Style & Mood Tags

[RMJFlack]

Not sure where to ask this ... if this is the wrong place please re-direct me.

I'm having trouble finding documentation on the purpose of the Style and Mood tags. Genre is well defined in the ID3 / Winamp specs. I've only really thought about these tags recently, so I have a few questions...
1. Are they 'front line' tags that most tagging and playing software will recognise? (Im thinking they could be useful in playlist generation for example)
3. Its not clear to me conceptually how Style would differ from Genre. It could be a sort of sub-genre is Genre were just broad categories. Classical / Opera for example, except Opera is actually a Genre.
4. Mood I think is fairly self evident and different from Genre or Style. But it would be good to have standard definitions.
5. iTunes does not have either Style of Mood in its smart playlist drop down. Is that just Apple being Apple, or is there a reason? (But the DO have a tag called Love which really has me intrigued ... but I digress!)

[garym]

Re: Style & Mood Tags

1. Are they 'front line' tags that most tagging and playing software will recognise? (Im thinking they could be useful in playlist generation for example)

Generally no. But certainly depends on the player.

3. Its not clear to me conceptually how Style would differ from Genre. It could be a sort of sub-genre is Genre were just broad categories. Classical / Opera for example, except Opera is actually a Genre.

It can be whatever you want it to be. People use it in all sorts of way. Probably the most common is as a "subgenre" (e.g., Genre = Rock, Style = Hard or Heavy or Folk, etc. Genre = Jazz, Style = Vocal, or Bebop, or Cool, etc.

4. Mood I think is fairly self evident and different from Genre or Style. But it would be good to have standard definitions.

There are no standard definitions. Again, whatever you want it to be. Some people use it for things like: exercise, chill, housework, party,

5. iTunes does not have either Style of Mood in its smart playlist drop down. Is that just Apple being Apple, or is there a reason? (But the DO have a tag called Love which really has me intrigued ... but I digress!)

Apple does its own thing.

EDIT. Heck, even Genre doesn't really have many standards. Some people use 5 genres only. Others have hundreds of Genres.

[mville]

Re: Style & Mood Tags

Heck, even Genre doesn't really have many standards. Some people use 5 genres only. Others have hundreds of Genres.

This is correct, sadly.

In the music industry there is no single standard regarding Genre, Style etc. and as such, different server/player software developers and music database providers stick to a their own standards, which they have developed over time.

With this lack of standards and no joined-up thinking, it is no wonder end-users struggle with Genre, Style etc., having ultimately to design their own standards.

[RMJFlack]

Re: Style & Mood Tags

Many thanks. I think I get the basic message (but not wanting to quibble I think I have seen in various places lists of ID3 Genre codes but I admit I havent checked to see if they all agree!!)

What I'm wondering is this... given what Im hearing hear, if Im getting metadata from different sources (depending on when & how CDs were ripped etc) does this mean they might be inconsistent?
I'm also not sure what they might have been putting into Style and Mood fields. If I make my own scheme for those fields (which it sounds like would be ok) presumably Im at risk of it getting upset if I should ever wind up reacquiring metadata on a track or tracks.

[garym]

Re: Style & Mood Tags

Many thanks. I think I get the basic message (but not wanting to quibble I think I have seen in various places lists of ID3 Genre codes but I admit I havent checked to see if they all agree!!)

What I'm wondering is this... given what Im hearing hear, if Im getting metadata from different sources (depending on when & how CDs were ripped etc) does this mean they might be inconsistent?
I'm also not sure what they might have been putting into Style and Mood fields. If I make my own scheme for those fields (which it sounds like would be ok) presumably Im at risk of it getting upset if I should ever wind up reacquiring metadata on a track or tracks.

Yes they could be inconsistent. But this won't cause any problems with players/servers. A player/server will recognize these tag fields (or not). But it won't care what the actual contents are. I personally don't use style or mood tags (even though my server/player does recognize them). I have enough trouble deciding on Genre. I did notice however that most of my 100,000 tracks had style (because ripped on dbpa and I had "style" ticked as a metadata item I wanted included. Most of these were frankly bizarre and had very little logic (at least to me). So last year I simply did a batch erase of all the style tags from my files. And I unticked "style" for future rips.

If you're going to use Style and Mood, probably best to check them when ripping and change to what you want. And you can certainly change these tags in already ripped files.

p.s. I think the Genre codes you refer to are only in the original mp3 ID3v1 tags that different genres had number codes assigned to them. But few people have used ID3v1 tags for quite a while. See:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ID3

[mville]

Re: Style & Mood Tags

I think the Genre codes you refer to are only in the original mp3 ID3v1 tags that different genres had number codes assigned to them. But few people have used ID3v1 tags for quite a while. See:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ID3

Yes, ID3 does have built-in Genres. However, if I recall, even the ID3v1 Genres differ from the ID3v2 Genres.

[RMJFlack]

Re: Style & Mood Tags

Thanks for all this. I guess I'll have to check the various tag editors etc to see if they only alter the cnaged fields vs writing the whole set back to the file. Ripping is easy enough to get whatever is there, its destruction of carefully curated tags down the road Im worried about.

Yes it was ID3v1 I was probably thinking about. Do I gather that v2 is entirely open season? Im surprised there wouldn't be at least some sort of top level standards. But then Im often surprised lol.

Thanks again.

[garym]

Re: Style & Mood Tags

Thanks for all this. I guess I'll have to check the various tag editors etc to see if they only alter the cnaged fields vs writing the whole set back to the file. Ripping is easy enough to get whatever is there, its destruction of carefully curated tags down the road Im worried about.

Yes it was ID3v1 I was probably thinking about. Do I gather that v2 is entirely open season? Im surprised there wouldn't be at least some sort of top level standards. But then Im often surprised lol.

Thanks again.

I use either mp3tag or dbpa tag editor. In both cases you can edit/remove/add any field of your metadata tag without disturbing the contents of the other fields. So you won't harm your carefully curated tags.