Auto-Tag From Discogs

Exaxxion · Post by **Exaxxion** » Mon Jan 16, 2006 12:10 am

I believe that there should be auto-tag features that expand beyond the lacking capabilities of Amazon.com. I strongly propose adding Discogs as a source. Discogs is a well-known, highly moderated, and constantly expanding online music database containing an immense collection of user-submitted titles ranging from vinyl releases to CDs. The track information adheres to strict regulations and is almost always complete. It also contains obscure artists and their works.

I believe that adding Discogs as an alternative tagging source would be highly beneficial to anyone who is either dissatisfied with the poor reliability of Amazon to provide complete and/or correct media tags, is compulsive about getting the tags correct, a user of Discogs and prefers their system, or all of the above. By pairing its abilities with the currently integrated Amazon Auto-Tag, One could find relevant tag information and album art for almost any conceivable song.

I currently use a standard version of MM because I am not fully satisfied with its capabilities, but I would definitely pay for a version of MM that includes this capability.

Anyone who agrees with me, please respond to this post. Maybe the developers will notice, and might attempt to add this feature.

Teknojnky · Post by **Teknojnky** » Mon Jan 16, 2006 12:16 am

I'd like to see a variety of alternate sources of tagging... musicbrainz, discog, freedb would be my top 3 preferences.

Exaxxion · Post by **Exaxxion** » Mon Jan 16, 2006 1:17 am

Agreed; the more databases that are available for a query, the more likely you will be able to find correct and/or relevant information. Adding almost any alternative to Amazon would be an improvement.

Another thing to note about Discogs is that it has "Buy on Amazon" links to many of the albums in its database. If the issue is that Amazon is paying MediaMonkey to use its database, adding Discogs would still support Amazon.com while providing better tag information.

Josti · Post by **Josti** » Wed Jan 18, 2006 8:21 pm

I don't think Amazon is paying, the (possible) reason is merely that Amazon provides an API to their database, so external websites and programs can use their collection.

Using another source for tagging which doesn't provide an interface for its data has to be implemented via parsing the HTML-Output, which is very troublesome and could be completely broken if the provider changes it's layout or code structure just a little.

But I strongly second to using FreeDB for tagging, i saw other programs that did implement it.

johndmann · Post by **johndmann** » Wed Jan 18, 2006 9:38 pm

I haven't checked out this discogs place, but I'm into the allmusic.com database. I go there everytime i add anything to my collection and manually insert it into my mediamonkey. i can't stand the amazon results which are never correct...

nickeaston · Post by **nickeaston** » Sat Jan 21, 2006 10:39 am

I just tried to update about 300 files with the Amazon service and it renamed all the files to 1 album title; trying to salvage the files by renaming tags using filename still left dozens of files with bad album title...

Also, I don't see how to turn off the album art download; don't need this feature.

Which of the above-mentioned databases are fee-based AND reliable? I would be happy to pay to rehab my thousands of files.

Teknojnky · Post by **Teknojnky** » Sat Jan 21, 2006 1:47 pm

You can uncheck any file or field of data from amazon window to prevent it from being applied.

You can also undo it if you click undo before you close amazon window.

Also, for best efficiency you should limit the files you tag from amazon from a single artist.

When I tag from amazon, I usually go by artist sorted by album and select only single album files at a time. If any are missing, then I select them add them as well.

If you mistagged a bunch of files, your best bet maybe to use the musicbrainz tagger to analyse your files and let you tag them from how they 'sound'.

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Sat Jan 21, 2006 10:05 pm

Check out Rate Your Music as well.

http://rateyourmusic.com/

tj_junk · Post by **tj_junk** » Thu Apr 13, 2006 11:09 am

AllMusic, FreeDB, and Discogs are my top choices for finding out artist/album/song info, usually in that order.

Amazon is much further down my personal list. The Amazon search seems to yield a lot of incorrect results for me.

MCSmarties · Post by **MCSmarties** » Thu Apr 13, 2006 12:07 pm

I voted yes - the more plugins the better!

For me, Allmusic, Musicbrainz and Arkivmusic (extensive classical music database) would be favorites.

While Amazon is far from ideal, I do like it for the following reasons:
- wide selection. If you search on amazon.fr or amazon.de you get a lot of hits for European music that can't be found on allmusic
- cover art size and quality (they are usually 300 x 300 px, compared to I think 180 x 180 px on allmusic.com)

danielbritt · Post by **danielbritt** » Fri Apr 21, 2006 7:17 pm

ive been using (believe it or now) walmart.com to grab covers from. they are always 500 x 500 and even the old ones that amazon has @ 300 x 300 are larger at walmart. ive been using buy.com for the same reasons.

Qwavel · Post by **Qwavel** » Sat Apr 22, 2006 3:46 pm

You need to be a little careful and remember the CDDB/FreeDB experience.

What is the license?

I worry that, once Discogs has accumulated enough user contributed material they will start charging for programmatic access to their database.

vonster · Post by **vonster** » Sat Apr 29, 2006 12:43 am

YES absolutely.

Discogs is particularly important for electronic dance: house, breaks, trance, techno

Its the primary way the entire dance industry catalogs the thousands of tracks - indespensible for DJs, labels, record stores (digital and otherwise) and related sub industries

I dont know if people outside of these genres realize this, but that is the case

Also - other media products do incorporate it - shouldnt be hard to implement

I run a business in this industry and it would be indespensible ... thanks

aboeing · Post by **aboeing** » Fri Nov 10, 2006 10:49 am

you can get a free discogs tagger here:
http://www.adrianboeing.com/asmthelp.html

the problem with discogs is they keep changing their web format and they dont provide a programmer interface to their database yet.

ReverendEntity · Post by **ReverendEntity** » Sun Nov 12, 2006 2:15 am

ABSOLUTELY. Discogs is my primary source for tag info, particularly since I have a lot of dance music and avantgarde material (but they are also quite good for more mainstream fare). The added advantage would be since Discogs is a user-maintained database, more people using it means more people submitting and more people submitting means a larger and more detailed database for everyone.

(I would also like to mention that if you don't have an Advanced account for Discogs, you should get one because Discogs deserves support.)

Auto-Tag From Discogs

Should Discogs be added?

Auto-Tag From Discogs

definitely need 1 or more mainstream databases

AllMusic, FreeDB, and Discogs are top choices

What is the Discogs license?