[Nicolai P. Zwar]

Obviously, there are lots of different ways people tag their music. People have different requirements, different devices, different listening habits. What works beautifully for one person collapses instantly for another.

By no means would I claim my approach is the only correct or perfect one. But back when I started to convert my CDs (the biggest part of them classical) to digital files, I had to give this some thought and trial and error, (and the occasional existential crisis over metadata). Whoever programmed iTunes was obviously oblivious to the fact that people may listen to anything but pop music. For most casual pop listener, “TITLE” and “ARTIST” is basically all they need, they don’t even care for “COMPOSER”. But for classical music, that’s different.

And when I started to tag my collection, I really did some thinking how to get a vast classical collection into the iTunes system in a way that’s functional, searchable, and consistent:

I came up with this:

Album Artist: Ludwig van Beethoven
Album: Beethoven: Symphonies / Karajan: BPO (1984)
Title: Beethoven: Symphony No. 1 in C Major, Op. 21 – 1. Adagio molto – Allegro con brio
Year: 1984
Artist: Herbert von Karajan; Berliner Philharmoniker
Composer: Ludwig van Beethoven

And here is the idea behind using the tags like that:

ALBUM ARTIST =
Here I put basically the “important” name, where I would expect the Album in a record store. Some insinst that “Album Artist” must be performer, but I find that neither practical, not consistent (because which performer? Conductor? Violinist? Orchestra?). In classical music, I usually put composer there, in pop music would be something like “Madonna”.

ALBUM =
Obviously the album title. In classical music, many albums don’t really have a “title”, so I try to be consistent and name them to what it “is”.

TITLE =
Obiously, the track title. And that should enable me to identify the track. Again, in pop music or even film music that’s often easy, as the tracks do have real names. In classical music, many works don’t really have “names” but just “descriptions” of what they are. I know my way around classcial music, but not so much that I would always identify “Symphony No. 1 in C Major, Op. 21” immediately as “that’s Beethoven”. So the composer’s name is part of the title in those cases, like “Beethoven: Symphony No. 1 in C Major, Op. 21”. I don’t need the composer’s name when there is an actual, more obvious title to begin with, like “Also Sprach Zarathustra, Op. 30”

YEAR =
There are obviously lots things you can put in the “year” tag. However, since the tags serve to identify recordings, recording date is the one I chose. I don’t maintain a music lexicon, so the composition date is completely irrelevant in the context of the files. “Release date” or “mastering date” would be other options I consider, but for me I have decided that recording date is the most important identifier for a particular recording.

ARTIST =
This is again a trick field. At least in iTunes, which seems to think there is one “artist”, though in classical music, you often have a lot more… who to put in there? It’s easy when it’s one performer, as in Igor Levit for a Beethoven Sonata, but already when it comes to a symphony, it’s tricky… Conductor? Orchestra?… in iTunes, I go with the most important performers, maybe combination of conductor/orchestra and perhaps soloist.

COMPOSER=
Well, the composer obviously. That one is easy.

This works for me, because on the one hand, it’s just a basic set of tags applied consistently, on the other hand, it allows me to distinguish even between very similar recordings, like:

Album Artist: Ludwig van Beethoven
Album: Beethoven: Symphonies / Karajan: BPO (1977)
Title: Beethoven: Symphony No. 1 in C Major, Op. 21 – 1. Adagio molto – Allegro con brio
Year: 1977
Artist: Herbert von Karajan; Berliner Philharmoniker
Composer: Ludwig van Beethoven

Same work. Same performers. But different recording. Instantly distinguishable from:

Album Artist: Ludwig van Beethoven
Album: Beethoven: Symphonies / Karajan: BPO (1963)
Title: Beethoven: Symphony No. 1 in C Major, Op. 21 – 1. Adagio molto – Allegro con brio
Year: 1963
Artist: Herbert von Karajan; Berliner Philharmoniker
Composer: Ludwig van Beethoven

So that’s how these three Beethoven/Karajan/Berlin Cycles are tagged in my collection.

This is at this point in time the most reliable and easy to maintain/navigate tagging-system I have come up with that fits my needs.

But everybody’s needs are different. As I said, I wouldn’t be surprised if a large number of people are happy with
TITLE and ARTIST, not even needing year, composer, album artist, etc.

But here are my hard coded basic needs:
1. Consistency and clarity
Obiously, I do have many classical recordings, which need to be searchable and identifiable. As in the example, I need to even be able to clearly distinguish between recordings when the same artist performed the same piece several times.

2. Cross-Compatibility
This one is the one thing that forces me to do a lot of compromises. For example, iTunes at one time got a nice set of features, like “work” and “movement”, which is really nice:

Doesn’t that look nice? I think that’s the way it should be. Work and movement, excellent.

The problem is: I can’t rely on it to work everywhere else the same. There is no way I want to rely on tags that only work here but not there. I use different devices that access my music collection: my home stereo system, several android and iOS apps, my car, etc. I want, I need tags that function across the board. That’s definitely the most compromising aspect of the way I use tags (I have not even implemented “multiple genres”, though that would be a most useful feature), but also the most liberating, because my collection does not rely on one single system to work. It works with any system, music server, music player, etc., anything I throw at it and use to listen to and play music. Tags work, work across the board. So that is definitely one of the most important aspects for me. Cross‑Compatibility dictates everything in my tag decisions. This is actually the main reason I still maintain my library in iTunes: because of its limitations. Those constraints force discipline. iTunes supports a small, predictable set of tags (which are a set standard in ALAC format– everywhere, whereas FLAC can be quite inconsistent when it comes to that, so that’s one slight advantage ALAC has over FLAC), and those survive the journey across platforms. MusicBee, for example, is vastly more flexible, gives me many more options I want and like, but flexibility is only useful to me when it’s portable. Multiple genres, custom tags, work/movement structures, I love those, wonderful ideas, but only if they don’t disintegrate the moment you sync to your car player. Maybe one day I can expand the useable set of tags, but until then, I stick to the basics. The basics work everywhere.

Now that’s what I’ve come up with to serve my needs. Other people’s needs differ. As I said, Artist and Title is probably all many people will ever need.

I’d always be open to find an even better way to systematically tag my music, but so far, that’s what works best for me and my needs.