SongKong Tagging using Compilation albums and ignoring earlier releases? Please Help!

[dmn1981]

Hi Paul,

Would be useful if you could just run Status Report over your whole collection so I can get a better handle on the status of your collection as a whole.

I essentially have my music broken down into individual folders based on Genre, which is mostly, UK Garage, Drum & Bass, UK Hardcore, Funky / Electro House. I typically tag all the files, and then manually change the Genre on the complete set to one of the above.

I will run a Status Report shortly for you. I will also make a copy all files in one of my folders (circa 1900 files), remove all metadata using Jaikoz and then put them all back through SongKong with MusicBrainx enabled to see what it finds.

In the meantime I have sent you a free Jaikoz license
Where did you send this, as i cant find an email…?

Edit: found it in my junk folder!" thanks

Thanks

Darren

[dmn1981]

Paul,

I have this evening made a copy of 900+ files and removed ALL metadata from those files using Jaikoz. I then put all of those files in to individual folders, which were just named the same as the file itself inside the folder.

I then put all of the files back through SongKong with MusicBrainz turned on and Discogs also. It could only identify based on AccoustID and the file name itself, as no metadata was available.

It was able to match only about 50% of the files, and a large proportion of these have been matched back to a Compilation Album, as per below image again.

Now i have also identified this evening that what i thought were completed matches that i had previously put through SongKong, a large portion of these have been matched to compilation albums with incorrect original release dates, which means i am now going to have to go back through 1000s of files to rectify what is probably a huge selection of tracks incorrectly matched (as per my needs).

This is really disappointing, and if i’m honest, i would like to request my SongKong license refunded. Ultimately what i thought was the holy grail of automated music tagging applications, has ended up creating more work for me in the long run.

Both MP3Tag and TagScanner are far better at identifying my tracks on Discogs than SongKong has been able to produce, and even though its manual, its going to produce a far greater accuracy of results for me, and leave me with a collection with most if not all correctly tagged as required.

I have generated a new Support Case for you to review after tonights efforts, and i cannot see how this is going to get resolved.

I look forward to your response.

Darren

[paultaylor]

Hi Darren

For the songs you originally matched with them all being in one folder per genre, as I explained before having them organized this way caused a big problem for SongKong. If they were in one folder but you actually had complete albums SongKong may have coped but because you just add individual songs from albums there was always going to be a weighting towards Various Artists compilations.

Did you realize that SongKong saves it changes to a database, so that can rollback the changes to how the files were before editing in SongKong. So if you select the Undo Fixes task this should hopefully undo all SongKong changes and get back to where you were to start with. It won’t work for songs you have moved around outside of SongKong but it should be fine for files that SongKong has renamed or moved.

Now, I have looked at your results on the 900 files and actually for nearly half it has matched them, and the majority of them (about 80%) have been matched to original album and most with artwork (white box on screen because when Create Support Files is run it doesn’t send the image files) so works out at about 40%.So if after undoing the changes and reorganizing folders and then applied to whole collection I would expect you to a good match for about 40%

Now that is low, but still it is going to save you alot of work. Also if your original collection does not have the matches you don’t want to compilations there would be no need to remove the existing metadata, and you can configure SongKong to only add metadata without modifying any existing metadata (hence protecting date/year), see the profile called Fix Songs, add new metadata only without changing existing metadata

Also I have provided you with Jaikoz that allow you to match to a specified Discogs release, so this should work just as well as your one by one MP3Tag/TagScanner tagging. Since SongKong Lite lets you check all results before purchase, and since I have now given you two products for the price of one, and I have suggested a way forward I dont feel a refund is applicable here.

[dmn1981]

Hi Paul,

Thank you for your detailed reply. Please let me share with you my view of this, as i am the consumer of your application, which i have also paid for. I will take your comments in order.

900 files and actually for nearly half it has matched them
That is correct, 995 songs and its matched 516 (52%). However, of the 516 matched songs, 219 songs have been matched to a compilation album (Album Artist = Various Artists). So the reality is out of 995 songs, its only matched 297 songs to an individual release, thats only 30% of the total number of songs put through SongKong, matching as i need/want. So its only 57% of the total matched songs to an individual release, not 80% as you suggest.

Now that is low, but still it is going to save you alot of work
You are right, that is low in fact my calculations make it lower than you are suggesting. Now, let me take a couple of examples where the application has matched to an individual original release that i’m looking for:

Slipmatt - After Dark
The above match has tagged it as released in 1999, which isnt correct. See below link:
Original Release - https://www.discogs.com/Slipmatt-After-Dark/release/2785030 (released 1996, not 1999)
I would also like to point out that the album artist isnt Various Artists, suggesting its not a compilation album, sadly, it has matched it to a Compilation also!

DJ Force & The Evolution - Out of Control
Another example above, tagged as released in 1998. However, this is also incorrect, see below link:
Original Release - https://www.discogs.com/DJ-Force-The-Evolution-Simply-Electric-Out-Of-Control/release/118638 (released 1995, not 1998)

As you can see, even the low percentage of individual releases that it has identified, its incorrectly tagged as i require. I set the parameters as Earliest Release Date and also Prefer Vinyl. It hasnt taken the earliest release date, and these are clearly CD releases in some cases.

On the point of it saving me a lot of work, in fact its quite the opposite. I have no confidence or trust in the application is able to tag with any real high level of accuracy, and therefore, i am going to have to check them all anyway, meaning its saved me no time at all in reality.

you can configure SongKong to only add metadata without modifying any existing metadata (hence protecting date/year
The whole point of me going through this process is to ensure that the metadata is correct, because i do not know if the existing metadata is correct in the first instance, so this settings doesnt actually help me.

Also I have provided you with Jaikoz that allow you to match to a specified Discogs release
You did indeed, however, that was your suggestion to help me with trying to get SongKong to recognise my collection more accurately, i didnt want or need Jaikoz as an application, and wont be using it going forward anyway.

Jaikoz that allow you to match to a specified Discogs release, so this should work just as well as your one by one MP3Tag/TagScanner tagging
This completely defeats the objective of me paying for SongKong, so that i could get the automation of tagging my files without having to doing it manually.

Since SongKong Lite lets you check all results before purchase, and since I have now given you two products for the price of one, and I have suggested a way forward I dont feel a refund is applicable here
Yes i did try before I bought the license, and during my Preview attempts on a small subset of files, it matched quite a lot, giving me confidence that the software would do what i needed. We now know that it doesnt, and in the vast majority of cases, it matched to a compilation, and where it does match a single release, the dates are wrong.

I would like to think that you would accept, even after, you’ve attempted to help me directly, that the results are not good enough.

I look forward to your reply.

Darren

[paultaylor]

Darren, as a act of goodwill I have refunded you because there is a fundamental difference in how SongKong works and what you want it to do. Firstly, SongKong is primarily a MusicBrainz based tagger that can match groups of songs to albums, but you want a Discogs based tagger. Secondly you mainly have single songs but still want to match to albums and specific versions of albums, usually customers wanting this level of album based accuracy would actually have the whole album and therefore this makes it much easier to match to that album, in contrast single songs can often been found on multiple albums.
Thirdly you have your songs just organized by genre, which is not a good approach for identifying by album.

I said you could protect date/year because it was my understanding you had already spent much time fixing this data for some of your collection and were happy with the results, now you seem to be saying you are not sure about the results of the work you have already done ?

Of course if you are just matching songs one at a time then it is much easier for the tool to find the required match. You would have more success with Jaikoz because this tool is for these more adhoc situations, but you have already rejected this.

Some comments on your examples.

Slipmatt - After Dark, here the only copy of the song on MusicBrainz is the one on the compilation, that is why it has been matched to a compilation

DJ Force & The Evolution - Out of Control, now actually in this case you have the whole album, so SongKong has matched to the correct album. The 1995 single release is not in MusicBrainz so we cant get ORIGINAL_YEAR of 1995, and we dont (yet) support looking for original release in Discogs.

Because the songs have already been matched to a particular album on MusicBrainz, Discogs is then only used to fill in the gaps. SongKong will not match to a Discogs release that isn’t a version of the release matched to in MusicBrainz, since MusicBrainz is the primary source.

[drdreidel101]

This is wonderful to see. I’m in a similar boat here and have a bloated Various Artists folder full of compilations instead of original releases. It’s my #1 request for songkong. Amazing work Paul!

[paultaylor]

What you could in meantime is as follows:

1.On your Various Artist Folder only use SongKong file rename mechanism to rename files into folders based on Artist (not Album artist) , so you should now have a set of artist folders
2. Use another tool (e.g Jaikoz but could use any regular tagger) to empty the Album Artist, Album , MB Release Id and Mb Track Id fields to tremove reference to Various Artists albums maybe already matched to.
3. Rerun SongKong on these folders but choose a regular rename mask that will organize as Album Artist/Album, hopefully the majority of these will now be matched to original albums.