Standardize Everything
A personal project I recently completed was the curation of our music collection. I worked on it off-and-on for most of 2020.
Digitize Old Media
LPs, cassettes, and CDs that we have collected throughout the years have been digitized and now co-mingle with songs we already had in digital format. As of February, 2021, we have around 43,000 song tracks by about 700 artists.
Folder Structure
All music is now organized in a standard computer folder structure like this:
“\Our Music Collection\<album artist>\<album>“
Music File Track Naming Convention
Each individual song file name is in the format of:
“<album artist> – <album> – <track #> – <title>.mp3″
One issue I had to deal with regarding standardization was special characters in artist and album names. I couldn’t create a valid file name if either contained the following characters, which are not allowed in Windows 10:
< > : / \ | ? *
“AC/DC” had to become “ACDC“.
I also had come up with a solution for foreign character sets. Windows allows them, but keeping them in the file name would make it hard to do specific name searches. Luckily, there was always an English alphabet letter equivalent I could use.
André Previn had to be changed to Andre Previn.
Metadata Tags
Every individual song file contain standard metadata tag info – album, artist, album artist, track #, genre, title, composer, disc #, etc. This metadata is searchable from Windows 10 file explorer. A great help was the use of a free software application called MP3Tag. It is an mp3 metadata tag editor that allows you to change info in bulk and automatically lookup album and track information on the internet. I’ve used it for years. One of the few free programs I have donated money to.
Artist Poster and Album Art
I placed JPG files of artist posters and album art in the same folder as the associated album. If there was something like a CD insert booklet, I digitized it in PDF format. Lastly, I went to www.allmusic.com, looked up each artist in our collection, and placed a URL shortcut to their bio, discography list, and awards.
https://www.allmusic.com/artist/ac-dc-mn0000574772
Music File Format
Individual song titles are all MP3 because many applications can play that format and the file compression algorithm makes the file size very small. I know that other formats such as WAV and FLAC are lossless and audiophiles will scream at me for choosing the ‘lossy’ MP3 format. Since Elaine and I listen to our music with earbuds or computer speakers and not headphones, we are perfectly happy with the listening experience we get from MP3s.
Standardize Song Volume
I ran each file through a program called MP3Gain. It sets a normalization level metadata tag that, if a music player knows about it, helps keep the listener from reaching for their volume controls between each song. It isn’t a perfect solution, but it doesn’t change the song’s dynamic range. It basically increases or decreases the overall volume by a few decibels. I set my Target “Normal” Volume to 92 db.
Classical
This genre was a challenge to standardize. Most of the LPs I digitized were own by Elaine’s aunts. Many came from the Music Heritage Society collection – No info about the artists on the internet because they were from foreign orchestras or choirs. Some of the LPs were from Germany so all the album cover printing was in the German language. There is a metadata tag in MP3 files called composer that I had to spend time with in order include the composers of the classical pieces.
‘Various Artists’
Albums containing songs with many different artists, such as ‘100 Best One Hit Wonders’, were a challenge. The music community understands this and accepts the name ‘Various Artists’ to be used for the album artist metadata tag. Each song can still be tagged with the actual artist that performed on it in the artist metadata tag.
Storage Medium
All digital music files are stored on a 500GB portable SSD drive that can be plugged into a USB port of a computer. Due to its small physical size, the drive can easily be stored in a drawer or pocket. I have a second drive of the same type I use as a mirror backup in case the source SSD goes bad or I make changes to the source SSD that were a mistake and I want to get the original files back.
As of February, 2021, I have 141 GB free on the source drive.
Plex Server
One thing that helped me clean up the music collection was a free program called Plex. It has both a server and player component. It focuses on streaming video, but is good at finding and playing music. It can use the metadata you added to your music files or it can go to the internet and find it. It expects your music folder structure to be consistent in order to do that. As I would use the Plex play and see missing artist or album info, that told me where in my music collection something was not standardized. The player shows artist posters and album art.
Since there are so many songs in our collection I have not heard in a long time, I created a playlist to include the entire collection, set a filter to play each song only once, then set it to shuffle. Based on statistics reported by the playlist, I could run the playlist for 6 months without having to listen to any song more than once!
Online Music Databases
This project help me discover that there are web sites where you can find more information about artists and albums. Many of them are free and allow you to program against an API or download their complete database. I used my programming and web development skills to run my own database queries against Discogs and MusicBrainz.
Last Modified Size File Name
=================== ======== ============================
2021-01-07 11:35:25 331.6 MB discogs_20210101_artists.gz
2021-01-07 15:02:44 56.1 MB discogs_20210101_labels.gz
2021-01-06 09:05:37 356.7 MB discogs_20210101_masters.gz
2021-01-05 10:45:34 8.7 GB discogs_20210101_releases.gz
Discography
Once in a while I have acquired a complete discography for an artist we like. But I don’t care to have multiple ‘collection’ albums if I already have the songs on the original album. John Denver is good example of that:
- “The Best of John Denver”
- “The Very Best of John Denver”
- “All of My Memories”
- “Greatest Hits (Vol. 1 & 2)”
- “16 Biggest Hits”
I have no qualm deleting song tracks that are just unbearable to listen to, even if it technically ‘breaks up the collection’. There are some experimental tracks from Manfred Mann in the 1960s that are ruined by an out-of-tune, squeaky saxophone! I am mostly interested in studio albums and not live concert recordings. For some bands, I am happy with just a “Best Of …” albums.
My Genre Preferences
In no particular order, with an artist example:
- Rock – (“AC/DC”)
- Pop – (“Elton John”)
- Blues – (“Buddy Guy”)
- Funk – (“Hot Chocolate”)
- Ska – (“Ace of Base”)
- A Cappella – (“The Nylons”)
- Bluegrass – (“Alison Krauss”).
- Alt. Rock – (“Talking Heads”)
- Metal – (“Godsmack”)
- Folk – (“Gordon Lightfoot”)
- Country Pop – (“Rascal Flatts”)
We have a lot of Jazz and Classical music because a few years back I digitized hundreds of LPs that belonged to Elaine’s two aunts. I can take a few hours of either genre, but then have to get back to my favorites. The stuff that is considered ‘Pop’ these days is hard for me to get into. You won’t find more than a couple auto-tuned songs in our collection. Rap? No. Some Hip Hop. Even though ‘Christmas’ is not a genre, Elaine likes Holiday songs so I have tagged holiday songs as such to help her create a Christmas playlist.
Conclusion
This project allowed me to revisit my collection. It gave me an incentive to look for other types of music I might like. For instance, until lately, I had no “A Cappella” music in our collection. I now enjoy “The Nylons“.
