Tag sorting - any issues with mutliple sort tag formats?

**Spoon** · March 29, 2015, 09:14 PM

Re: Tag sorting - any issues with mutliple sort tag formats?

You can do it, if at a future time it causes issues, you can remove.

**mville** · March 29, 2015, 09:41 PM

Re: Tag sorting - any issues with mutliple sort tag formats?

Originally posted by TimR

For greatest portability across players and servers is there any reason why I shouldn't store all the following tags (both with and without spaces) in my FLAC files?

AlbumArtist
Album Artist
AlbumArtistSort
Album Artist Sort
AlbumArtistSortOrder
Album Artist Sort Order
ArtistSort
Artist Sort
ArtistSortOrder
Artist Sort Order
ComposerSort
Composer Sort
etc.

Doing so would be easy with Music Converter and the ID Tag Update, but the question is should I?

Personally, I wouldn't. I don't think you are going to be able to cover all bases anyway (however, maybe you can).

At some point, things could get very confusing. In my experience, it has been better to keep things simple.

**BrodyBoy** · March 30, 2015, 03:14 AM

Re: Tag sorting - any issues with mutliple sort tag formats?

Originally posted by TimR

I know there is no standard for Vorbis comments in FLAC files around whether AlbumArtistSort or 'Album Artist Sort' is recognised by a player/server. In fact for a number of tags, whether to name them with spaces or not seems to depend on the platform developers choice.

For greatest portability across players and servers is there any reason why I shouldn't store all the following tags (both with and without spaces) in my FLAC files?

AlbumArtist
Album Artist
AlbumArtistSort
Album Artist Sort
AlbumArtistSortOrder
Album Artist Sort Order
ArtistSort
Artist Sort
ArtistSortOrder
Artist Sort Order
ComposerSort
Composer Sort
etc.

Doing so would be easy with Music Converter and the ID Tag Update, but the question is should I?

Thanks
Tim

That's actually pretty close to the way I do it.

Though I don't know of any players that use those "...SortOrder" tags, so I don't include them. But ALBUMARTIST is the most important field for the organization of my library, so I started including both "spellings" of that one about three years ago. As you point out, it's very easy to add these things (I actually do it in mp3tag), so I eventually just covered all bases and include the variations of ARTIST, ALBUMARTIST, and COMPOSER now.

I've not experienced any negative or unexpected consequences in doing it this way.

**TimR** · March 30, 2015, 07:42 AM

Re: Tag sorting - any issues with mutliple sort tag formats?

Thanks for the replies.

I think I'll give it a go but may limit the tag set to the ones I really care about which are ARTISTSORT, ALBUMARTISTSORT, and COMPOSERSORT.

By the way, according to various sources the "... Sort Order" tags are used by iTunes. I don't use iTunes myself but my wife does.

Thanks
Tim

**BrodyBoy** · March 30, 2015, 08:46 AM

Re: Tag sorting - any issues with mutliple sort tag formats?

Originally posted by TimR

Thanks for the replies.

I think I'll give it a go but may limit the tag set to the ones I really care about which are ARTISTSORT, ALBUMARTISTSORT, and COMPOSERSORT.

By the way, according to various sources the "... Sort Order" tags are used by iTunes. I don't use iTunes myself but my wife does.

Thanks
Tim

Hmm....I think you got some bad or confusing info there. Keep in mind, first of all, that .FLAC and Vorbis Comments don't apply to iTunes, as they aren't used in Apple products. But further, I can attest that the "...SortOrder" tags aren't necessary. I do in fact use my files in within the Apple universe (so I use .ALAC) and they seem to sort just fine using "...SORT" tags.

**mville** · March 30, 2015, 01:18 PM

Re: Tag sorting - any issues with mutliple sort tag formats?

I appreciate that, depending on certain players/devices, tags may require duplication (of the dBpoweramp standard tags).

However, I (selfishly

) encourage users not to use different naming conventions (from dBpoweramp) in the hope that at some point in the future, dBpoweramp becomes a sort of unofficial standard for flac/vorbis that developers and users will adhere to, due to the large user base that will eventually exist.

**BrodyBoy** · March 30, 2015, 04:39 PM

Re: Tag sorting - any issues with mutliple sort tag formats?

That's a great goal, and I'm a firm believer that there ought to be one standard set of tags (a very extensive set). I'd further add that it'd be great if that set was uniform across all the different codecs.

But it's just not where we are right now....players are still all over the place in which tags they recognize and how they use them. Developers aren't there to experience your frustration the first time you use that new car stereo, or fancy new portable player, or whatever, and realize that it's not reading your carefully groomed tags properly, sending you back to mp3tag to add or edit once again. I got really tired of that, so I try to pre-empt it with a more "universal" set of tags from the start. Another advantage, I've found, is that I avoid those annoying "translation errors" when I need to convert a batch of files to another format.

If there's ever a single standard, I'm all in, and I'll adjust my tags accordingly. Until then, I just want the music library I've spent so much time building to play everywhere with ease and consistency.

**TimR** · March 30, 2015, 04:47 PM

Re: Tag sorting - any issues with mutliple sort tag formats?

Originally posted by BrodyBoy

Hmm....I think you got some bad or confusing info there. Keep in mind, first of all, that .FLAC and Vorbis Comments don't apply to iTunes, as they aren't used in Apple products. But further, I can attest that the "...SortOrder" tags aren't necessary. I do in fact use my files in within the Apple universe (so I use .ALAC) and they seem to sort just fine using "...SORT" tags.

I wasn't clear. I convert the FLAC files to other formats for Apple ecosystem playback (MP4, ALAC depending on desired quality).

Good to hear that the "...SortOrder" tags have not been necessary for you, but specifically do you use the AlbumArtistSort in iTunes?

As for where the info came from, I found it on a page somewhere about Vorbis comment mapping (might have been xiph.org but I can't seem to find it again), but it's also listed here at MP3tag:

Tag Field Mappings – Mp3tag Documentation

http://help.mp3tag.de/main_tags.html

Overview of all available tag fields, their names in Mp3tag, and how they are mapped to the internal structures of the different tag formats. Mp3tag is the universal Tag Editor.

The AlbumArtistsSortOrder is the fourth one in the list.

**TimR** · March 30, 2015, 04:48 PM

Re: Tag sorting - any issues with mutliple sort tag formats?

Originally posted by BrodyBoy

If there's ever a single standard, I'm all in, and I'll adjust my tags accordingly. Until then, I just want the music library I've spent so much time building to play everywhere with ease and consistency.

My thoughts exactly.

**TimR** · March 30, 2015, 04:51 PM

Re: Tag sorting - any issues with mutliple sort tag formats?

Weird. I posted another reply to an earlier comment just before this one but its gone for moderation while this one showed up right away.
I didn't even use any naughty words!

Go figure.

**mville** · March 30, 2015, 05:41 PM

Re: Tag sorting - any issues with mutliple sort tag formats?

Originally posted by BrodyBoy

That's a great goal, and I'm a firm believer that there ought to be one standard set of tags (a very extensive set). I'd further add that it'd be great if that set was uniform across all the different codecs.

But it's just not where we are right now....players are still all over the place in which tags they recognize and how they use them. Developers aren't there to experience your frustration the first time you use that new car stereo, or fancy new portable player, or whatever, and realize that it's not reading your carefully groomed tags properly, sending you back to mp3tag to add or edit once again. I got really tired of that, so I try to pre-empt it with a more "universal" set of tags from the start. Another advantage, I've found, is that I avoid those annoying "translation errors" when I need to convert a batch of files to another format.

If there's ever a single standard, I'm all in, and I'll adjust my tags accordingly. Until then, I just want the music library I've spent so much time building to play everywhere with ease and consistency.

Yes, I completely understand. I'm just banging a drum... Standards develop over time and they have to start somewhere.

**BrodyBoy** · March 30, 2015, 05:50 PM

Re: Tag sorting - any issues with mutliple sort tag formats?

Originally posted by TimR

Weird. I posted another reply to an earlier comment just before this one but its gone for moderation while this one showed up right away.
I didn't even use any naughty words!

Go figure.

That is weird. I've seen others comment that one of their posts has been withheld or moderated, but I don't think I've ever seen it myself. I have no idea what causes that...

**TimR** · March 30, 2015, 06:55 PM

Re: Tag sorting - any issues with mutliple sort tag formats?

I put a link it to the site that listed ALBUMARTISTSORTORDER as in use in iTunes, so maybe that did it?

The link is http://help.mp3tag.de/main_tags.html

**TimR** · March 30, 2015, 06:58 PM

Re: Tag sorting - any issues with mutliple sort tag formats?

We'll I just tried again. Moderated again. Apparently if you post a link it gets moderated.

I was trying to point you to one of the links that showed ALBUM ARTIST SORT ORDER as iTunes format.
Google MP3tag ALBUM ARTIST SORT ORDER and it's the first on one the list.

There were others, one on xiph.org I think when I was researching Vorbis comment mappings, but I can't seem to find it now.