release year/type fields in manual correct mode & higher resolution album art

[njs]

Great program, I’m surprised how long it has taken me to find it!

Here is what I am looking to do with my music collection (10K+ files). I would like to tag all of my music (mp3) files with the following two features:

1. If it is a studio track (which a majority of mine are) to tag it with the earliest studio album to which it was originally associated (disregarding all various artist compilations or greatest hits).

I am aware of all the algorithms present in Jaikoz to optimize this process. However, what would help me even more, is to have the “ALBUM RELEASE YEAR” field present in the Manual Correct Tags from MusicBrainz output window, and possibly the “RELEASE TYPE (Compilation/Album)” field as well. I know MusicBrainz has this as a field listing. That way, I can quickly flip down the screen and select the most pertinent album for the file in manual mode (if need be).

2. To add the highest resolution album art photos possible to the abovementioned album files. Currently I manually use a website (www.slothradio.com/covers) which is lightening quick and fast loading, and instantly provides several cover options. In “advanced options” it is possible to search “largest available”, or large, medium, or small images. I believe the algorithm queries the public domain on the internet and pulls up images. I then copy/paste these into the tags. Definitely not the best approach, but the images look great on large computer screens.

I noticed that the album art that Jaikoz grabs all has a very low resolution and has small file sizes. Maybe that is because it merges the album art into the file as opposed to iTunes which puts the art in a separate folder (and you want to minimize the track file size)? Is there a way to either expand the album art file size permitted (greater than the 10 MB on Jaikoz) and/or piggyback with a similar search engine as the slothradio.com/covers site to generate larger album art files? There could be an option to save the art to another folder (a la iTunes) for people looking to minimize track size.

Again, great program, and one that seems to be unique amongst all others out there which I have researched pretty extensively. I am interested to hear your feedback on the above two points, and if those features might be integrated in the near future.

Thank you.

[paultaylor]

[quote=njs]Great program, I’m surprised how long it has taken me to find it!
[/quote]
Glad you like it, yes marketing is lagging some way behind development !

1. … I know MusicBrainz has this as a field listing. That way, I can quickly flip down the screen and select the most pertinent album for the file in manual mode (if need be).

You are sort of right, but musicbrainz doesnt have a release date per album, it an album and then a list of release events detailing when the album was released in different countries. So I can see it would be good to have these two fields, but it would mean showing the same track a number of different times (one for each release event) and it requires the extended release information to be retrieved from musicbrainz for each possible match which would slow things down because only one request can be made to MB per second. So I would like to solve this issue but it isnt quite as straight forward as you might think.

2. To add the highest resolution album art photos possible to the abovementioned album files. Currently I manually use a website (www.slothradio.com/covers) which is lightening quick and fast loading, and instantly provides several cover options. In “advanced options” it is possible to search “largest available”, or large, medium, or small images. I believe the algorithm queries the public domain on the internet and pulls up images. I then copy/paste these into the tags. Definitely not the best approach, but the images look great on large computer screens.

I think the site uses Amazon Ecommerce Server to retrieve the album art on the basis that the images are there temporarily and that the main purpose of the website is a portal to making Amazon purchases. AFAIK if you store the images permananently you cant use Amazon Ecommerce Server - and using ECS binds you to a binding contract, but this is unclear. So the feed I use is generally lower resolution than this, Im not on purpose making the image quality low, and 10MB is more than large enough for a very high resoltion image. I do want to improve the cover art search and will be making some improvements in the next few months.

There could be an option to save the art to another folder (a la iTunes) for people looking to minimize track size.

Yes, this will be one of the options.

[njs]

I guess it is better to have a well-developed product than a poorly-developed and well-marketed product. So it seems like you are assigning your resources best for the consumer.

I am impressed with the highly responsive programmers (both in response time and in depth and breadth of addressing user needs/wishes/requests/tweaks). That swift and direct personal feel, combined with the highly manipulate-able search algorithms, has given Jaikoz a unique edge over the other tools out there. It also seems that there is a shared interest amongst the programmers and users in proactively growing the tool in a focused, yet open-minded way.

Having used the Picard program, as well as the MusicBrainz site in general, I have come to find their results too broad and nearly unhelpful. But adding your search algorithms to the MusicBrainz database has created a powerful and highly useable tool. I think Jaikoz is the only way to make use of the vast amount of information in the MusicBrainz database in any functional manner.

I will say this though - when researching audio file tagging programs, and coming across Jaikoz, it was very difficult to find a single 3RD PARTY site which aggregated the comments and user feedback from the program.

I found over two dozen different portals for downloading the Jaikoz software, yet only a handful had user reviews, if they even had a single review at all.

It seems like user feedback drives dowload numbers pretty significantly. Dowload.com/CNET, which I consult frequently, had 4 user reviews, all of which were outstanding. With such a small sample size and all positive reviews, I was definitely skeptical. Plus, after reading the reviews on the Jaikoz site which seemed too good to be true, I searched even more.

Disaggregated across all those sites there were probably 5K downloads total listed and maybe 15 user reviews. Consolidated into a single location and compiling the numbers I’m sure would have a positive effect. To build awareness, for your sake, it might help to direct all traffic to one third party site to build a body of impartial reviews, which in turn propagates an increase in software downloads.

All in all, thanks for the great program. I look forward to partaking in it as it grows.

[paultaylor]

Disaggregated across all those sites there were probably 5K downloads total listed and maybe 15 user reviews. Consolidated into a single location and compiling the numbers I’m sure would have a positive effect. To build awareness, for your sake, it might help to direct all traffic to one third party site to build a body of impartial reviews, which in turn propagates an increase in software downloads.

Thanks for the advice, the downloads are currently hosted directly on my site because Jaikoz has quite regular updates, and it is expensive to regularly add updates to Download.com if you want the program to be loaded immediately, but I may do so in the future. Similarly MacUpdate will only host applications if they get new versions of the software before anybody else which causes some problems. But I think I should move toward this model.

On that note if anyone else has some good marketing advice you can post it here, or email me direct at paultaylor AT jthink DOT net

[markfaine]

I’d suggest getting to be well known on enthusiast forums and posting information about Jaikoz on threads such as this one:

http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=58202&hl=tagging&st=0

[quote=njs]Disaggregated across all those sites there were probably 5K downloads total listed and maybe 15 user reviews. Consolidated into a single location and compiling the numbers I’m sure would have a positive effect. To build awareness, for your sake, it might help to direct all traffic to one third party site to build a body of impartial reviews, which in turn propagates an increase in software downloads.

Thanks for the advice, the downloads are currently hosted directly on my site because Jaikoz has quite regular updates, and it is expensive to regularly add updates to Download.com if you want the program to be loaded immediately, but I may do so in the future. Similarly MacUpdate will only host applications if they get new versions of the software before anybody else which causes some problems. But I think I should move toward this model.

On that note if anyone else has some good marketing advice you can post it here, or email me direct at paultaylor AT jthink DOT net[/quote]

[paultaylor]

Thanks Mark, I do use this site - but it isnt correct for me to post on such sites I have to rely on my customers for this.