My Vorbis-style Comments Style Guide

for those who scribble quite a lot on the front of a disc

This is my style guide. There are many like it, but this one is mine.

Music metadata style is a matter of personal taste, available tools, the music collection in question, and how much time the tagger wants to spend doing data entry. All my FLAC and Vorbis files are tagged in foobar2000, and I’m perfectly willing to futz around with Windows’ Character Map in order to get untypeable characters in my files, such as accented letters, curly quote marks, and copyright symbols.

Field Names I Use

(Also see the official, minimal list.)

`title`

As you’d expect. However, if the title calls for a colon, use it; I don’t worry about whether the title will be able to conform to Windows’ file name conventions.

`artist`

I use the artist field name when “who played it” is a relatively uncomplicated question to answer. Weezer’s albums—at least the first four of them, anyway—are all like this. If I want to record who’s in the band at the time, I’ll use the performer field name. Not that I’ve ever checked the contents of any performer fields…

For more complicated discs that were, say, composed by Sergei Rachmaninoff and performed by the London Symphony Orchestra with Vladimir Ashkenazy on the piano with André Previn conducting would have comments like this:

COMPOSER=Sergei Rachmaninoff
ENSEMBLE=London Symphony Orchestra
PERFORMER=Vladimir Ashkenazy (piano)
CONDUCTOR=André Previn

No artist fields would be present.

`date`

Usually ends up being the copyright year if I don’t know any better; if I’m lucky, there’ll be an encircled P somewhere (℗) that indicates the date of the performance. If the date of the performance is so indicated, I’ll stuff that date into this field.

`opus`

Just the number.

`tracknumber`

Just the number; ideally, not 0-padded. No “of 13” or “/13” gets appended to the current track number.

I haven’t bothered to pick a tracknumbertotal-type field to add in this sort of information.

`discnumber`

Just the number of the disc, and only present if there is more than one disc in the set. As with tracknumber, I haven’t bothered to standardize on a discnumbertotal-type field.

`composer`

As you’d expect, but with first names first and last names last.

`performer`

For any performers of note in the work; the instrument they play goes after the name in parentheses, as in “Edo de Waart (piano)”.

`part`

Useful for multipart/multitrack works such as Rodeo in the Copland CD I have. For most classical works, this field will contain things like “Moderato”, “Finale (Alla breve)”, and the like. Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess, which in my collection comes in two tracks on one CD, has “Part 1” and “Part 2” put in the part field.

`version`

Contains “Live”, “Trouser Enthusiasts Remix”, etc.

`license`

The only time I’ve used this is on Jim’s Big Ego’s They’re Everywhere!; the contents of this field is:


This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Sharealike license.
To view a copy of this license, visit http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/1.0 or send a letter to:

Creative Commons
559 Abbott Way
Stanford, CA 94305
USA

This, of course, wrecks attempts to use vorbiscomment-style newline-delimited files to transfer comments to or from files.

File Organization

Music files go in a directory named “audio”. Because of space issues, this is almost never in my home directory, but usually on a second partition or entire spindle.

The audio directory contains multiple subdirectories—one per artist, usually. This is best illustrated, really…

+ audio
  + Chopin
    - Essential Chopin
    - Georges Cziffra - Waltzes and Impromptus
  - Gershwin
  - Halo
  + Moby
    + Mobysongs
    + Play
  + John Williams' Greatest Hits
    - Disc 1
    - Disc 2

File Naming

This is also best illustrated by example. Take, for example, the Halo soundtrack:

D:\audio\Halo>ls
01. Opening Suite.ogg
02. Truth and Reconciliation Suite.ogg
03. Brothers in Arms.ogg
04. Enough Dead Heroes.ogg
05. Perilous Journey.ogg
06. A Walk in the Woods.ogg
07. Ambient Wonder.ogg
08. The Gun Pointed at the Head of the Universe.ogg
09. Trace Amounts.ogg
10. Under Cover of Night.ogg
11. What Once Was Lost.ogg
12. Lament For Pvt. Jenkins.ogg
13. Devils... Monsters....ogg
14. Covenant Dance.ogg
15. Alien Corridors.ogg
16. Rock Anthem for Saving the World.ogg
17. The Maw.ogg
18. Drumrun.ogg
19. On A Pale Horse.ogg
20. Perchance to Dream.ogg
21. Library Suite.ogg
22. The Long Run.ogg
23. Suite Autumn.ogg
24. Shadows.ogg
25. Dust and Echoes.ogg
26. Halo.ogg
Halo.m3u

However, for some albums with multitrack works, such as my Copland CD, appending the contents of the part key can help out:

D:\audio\Copland>ls
1. Fanfare for the Common Man.ogg
2. Rodeo (Buckaroo Holiday).ogg
3. Rodeo (Corral Nocturne).ogg
4. Rodeo (Saturday Night Waltz).ogg
5. Rodeo (Hoe-Down).ogg
6. Quiet City.ogg
7. Billy the Kid.ogg
8. Appalachian Spring.ogg
Copland.m3u

Also notice that the track numbers aren't 0-padded for albums of nine tracks or fewer.

More on File Names

I name files so their names are Windows-compatible 7-bit-ASCII filenames. Anything fancier simply begs for trouble when it comes time to transfer files between two computers. The same goes for directory names.