Tagging tracks with DATE or DECADE and finding year released...

I am in the process of "dating" all of the songs in my library by decade. Every song gets a label (I'm using the "grouping" field in Serrato) of 40's, 50's, 60's, 70's, 80's, 90's, 2000's...

Eventually I can use the tags to make lists and then it will be easy to find background and dance music from any decade.

I'm wondering if anyone else has done this and if you could recommend a website or other source to quickly look up the dates? I have been using the following websites, but one site or another will not always have a definite date so it can take a while.

http://www.wikipedia.org
http://www.allmusic.com/
http://www.secondhandsongs.com/home/

I've been working on this off and on since fall of last year and have done about 30% of my library (A-C working down and Z-S working backwards, alphabetically).

Any advice?

Aaron,

I can certainly appreciate you wanting that info, but is Serato's tagging going to carry over, if you ever decide to use another program...?


If you just tag the MP3 ID3 year field, it will work in any software, and can easily be sorted or searched on that using anything.


I used to just dump the files into decade folders, although I have no need to do that anymore.

You might want to try that Green Book of Songs (I think they call it), as far as the dates and other info...

Not sure the green book lists release year... "Each song listing includes the name of one or more artists who recorded it (usually the original artist and the most popular renditions), the album titles and the related record labels for those recordings."

I'm not sure if the "grouping" tag is recorded into the mp3 or not. This might be a problem if I switch from Serrato.

Check with Ken Heath over at Ryan's place, if I remember correctly, he had a link in his sig to the book, and can probably give some more info.

I would imagine that Serrato's grouping is either a proprietary tag, or something in their own database, and wouldn't carry over...

If you want to kill two birds with one stone try www.bpmlist.com the first 250 are free after that some investment required.

I use allmusic for that research, and yes, it's very time-consuming. With very few exceptions, all of my music files have tags that include the year.

I've done all this, but (call me crazy), I'm next looking at finding the the names of the original albums the songs are from (not "Greatest Hits" or the year of the GH cd), and the artwork, as the latest VDJ release, as well as itunes will display "album covers". HUGE pile of "work".

Nevermind the notion of putting the key into it.

Steve you're worse than I am! Sometimes I feel obsessed like when I get this done will it really matter or will I just feel better that things are "in order"?

The BPM list looks like it might make things easier, if I am not too cheap to pay $25...lol

Sometimes I feel obsessed like when I get this done will it really matter or will I just feel better that things are "in order"?

If I thought it really mattered I would be a lot more dilligent about getting it all done. I can't think of a dime worth of income that will be generated by this, but I still think it would be awesome to have completed.

http://www.recordresearch.com

Get:

Top Pop Singles, 1955-2006 (every charted song);
Top R&B/Hip Hop 1942-2004 (every charted song on the black charts);
Top Country 1944-2005 (country AND western charts)
Pop Memories 1890-1954 (yes, charted music from that era)

If one is an alleged lover of music, especially charted stuff, these are the bibles.

Tagging manipulations:

In the year field of your tags, instead of typing in 1995 for a number 1 song in 1995, type in 9501.

If the song hit #25 in 1978, type in 7825.

Then if you sort on the year it will come up with your #1s through #99s, year by year.

Ideal for class reunions, anniversaries, birthdays, etc.

If you really want to get really anal (as I am), add a condensed bio in the comment field or some buzz about the song. Makes one appear far musically smarter than the average bear. The edumacation absorbed while doing this research and typing is indispensable.