Apple passes WalMart, now #1 music retailer in US

Over the past few years, we have watched Apple climb the music sales chart courtesy of the iTunes. Last month we learned that Apple passed Best Buy to become the number two retailer in the the US. Now, Apple has ascended to the top of the charts, surpassing Wal-Mart for the first time ever, according to the NPD MusicWatch Survey.

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Tagging Classic Music albums with Mp3tag for iTunes and Last.fm

I realized a lot of people having trouble with tagging Classic music. Initially, I got into Classical music to take up this challenge but now I am hooked into it because of its nice sophisticated melodies. There has to be a very straight forward way of tagging music. The ID3v2 specification provides us frames for the following tags that can be used to organize classical music:

 

1. Artist
2. AlbumArtist
3. Conductor
4. OriginalArtist
5. Composer
6. Album
7. Name

 

My goal is to devise a plan to fit all of these tags into Classical music appropriately, so that

• the Classic music composers will appear in Last.fm statistics
• music will be organized and displayed well in iTunes

 

The primary focus is given to how the music is organized. This means tagging conventions for track names is not one of the primary concerns in this article.

First we familiarise ourselves with the ID3v2 frames for the tags above.

 

TPE1
The 'Lead artist/Lead performer/Soloist/Performing group' is used for the main artist. This is our Artist tag. In Mp3tag this is %ARTIST%.

 

TPE2
The 'Band/Orchestra/Accompaniment' frame is used for additional information about the performers in the recording. This is our AlbumArtist tag. In Mp3tag this is %BAND%.

 

TPE3
The 'Conductor' frame is used for the name of the conductor. Conductor is a person who conducts an orchestra or choir. This is our Conductor tag. In Mp3tag this is %CONDUCTOR%.

 

TOPE
The 'Original artist/performer' frame is intended for the performer  of the original recording, if for example the music in the file  should be a cover of a previously released song. This is our OriginalArtist tag. In Mp3tag this is %ORIGARTIST%.

 

TCOM
The 'Composer' frame is intended for the name of the composer. This is our Composer tag. In Mp3tag this is %COMPOSER%.

 

TALB
The 'Album/Movie/Show title' frame is intended for the title of the recording (or source of sound) from which the audio in the file is taken. This is our Album tag. In Mp3tag this is %ALBUM%.

 

TIT2
The 'Title/Songname/Content description' frame is the actual name of the piece (e.g. "Adagio", "Hurricane Donna"). This is our Name tag. In Mp3tag this is %TITLE%.

 

iTunes, at the time of writing, does not support the following tags:

• Conductor
• OriginalArtist

However we will be populating these frames for future use.

 

 

The easiest way to demonstrate the usage of these tags is by examples.

 

Example 1:

 

From the cover art, we gather information about the following people/groups.

• Academy of Ancient Music
• Christopher Hogwood
• Jaap Schröder
• Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Immediately we realize

Album: Mozart: The Symphonies

 

The band/orchestra is obviously Academy of Ancient Music.

AlbumArtist: Academy of Ancient Music

 

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart composed the music, and also the original artist.

Composer: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

OriginalArtist: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

 

Christopher Hogwood and Jaap Schröder conducted the band/orchestra.

Conductor: Christopher Hogwood, Jaap Schröder

 

What to use for Artist is the biggest argument in Classical Music. Last.fm only scrobbles Artist tag. It does not yet scrobble original artist or composer tag. For useful and meaningful charts, we require Last.fm to scrobble original artist e.g. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

Artist: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

 

Example 2:

 

Artist: Ludwig van Beethoven
AlbumArtist: London Symphony Orchestra
Album: The Nine Symphonies
Composer: Ludwig van Beethoven
Conductor: Josef Krips

Example 3:

 

Compilation Discs such as "Best of" will cause a disc to have multiple bands according this logic. However, to keep all the tracks in the album organized under one album folder, it is recommended to use "Various Artists" in the AlbumArtist tag if this is the case.

 

Artist: Johann Sebastian Bach
AlbumArtist: Various Artists
Album: The Best of Bach
Conductor: Hans Swarowsky

 

For tagging Name, follow MusicBrainz conventions.

• Catalogue: number and opus

  • Always use "No. " and "Op. " Examples:

    • 'Symphony No. 5 in C minor, Op. 67'. Note the spaces after the stop character, and the use of comma (i.e. "No. 5", not "No.5" and "Op. 67", not "Op.67").

    • 'Mazurka in B major, Op. 63 No. 1'. Here the 'No. 1' is a subpart of 'Op. 63'. Note that there's no comma between them.

• Chord: minor and major

  • Always use the expanded form and lowercase including a hyphen for German. Examples:

    • 'Violin Concerto in D minor, Op. 47' (English)

    • 'Prélude No. 1 C-dur, Op. 28: Agitato' (German)

• Keys

  • Always use uppercase for English and German notation "A, B, C, D, E, F, G" and proper case for Italian (and French and Spanish) "Do, Re, Mi, Fa, Sol, La, Si". Attribute "in", "en" or "em" should be inserted according to release language. Examples:

    • 'Trio in A minor, Op. 50;' (English)

    • 'Prelude and Fugue in F-sharp major, BWV 858' (English)

    • 'Concerto No. 1 in Sol minore, Op. 8, RV 332' (Italian)

    • 'Concerto No. 4 en La mineur' (French)

    • 'Prélude No. 2 A-moll, Op. 28: Lento' (German)

    • 'Prélude No. 8 Fis-moll, Op. 28: Molto agitato' (German)

  • For more combinations refer to English Musical Keys and to the complex German notation

• Italian tempo markings

  • Since they are Italian they should follow CapitalizationStandardItalian such that only the first letter of the phrase is titled. Example:

    • 'Concerto for Piano and Orchestra No. 5 in D major, KV 175: II. Andante ma un poco adagio'

• Common names

  • Common works names can be omitted, yet it's preferable to add them. They have to be entered within double quotes:

    • 'Piano Sonata No. 23 in F minor, Op. 57 "Appassionata": II. Andante con moto' (do not use 'Appassionata' or «Appassionata» or -Appassionata-)

    • 'String Quartet No. 17 in B-flat major, KV 458 "Hunt": II. Moderato'

    • 'Sinfonie in e-moll, Op. 95 "Aus der Neuen Welt": II. Largo'

    • 'Cantata, BWV 17 "Wer Dank opfert, der preiset mich": Part II, V. Aria "Welch Übermaß der Güte"'. Same as before, but note that it also applies to the very track title.

• Vocalists

  • Entering vocalists (tenor, soprano, bass) is not mandatory. They are entered after the track name, but before the common name if present:

    • 'Cantata, BWV 17 "Wer Dank opfert, der preiset mich": Part II, V. Aria (Tenor, Soprano) "Welch Übermaß der Güte"'

 

Sources:

• http://www.id3.org/id3v2.4.0-frames
• http://www.mp3tag.de/en/help/main_tags.html
• http://musicbrainz.org/doc/ClassicalStyleGuide

Digsby Launches- One App to Manage IM + Email + Social Network

Digsby is the first application that lets you manage all your existing IM, email and social network accounts from one easy to use application. it supports 15 services and integrates them into a clean user interface

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Mozart - The Symphonies (Hogwood) [1997/MP3/V0(VBR)/Log]

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Satellite Dishes

It seems that despite you own your house and your land, you cannot simply buy and install a satellite dish at your will. The Canning council paper mentions the following:

 

If you are thinking of installing a satellite dish, please ensure you contact the City before making any final decisions on the type of dish or where you want it installed.

It is advisable to speak with the City's Planning staff to find out if the process before you purchase or make arrangements for installation.

It may save you heartache in the future!

Planning staff can be contacted by ringing the City of Canning on 9231 0606 and asking for a Planning offer.

 

I am thinking why the heck would I have to. It is not like I am installing it on the road.

 

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iTSfv - Hands down the best iTunes addon you could ever ask

iTunes Store file validator is an open source add-in for iTunes for automatic genre tagging from Last.fm, exporting iTunes Store artwork, downloading Lyrics from LyricsWiki, Synchrocleaning iTunes Music Library, recovering playedCount from Last.fm, automatic rating according played pattern, creating statistics for your music library, and many more.

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iTunes to MediaMonkey to iTunes

I gave MediaMonkey 3 a shot today, after a successful trial in VMware Workstation last night. The reason I tried MM3 was, it being the first media player I heard that can automatically rename files and move them immediately after renaming tags. This behavior is not enabled by default however. I added the my proper iTunes managed 19910 tracks to MM3 and noticed

1. tracks getting moved. For example a song belonged to AC/DC artist folder moved into a AC-DC artist folder
2. tracks getting renamed (variant 1). For example 1-03 Secrets.mp3 renamed to 03 Secrets.mp3. I realized MM3 did not by default use the DiscCount tag to rename files.
3. tracks getting renamed (variant 2). For example "07 What is Love_.mp3" which has the Name tag as "What is Love?" renamed to just "07 What is Love.mp3". iTunes used underscore for illegal characters but MM3 just did not include them at all.

All this damage was done without me even enabling Automatically organize files. I understand this behavior (such as using underscore for illegal characters) can be customized using the MM3 ini file. However by default doing such damage is certainly undesired.

I noticed another disastrous thing happening. A bunch of files with the AlbumArtist\Album\Track structure were moved into the AlbumArtist folder "AC/DC". I am really not sure how this happened but it did. I immediately terminated the process, uninstalled the piece of crapshit.

Lesson learnt to have only one music manager.

I managed to get everything back to normal with the help of Synchroclean® using iTSfv.

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