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UnloadedAlbum Naming Strategy

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Nongorilla edited this page Oct 21, 2017 · 1 revision

The UnloadedAlbum naming strategy splits up the combination of information that is often included in the ALBUM tag into four additional tags. To take a Cure disc as an example:

The Cure - 1985 - The Head on the Door [2006 Remaster] (Disc 2) (Rarities)

The most commonly used file naming strategy of ArtistTitle loads many types of information into the ALBUM tag for only 3 tags:

ARTIST=The Cure
DATE=1985
ALBUM=The Head on the Door [2006 Remaster] (Disc 2) (Rarities)

This loading up of information into the ALBUM tag makes the tag less useful as data. The strategy UnloadedAlbum decomposes the ALBUM tag by using the ALBUM tag only for the actual title and placing the other information in 4 additional tags:

ARTIST=The Cure
DATE=2006
ALBUM=The Head on the Door
RELEASE DATE=1985
EDITION=Remaster
DISCNUMBER=2
SUBTITLE=Rarities

For reissues, the DATE tag is the reissue date and the RELEASE DATE tag is the original issue date. This is to be accommodating to players such as Windows Media Player that would otherwise handle album name collisions ungracefully.

Advantages of this naming over the default strategy include:

  1. Tags are treated as useful data and not just dumb text. Tools such as the SqlTree component of foobar2000 can be used much more effectively when data is normalized into discrete tags.

  2. Customizable players such as foobar2000 may have the layout tailored exactly as desired. Clutter may be reduced and fields may be put in predictable locations. For example, the subtitle could easily be displayed next to track name.

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