Beefy ID3 tags on MeFi Music songs, please!

July 12, 2006 4:55 AM

Hello! I'm addicted to MetaFilter Music. One thing I'd like to encourage is well-fleshed ID3 data. Some of the songs I've downloaded simply say things like "Track 4" and then I can't figure out who the hell provided me with the wonderful ear-candy. Thanks to everyone for posting their tunes!
posted by sciurus to Etiquette/Policy at 4:55 AM (13 comments total)

Seconded. Also, is there a way to use a spare ID3 field - maybe "Comment" - to add something like "MeFi" to every track's metadata so I can make a smart playlist out of all the tunes? I don't know how easy this is to do server-side or whether it would need to be done manually by the uploader.

Thanks again to all contributors - you rock. Even those of you who don't.
posted by blag at 5:17 AM on July 12, 2006

I don't know about you blag, but in iTunes I have a smart playlist of all the podcasts that just has Genre set to podcast and Album set to include MeFi. I mess with it every once in a while to make sure that I'm listening to the stuff that is least played first, but that seems to work for me.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 6:13 AM on July 12, 2006

You know, there's an id3v2 field for URL. Maybe mathowie (blessing be upon his user name) could write the song's url to this field once the song gets uploaded. So when your downloaded copy of "Matthew Chen is Spamming" doesn't have good tags( this is just an example, I haven't look at the song's actual tags), at least the URL tag shows http://music.metafilter.com/mefi/25.
posted by boo_radley at 6:41 AM on July 12, 2006

Goddam right it's just an example. :)
posted by cortex at 6:47 AM on July 12, 2006

Yeah, I complained about this a couple threads back.
Forgettin' the ID3 tags? That's a paddlin'.
posted by klangklangston at 7:08 AM on July 12, 2006

Do you think putting a suggestion on the Music posting page to remind folks to check the ID3 tagging would be effective?
posted by sciurus at 7:14 AM on July 12, 2006

Why not check for ID3 tags at the step when clicking on the "Upload Song" button?
posted by Mr. Six at 7:24 AM on July 12, 2006

Thanks for the suggestion, Jess. I don't currently use the podcast features - I just download individual tracks and bang them into my music library - but I'll give it a try. Ta.

I like boo_radley's idea, though. I don't know how relevant it is, but I found this article on manipulating ID3 tags from within ColdFusion.
posted by blag at 7:33 AM on July 12, 2006

Cortex: Oh, hey. Those are some complete tags, it's true. :)
posted by boo_radley at 8:25 AM on July 12, 2006

and if it's a pain in the ass, I'll cough up the money for those communitymx articles.
posted by boo_radley at 8:31 AM on July 12, 2006

I spent a couple days last week and yesterday trying to get some ID3 reading/writing code to work. It appears that I'm getting odd errors with the java libraries out there.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 9:16 AM on July 12, 2006

Thanks Matt! Good luck figuring out whatever it is that you're talking about.
posted by sciurus at 9:18 AM on July 12, 2006

Whenever there's so much music coming in from so many sources, it's inevitable that the volume levels are all over the board. To make things a bit easier on the listeners, it might be nice to add a note on the upload page suggesting that artists normalize their tracks with mp3gain.

That minor quibble aside, I'm loving the quality and diversity of songs that have been flowing in. There are some very talented people here.
posted by Galvatron at 9:36 AM on July 12, 2006