Tagging Song Covers

[cartman005]

Does anyone use a certain tag to track renditions of songs by other artists. For example, "Killing Me Softly" was originally recorded by Lori Lieberman in 1972, so on the Roberta Flack version of the song, I have the following tags.

Original Artist: Lori Lieberman
Original Album: Lori Lieberman
Original Year: 1972

It has recently come to my attention that some people use these tags in a different way (see this thread, where I asked the same question).

Just wondering how other people use these tags and how they tag cover versions, if at all.

[psychoadept]

I don't tag covers. If a work is well known enough for it to matter that it's a cover, I generally know what it is anyway. If I don't, title and composer are usually enough identification. (With MusicBrainz I often get the work tagged, too.)

I use those fields for compilations. Actually, the way I use them is opposite of how I imagine they're intended to be used, because I put the compilation in Original Album and tag the track with the actual original album and date. I don't bother tagging the compilation date, album is only there so I know what actual cd in my collection the track came from.

Original Date I use for either peak chart date, in the case of pop music, or date of composition for classical music.

[cartman005]

Thanks for your response. I guess there isn’t really a standard way.

[psychoadept]

I mean, even if there were an official way to use those tags I would be very surprised if a lot of people did it exactly the same.

[TateB]

I tag the original artist for covers.  I then created a virtual tag:

$IsNull(<Original Artist>,<Title>,<Title>{color: 252,255,64}" ("<Original Artist>" cover)")

I display this field rather than <Title> so that it shows me the original artist after, in brackets and yellow, when available (I am planning to change the colour as it doesn't work well when the track is highlighted).

I've also set up a Filter - "Original Artist is not null" - and then set this filter to group by Original Artist.  This enables me to get a complete list of all cover songs, organized by the original artist, which I can sort by other Album or Artist depending on what I am looking for.


I use the original year for 2 things: to tag studio albums that are reissues and to tag live albums with the date of the performance.  I do this as I sort all of my albums by album artist, then year, and I prefer reissues and live albums to appear at the original date of issue or performance.

[The Incredible Boom Boom]

I use those fields for compilations. Actually, the way I use them is opposite of how I imagine they're intended to be used, because I put the compilation in Original Album and tag the track with the actual original album and date. I don't bother tagging the compilation date, album is only there so I know what actual cd in my collection the track came from.

Do you use Picard to grab the original track date?

[psychoadept]

With Picard I tag the compilation first, and it writes the album name to Original Album. Then, when I go back and tag the track with the actual original album, it leaves the Original Album field with the compilation name, but overwrites most everything else. Does that answer the question?

[The Incredible Boom Boom]

With Picard I tag the compilation first, and it writes the album name to Original Album. Then, when I go back and tag the track with the actual original album, it leaves the Original Album field with the compilation name, but overwrites most everything else. Does that answer the question?

More work to be done. 😩
What script(s) do you use for this?

[psychoadept]

This is the script for compilations, which sets Original Album and Original Artist:

$if($or($eq(%compilation%,1),$inmulti(%releasetype%,compilation)),
$set(originalalbum,%album%)
$if(%albumartist%,$set(originalartist,%albumartist%),$set(albumartist,[compilation])$set(originalartist,[compilation])),)


Then you also need to put originalalbum and originalartist in Preserved Tags, so once it's set it doesn't get changed later.