOGS_LABEL>, etc. For the subgenres, the plugin uses the STYLE field.
*3. On Windows: fill the COMMENTS tag of any track*
Once you tagged your music with foo_discogs, you get some useful tags (right click on a track, select "Properties"). For example:
Genre : Electronic
<DISCOGS_ARTIST_LINK> : 1200%20Mics
<DISCOGS_CATALOG> : TIPWCD51
<DISCOGS_COUNTRY> : UK
<DISCOGS_LABEL> : TIP.World
<DISCOGS_LABEL_LINK> : TIP.World
<DISCOGS_ORIGINAL_TRACK_NUMBER> : 01
<DISCOGS_RELEASE_ID> : 985100
<DISCOGS_RELEASED> : 2007
<STYLE> : Psy-Trance
Ok, we want that the datas about catalog, country, label, genre and style are accessible from an iTunes Smart Playlist. We have to save theirs values into the COMMENTS field.
To to this, use the Foobar2000's masstagger. If you don't find the masstagger on your Foobar2000, you should reinstall it checking its option during the custom setup.
Procedure:
a) select your tracks on Foobar2000, right click and choose "Manage script" from the "Tagging" sub-menu.
b) click the Add button to add a new action, and select "Format value from other fields..."
c) as "Destination field name" select COMMENT
d) as "Formatting pattern" insert (without line breaks):
$if([%genre%],GENRE: %genre%)$if([%style%],$crlf()STYLE: %style%)$if([%discogs_label%],$crlf()LABEL: %discogs_label%)$if([%discogs_catalog%],$crlf()CATALOG: %discogs_catalog%)$if([%discogs_catalog%],$crlf()COUNTRY: %discogs_country%)$if([%comment%],$crlf()$crlf()%comment%)
e) click "Run" to rewrite the COMMENT field
The result will replace the COMMENT field: if there is already a COMMENT value, it will be placed at the end. The result would be like:
GENRE: Electronic
STYLE: Psy-Trance
LABEL: TIP.World
CATALOG: TIPWCD21
COUNTRY: UK
(Original comment, if any)
*4. On your Mac: embed artworks with Jaikoz*
Open Jaikoz and add your music directory in the edit pane. Select the Actions menu > Local correct > Correct artwork. This will embed into your MP3s ANY jpg found in theirs directory, i.e. the album arts retrieved with from discogs.org and foo_discogs.
Since discogs has very good JPGs, better results are gained if the directory contains only that JPGs and not covers downloaded from other sources.
Once done, remember to save the changes on your files!
*5. On your Mac: refresh your iTunes library*
We have modified our MP3s, changing the COMMENT field and adding artworks: if the files where already in your iTunes library, you need to update it. To do this, use the script you find at http://marv.kordix.com/archives/000860.html to reload the values from the files.
*6. On your Mac: create smart playlist to find music*
For example, you want to search music which style is Psy-Trance, as retrieved from discogs.org in the example above. Create a new smart playlist specifying "Comments contains 'STYLE: Psy-Trance'" (or the style you got from Discogs.org). You should find your tracks there. Often it happens that discogs has multiple values fields, so you will have something like 'STYLE: minimal, minimal techno'. In those cases, create a playlist where comments contain 'minimal techno', without the "STYLE: " prefix. Rembember that the smart playlist will search the whole comment field!
Other example: if you want to find music released in the UK, just search for "COUNTRY: UK", and so on.
*CONCLUSIONS*
I hope now I found my way to be happy with iTunes. iTunes lacks a lot of functionality I was used to have in Windows, and it seems also that a lot of people has such problems too. I would be happy to share other suggestions with iTunes user on how to maintain the musc well organized. If you try the way I described above, please remember to backup your library and your MP3s before doing any change, or try it for only an album in order to be enough experienced with the procedure.
There are a lot of tricks for doing the process faster, but they need a bit of experience with foobar2000. I would be happy to share them too.... 🙂 If there's something unclear, just ask here :P
iMac, Mac OS X (10.4.10)
