classical music related wishes: code generator for 'album', more date fields

[jistme]

A little hesitant to stack more wishes and ask for even more presents, these two might be useful for whenever it is chosen to pick up some challenge to maybe add some features to make MusicBee even more suited for classical music.
Yet they also could be useful for most other collections ans genres.


1. 'crc' generator for 'Album'

While the options in MB to setup what defines an album in grouping are well-implemented, there are exceptions which no setting seems to cover completely.
This will mostly occur with classical music, where albumtitle, artist or composer are often the exact same for different albums.
E.g. the same work from the same composer released in the same year, by a different conductor.
For every situation a right grouping setting can be made, but that will always affect other albums or compilations in an unwanted manner.

Would it be perhaps possible to select the tracks which you want to define as an album, and then have MB generate some unique ID (crc?) for those, which then could be added as an option to use to define grouping for albums?


2. more customisable date fields

Another challenge without an ideal solution is dates.

It would have been useful if there would have been an clear agreement and implementation on defining and tagging the following dates:

- date of recording/performance
- release date of the (original) album
- release date of 'this' album (re-release, compilation, remaster, etc.)
- date of which the piece/work was published/composed

The last one would be nice to see the development in years of composers as Bach, Wagner etc., and also place classical music more convenient in their era. Such a date is for classical music more relevant than the cd release date.

Since there isn't uniformity in the industry for this, there exists no way even for MusicBee to get this completely right for everybody and all situations.
Of course a lot can already be achieved with the use of custom tags, but I have already ran out of them...

Without having a very clear vison how to design or implement, I do feel the need to have some better options and overview for such date fields.
For above reasons they will have to be customisable for different users and their usage and requirements.

I envision something like:
- the abilty to setup, name and map up to 4 different year fields in preferences.
- have them displayed in the tag editor panel

Both of course completely optional, so not to confuse or hinder users that don't want to dive into this mess...

[Roadrunner]

Just a thought about your 1st point, the crc:

I assume, these are rare cases, so why not just append in such situations some small text to the album title i.e. "Xxx (conducted by Yyy)"? The advantage would be, that every other music player could handle this too...

Or do you already use the "Grouping" field? If not, you could use it in cases you have to distinguish two albums. And append this to the album grouping fields (Edit -> Preferences -> Sorting/Grouping). Instead you could also use any custom field.

[jistme]

Thanx for replying and giving it some thought.
All three questions however are answered in my startposting.

Compatibilty with other musicplayers is of a very low priority to me.
MB rules anyway, and it's easy to make some adjustments later when converting to portable players.

[Greb]

Yeap, this a very interesting issue: same artist, same album/work, but different recording, or remastered/remixed edition.

I usually use a slightly different title: Like "Winterreise D.911" vs "Winterreise song cycle D.911". And not only in classical music. I have a 'Tubular Bells', 'Tubular Bells [remastered 2003]' and 'Tubular Bells [remixed 2009]' that are, basically, the same...

[Bee-liever]

I usually use a slightly different title: Like "Winterreise D.911" vs "Winterreise song cycle D.911". And not only in classical music. I have a 'Tubular Bells', 'Tubular Bells [remastered 2003]' and 'Tubular Bells [remixed 2009]' that are, basically, the same...

Since there isn't uniformity in the industry for this, there exists no way even for MusicBee to get this completely right for everybody and all situations.
Of course a lot can already be achieved with the use of custom tags, but I have already ran out of them...

I've been using the subtitle (TIT3) and the set subtitle (TSST) frame to track these.
Like Greb's example, I have Deep Purple's Fireball (original and 25th anniversary edition), so I've set the subtitle as original and 25th anniversary respectively.
For classical pieces, like Grieg's Piano Concerto in A minor,Op.16, I've used the movements as the subtitle and used Opus 16 as the set subtitle.
But just like jistme, I've run out of custom tags, and have taken to using virtual tags to map real tags so I can sort and display them.