Anal musical organisation passtimes

[lazyhour]

One solution might be tick the 'Part of a compilation' box for all the audiobook stuff, and then make sure that in your iPod setup, any compilation tracks are kept out of the main artist list.  Then hey presto, no more audiobooks in there!  I know you can do this on my nano, so hopefully it'll work for yours too.  Then if you want to listen to an audiobook, just go into the Compilations bit on your iPod menu.

[lazyhour]

...did that work for you, Tokyo?

[Tokyo Sexwhale]

I haven't tried it yet - I left my ipod in the office.

[lazyhour]

Well that's bloody great.  Just like Edwyn Collins, I'm on tenterhooks here!

[matt]

This seems like an appropriate place to ask this question...

Can someone explain to me the difference between MP3 tags, ID3 and the way Gracenotes works?

Is ID3 a specific type of tag? One that is linked to Gracenotes? Or am I way off the mark?

[NoSleep]

ID3 tags and MP3 tags are the same thing. Gracenote (no "s"), aka CDDB, is a database of information that will work for ID3 tags, but also for other types of tags, such as you find in FLAC files.

[matt]

I see, thanks. So the tagging system iTunes uses, ID3 tags, is just standard MP3 tagging? And CDDB (CD Database?) aka Gracenote was (presumably) around before iTunes, and uses ID3 tags?

[NoSleep]

No, because other formats that don't use ID3 tags can make use of Gracenote. It's just a database of CD information that can be used to write tags.

[Retinend]

I've been convinced of the worth of the 'album artist' field. Is there any way to duplicate the 'Artist' field to the 'Album Artist' field? Because otherwise I'll have to spend a day doing it manually.

[NoSleep]

If you're on a Mac the easiest way is to go to Doug's AppleScripts and acquire the script "Put this in that".

[Retinend]

i'm not

[Retinend]

(bump)

I really like the idea of the coverflow on iTunes, but does anyone's computer run fast enough to make it work, i.e. to be able to zip through the covers without having to wait for them to load? It's kind of pointless, otherwise.

(also, the new iTunes version has finally made the stupid album artist field unnecessary simply by lumping all albums marked 'compilation' at the end of the non-compilation albums. I'm pretty happy sorting everything under 'Album by artist' now)