[vorbis] (Classical) Request for Standardization of expanded TAGS

[Craig Dickson]

Tuomo Latto wrote:

> The requirement of a singleton is not needed for the above reasons but
> especially in ALBUM tag it doesn't work:
> In a way it's okay since the track is probably ripped from only one album
> (if not I want that program) but the _exactly_ same version of the track
> might be on other albums as well (collections, re-releases of multiple
> (CD) EPs as an album, etc).
> The goal of the proposion was to be able to tell the album the track was
> ripped from. In case of multiple albums, I would like to know all those
> albums so I could pick the one I like most.
> (Of course then any other album specific information would become
> virtually useless since there would be no way to link them to the correct 
> album.)

That's one problem with your idea. There are other problems as well.

For one thing, I don't trust the average user to be able to tell
reliably whether the versions of a song on two albums are exactly the
same. They could be slightly different mixes, one might be edited for
radio (hopefully that's obvious enough that anyone would notice, but I'm
not that trusting), or differences in CD mastering could mean that one
CD sounds really great while another sounds awful (so even though the
exact same recording went into the mastering process, a very different
CD track came out).

To take one moderately obvious example from recent history, Moby's song
"South Side" exists in two quite noticeably different versions. The CD
single release, which is what was most often played on the radio,
features prominent harmony vocals by Gwen Stefani, the lead singer of No
Doubt. However, the version of the song on Moby's album "Play" lacks
Gwen's vocals. The difference between the two versions is not subtle,
yet when I went looking for the song on Napster, I found many, many
copies identified as "Moby featuring Gwen Stefani" (or similar wording)
that were in fact the album version without Gwen.

If people can't tell the difference between one person singing and two
people singing, then I don't want them trying to guess whether a song
that appears on two albums is the same version on both. I'd rather they
just stick to straightforward facts that require no interpretation (or
ears), such as the name of the CD from which the track was ripped.

Craig

--- >8 ----
List archives:  http://www.xiph.org/archives/
Ogg project homepage: http://www.xiph.org/ogg/
To unsubscribe from this list, send a message to 'vorbis-request at xiph.org'
containing only the word 'unsubscribe' in the body.  No subject is needed.
Unsubscribe messages sent to the list will be ignored/filtered.