Classical music and composer

[Jim_DeLaHunt]

Hello, hemming65:

(Do you have a name?)

@henning65

In classical music the importance of “works” and the “composer” differs significantly from other genres. I believe back in time - as there was no tag / metadata for work / composer available there was the desire - and than the decision - to structure classical music differently than other genre. By forcing the metadata TrackArtist to COMPOSER….

• Do I somehow describe correctly why there are “special” rules for classical music?

I think you have grasped the essential pair of factors, though I might word some of the details a little differently. First, back in the early days of digital music files and metadata tagging — I wasn’t deeply deeply involved then, but this is my understanding — there were really only three metadata tags that mattered: Album Artist, Album Title, and Track Title. Metadata databases went through many contortions to fit more than three data types into three character strings. Second, while the pop music tradition emphasises performer over composer, and performance over composition, the classical music tradition values both composer and performer, both composition and performance. So, fans of classical music wanted different contortions to fit more data types into three character strings than did the fans of popular music. A lot of complexity and confusion has followed from that.

I think MusicBrainz has the right long-term solution to this: build a database which has a lot more data types and relationships than just three character strings; store the metadata in accurate datatypes with meaningful relationships, and let a separate “tagger application” convert that complex data into the three or more character strings for tagging digital music files.

@henning65

• Do you agree that directly addressing music software developers might be a way forward?

I’m not sure which software developers you mean. In the MusicBrainz world, a number of skilled developers have made some nice pieces of software to let people take as much care with their metadata as the want to. MusicBrainz Picard is a tagging app with a powerful scripting system which lets you map from several MusicBrainz data fields into tags in a very flexible and customisable way. The Classical Extras plugin for Picard does a great job of bringing composer and work data into music file tags. There are lists of tools like The Classical Editor Toolbox right here on this forum.

You are are thinking about ways forward. That is great! You don’t have to start from scratch. A lot of people have been paving this road for a long time.