Year/Date Tagging philosophies

[Lossless Nesman]

When ripping, do people find it better to include the entire release date (which is what happens for most of my test discs e.g.- 2005 05 31), or to use the "Force no date on year" setting to get only the year in the DATE tag? (Doing FLAC btw)

I use this for my file naming string(so far anyway):
[IFVALUE]album artist,[album artist],[IFCOMP]Various Artists[][IF!COMP][artist][][]\([DEL]5,posto,[year][]) [album]\[track] [title]

it gives me what I want for folder/file naming, something like:
Album Artist\(2011) Album Title\05 Title

So, it's no problem keeping the full date in the tag. But does that ever cause any problems (or provide any benefits) when it comes to front ends? (I don't have a preferred front end at the moment, so I'm looking for overall best compatibility for my tags.)

I can think of one benefit. A properly behaved app would correctly sort albums released in the same year by the same band (i.e. - Black Sabbath s/t & Paranoid - both in 1970). A poorly behaved app could fail in a bunch of different ways. Is there anything else to consider? Do people ever sort a filtered album list by date and then by albumartist? If it uses the whole date and not just the year, that would not look like you might expect. I'm just spit-balling here. (I'm probably overestimating what most front-ends can do here anyway...) What do you experts with thousands of CDs do for date/year tagging? Better to get as much right as possible when ripping, I think.

[garym]

I use only year. And I use original year of release and put any re-release info in album name. For example

ALBUM: All Things Must Pass
YEAR: 1970

ALBUM: All Things Must Pass (2014)
YEAR: 1970

ALBUM: All Things Must Pass (50th Anniversary Deluxe)
YEAR: 1970

[simbun]

I store DATE (release date) and ORIGINALDATE, but also have a RELEASE tag that would hold information like '50th Anniversary Deluxe' to differentiate the releases.

I use year(DATE) in my folder naming scheme so remasters don't cause a naming conflict but use ORIGINALDATE in my UPnP server software and foobar2000 for displaying next to the album name so I can see it in the order it was released.

Historically I only stored the year, but some more prolific bands have multiple releases in the same year e.g. The Beatles, so for those I've added the full date in order to correctly order the releases in my UPnP control point (but only have the year part shown e.g. The Beatles album 'Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band' has ORIGINALDATE of 26 May 1967, but only "1967 - Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" is displayed in my album list, yet it's still correctly sorted before 'Magical Mystery Tour' which was released on 8 December 1967).

[Dat Ei]

An album can have several release dates...


Dat Ei

[simbun]

An album can have several release dates...

I assume you're replying to me, but I just inferred that myself "I use year(DATE) in my folder naming scheme so remasters don't cause a naming conflict", in other words, because they have different release years the folder names will differ too e.g.

Dire Straits\1985 - Brothers In Arms (the original release)
Dire Straits\2013 - Brothers In Arms (the MFSL version)

Deluxe versions are often released at the same time as the originals so would share the same release date (year), this is where the RELEASE tag (also used in the folder name) would differentiate them e.g.

Ed Sheeran\2011 - +
Ed Sheeran\2011 - + (Deluxe Edition)

If I had the initial release CD from two different countries then yes I'd need extra information (maybe country) to add to the folder name, but I haven't encountered that situation yet.

Unless I've misunderstood?

[Dat Ei]

Albums can have different release dates in different markets / countries.


Dat Ei

[Lossless Nesman]

Thanks guys. Good input.
I think I'm going to do like garym for remasters, deluxe & anniversary editions, etc. That makes sense to me.
But I'll leave the release year out of the album title tag (but include it in the folder name).
So, ALBUMTITLE = AlbumTitle [1998 Remaster] & DATE = 1982
and
\albumartist\(1982) albumtitle [1998 Remaster]\01 tracktitle.flac

So I guess I'll keep/force the date tag to just the year when ripping. And when I get to those special cases (Beatles, Black Sabbath, others) that were prolific during certain years, I'll play around with the full date in the DATE tag. I have no problem with manually dealing with special cases, I just don't want to get a thousand discs into the process and say, oops, should have done it this other way. But in the end, there doesn't seem to be any reason why it would help the majority of albums to include the day and month in the date. Is it an interesting bit of information? Perhaps. Is it useful for playback, conversion, searching, sorting, filtering or identification/display? Probably only for a handful of discs in my collection. So they can get special treatment if necessary.

[garym]

I'd play around with your music server/players to see what it does with full dates (month day year). If they handle this OK for you, then can't hurt to use the full date. I'm not personally OCD enough to worry about whether my albums are sorted by date. In fact, I typically sort albums alphabetically by title under artist. Easier for me to find (and in some artist cases I may have 30 or 40 albums, or even 100s, including live concerts, etc. I can remember the album name easier than the release date.

[GBrown]

I store DATE (release date) and ORIGINALDATE, but also have a RELEASE tag that would hold information like '50th Anniversary Deluxe' to differentiate the releases.

I use year(DATE) in my folder naming scheme so remasters don't cause a naming conflict but use ORIGINALDATE in my UPnP server software and foobar2000 for displaying next to the album name so I can see it in the order it was released.

Historically I only stored the year, but some more prolific bands have multiple releases in the same year e.g. The Beatles, so for those I've added the full date in order to correctly order the releases in my UPnP control point (but only have the year part shown e.g. The Beatles album 'Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band' has ORIGINALDATE of 26 May 1967, but only "1967 - Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" is displayed in my album list, yet it's still correctly sorted before 'Magical Mystery Tour' which was released on 8 December 1967).

it really depends on your player(s) and whether they are able to support the extended date info. Typically the year tag only support the 4 digit year but some software has extended support outside of the spec for month and day as well. I think some even add hour:minute:second too. The release date tag supports the full info but most players (especially mobile ones) ignore that tag. So frustrating, given the 20+ years of digital music and tagging evolution.

[BOOTP]

Personally, I would use just the year only as this will be more than sufficient - you will find it tricky to get an accurate day / month for more obscure releases and date formats differ a lot.

I also put the year for the date of release (not original if this applies) in order to tie in with the correct catalog number.

I have one off label release where I have put 'Unknown' as the year - foobar2000 doesn't mind at all, at least.

[Lossless Nesman]

I changed my mind and I think I'm going to keep the full date (yyyy mm dd - like MusicBrainz seems to supply in it's metadata), simply because I can probably automate stripping out day and month if it causes me problems.(batch file with metaflac? or even using dbpa's converter and the tagging DSP maybe? - haven't even tried the converter at all yet) Whereas, adding a day and month in an automated fashion feels like it would be less likely to work perfectly - at least with me doing it.

[garym]

I changed my mind and I think I'm going to keep the full date (yyyy mm dd - like MusicBrainz seems to supply in it's metadata), simply because I can probably automate stripping out day and month if it causes me problems.(batch file with metaflac? or even using dbpa's converter and the tagging DSP maybe? - haven't even tried the converter at all yet) Whereas, adding a day and month in an automated fashion feels like it would be less likely to work perfectly - at least with me doing it.

Sorry, we don't allow changing of minds around here. We might have to send the tagging police around to your house.

(as said by someone who has changed genre category approach at least 3 times over the years....maybe more)

[AdamMellor]

Can I ask a point on this.

I understand for Re-releases using the original year eg.
Michael Jackson - Thriller, Release Date 1982
Michael Jackson - Thriller (2001), Release Date 1982

though it gets interesting when the rerelease adds content published much later, this album has tracks recorded in 2008
Michael Jackson - Thriller 25th Anniversary Edition, Release Date 1982 or 2008 ?

though my most confusing point is how to tag compilations such as
Michael Jackson - Visionary: The Video Singles
each disk is basically a single, you could tag each with each single's original release date (i think that's best)
though the compilation was released in 2006

In a similar vein, box sets of multiple albums such as
Michael Jackson - Bad / Dangerous, Released in 2004, a compilation of two albums on seperate disks 1 - Bad (Special Edition) Released date of 1987 (SE from 2001) & 2 - Dangerous (Special Edition) Released date of 1991 (SE from 2001)

then you have traditional "Greatest Hits" compilations such as:
Michael Jackson - Ones, released in 2001, tracks released over the previous two decades




I think typing this up I have answered the question for myself,

• compilations where a disk has mixed release dates get the release date of the compilation.
• compilations where a disk has only original release tracks (eg box set of several albums) each disk gets the original release date

• ReReleases where a disk has only original release tracks (eg from the same album) each disk gets the original release date
• ReReleases where a disk includes previously unreleased tracks from the original album each disk gets the original release date
• ReReleases mixed with new content or remixes gets the release date of the rerelease

[GBrown]

The answers you came up with to your own questions all mirror how I tag my library.