When metadata's messed up--titles switched for artist--ability to transpose columns

[GeorgeButel]

Sometimes, the metadata in multiple databases is totally messed up on some of the more esoteric cds. I'm beginning to think that cognitive impairment is a requirement for submitting data to them. When the problem is simple, such as all the titles being in the artist column and vice versa, isn't there some way to transpose the data all at once instead of having to do it manually track by track?
I am also wondering why, after removing the cd, you can no longer submit changes to freedb or AMG. Even if you put the cd back in, the option to submit changes is greyed out at that point. After laboriously correcting all the wrong info, if I forget to submit the info, then I'll have to do it all over again if I have to re-rip the cd for some reason in the future, not that that submitting the corrections seems to do much good. Even when the original metadata in their database seem to have been submitted by someone with no blood in their alcohol system, freedb regularly rejects the corrections. I've read their FAQs, but I fail to understand how some of the most glaring errors can remain uncorrectable due to whatever freedb uses to decide if the submission is authentic. My collection was not obtained from the black market. [By "errors," I'm not referring to the different ways we all have of formatting things, like whether or not to include the "the" in a group's name (I prefer omitting the "the" to having to put up with ludicrous formatting I sometimes see like "Beatles, The," which angers me to no end.)]

[Spoon]

Re: When metadata's messed up--titles switched for artist--ability to transpose colum

If you consider there are 2 million discs in many of the databases there will aways be a % error. I thought there was a swap artist + track option on the right click menu on a track, might be wrong though.

[GeorgeButel]

Re: When metadata's messed up--titles switched for artist--ability to transpose colum

You are absolutely correct that you can swap artists and track titles; I never noticed that context menu option since it is greyed out and virtually invisible on non-compilations, and most of my albums are from individual artists. When I do put in a compilation with wacky metadata, I am usually overwhelmed by the upcoming hassle of the corrections, and just start doing it manually. At least you recognize that it is a common enough occurrence that you have already included that option. But a few compilations do have more egregious errors than that. (By the way, can you not delete the "Psychadelic" spelling from your genre list? Are there people who spell it that way?)
I guess the only way to correct the wacky freedb entries is to do it manually, as they describe at http://www.freedb.org/en/faq.3.html, which requires increasing the revision number of the file. I had thought that they would appreciate receiving some scanned album art not in anyone's database, and which I had assumed would be uploaded when I attempted an automatic correction ("submit changes"), but the manual procedure doesn't say anything about that.
Something separate that bothers me is the "year" category. I want 2 year categories, one for the actual issue date of the media itself, the other for the original issue date of the individual songs and/or album in question. I find it extremely annoying to see, say, a 2008 "year" for a Brothers Four album that was originally issued in 1962, and sometimes, when listening to a song, my friends or I might wonder (or even argue) about what year it first came out. I do add the info as a new tag, when I feel like spending the time, but I think it ought to be a standard tag. Another tag that ought to be in the list of "standard" ones, especially in the case of pop music, would be whether or not the recording is the "original" version or not (and I would be more sympathetic toward the music industry if they would let us know on all their releases WHICH version of a song is being included for anything that has been previously released in any version.) I have taken to putting that information into brackets after the song title (I save parentheses for when the actual title has something in parentheses), as well as a tag "Original recording?" which results in a yes, or a yes, remastered, or something like that.

[GeorgeButel]

Re: When metadata's messed up--titles switched for artist--ability to transpose colum

What would be a nice feature is this: the ability to copy an entire user-selected column from one meta's database entry for a cd so that the entire column could be pasted to one from another meta's database. For example, freedb has a certain classical compilation listed with the composer as artist, using, as most of us do, the "one" name where no confusion exists (Beethoven is not Ludwig von Beethoven, he is just Beethoven). The full name is in the metadata, as are the actual performing artists. I am not a classical fanatic, so I keep all my classical files as [the composer as one name] - [musical piece title]. So if I rip using freedb, and use, as naming, [artist] - [title], I get the exact track name I want. But I don't like having the composer listed as artist. I would rather name as [composer's last name] - [track title] and have all information listed correctly, with a column of composer (as the one names), which I cannot get from that database without manually deleting all the extraneous first names from each entry. So I would like to copy the artist metadata from the freedb information to either a blank data cdripper window--i.e., have two windows open--into whatever column I want, or else copy to the cdripper window that has the information from some other database. I may prefer the title formatting of a different database better; there are huge differences in the way people format classical titles. At the present, only the artist and title columns can be switched, and the only copying I see is to the clipboard: I would like to have that capability extended, as well as the capability of copying any other column in question. which may have the track titles formatted more to my liking (classical track titles can be nightmarishly long and complicated, especially when all the classical freaks put in their [wonderful for them] bits of information.) Is there a way to copy everything to, say, Excel, manipulate it the way I want, changing column titles, etc., and then paste it back?
Also, although there is a "check all," it would be nice to have a "select all" somewhere.

[wondermouse]

Re: When metadata's messed up--titles switched for artist--ability to transpose colum

Yes please!