Last.fm-like multiple tag system
Wouldn't it be great to have a multiple tag system like in last fm (or with firefox3 bookmarks) (or with your add-on download page ;-P). For example, I could tag a song with "soundtrack" "classic rock" "movie" and "60s" cause all these are relevant. I think the easiest way is to handle the genre field. Tagging a song with "soul, funk, rnb, female vocalist" would make it appear in genre "soul", "funk", ... I think it will greatly integrate with tag cloud add-on. I was lacking this feature in iTunes and had to use the multiple fields they offer (group, genre, comment...) to do the same thing. With great library, it will definitely make browsing easier.
123
people like this idea
I like this idea!
Tell me when this idea gets some attention.
The more people who like this idea, the more it gets noticed.
The more people who like this idea, the more it gets noticed.
The company has this in progress.
The best points from everyone
-
Atreiu asked if I had any ideas about how a tagging system could work in Songbird, and I made a mockup of what I think it would look like if it were officially implemented. I thought it might be worth sharing to give anyone ideas.

I figured you should be able to add tags to songs quickly and frequently, so I made a tag bar separate from the metadata editing box because I thought it would be easier. I based it off of Firefox's Find bar. It could be shown or hidden by clicking on the tag button in the status bar or with a keyboard shortcut. I made it treat tags exactly like last.fm does; after typing a comma and space after a term, it turns it into a single item that can be removed by hitting the x on it. You should be able to tag whatever songs are selected, not just the currently playing one, because I'm sure people will want to be able to select a bunch of tracks and add a few tags to all of them.
As you add each term, it could be added to the Tag column in the song list. I thought this would be important to have, because it would allow you to see what tags your songs currently have. I also replaced the Genre filter in the media view with a Tag filter, because I think this tag system would basically be an improved genre system. I also thought it was important to have have the tag filter along side the usual Artist and Album filters, because I know I would be using them interchangeably, not just one or the other. For example, sometimes I would probably just want to listen to a specific album, but other times I might be in a certain mood and decide to listen to a particular tag.
Finally, I have the last.fm icon at the end of the tag bar because I figured last.fm could provide some important functionality to the tagging system. If you could click it, it could give you the option to sync the tags of the selected tracks to your profile. This would allow you to download tags if you have already added them on songs in last.fm, and if your last.fm profile didn't have any, it would add your library's tags to it, giving you a way to store your tags in the cloud. It could also give you the option to view the popular public tags that people have added to tracks and download them if you wish.
7 people think
this is one of the best points
-
Hi there, I just stumbled over the discussion here. Maybe I have something to contribute :).
I'm currently working on a simple tagging solution. As already mentationed here it's based on comma seperated values stored in tag comments. I started this as an education project for me a while ago stopped the work on it and finally picked it up again.
The project started as a modification of the "divided tag cloud" extension. For now it's far from complete (I wouldn't even call it in alpha stage).
Currently the tagging (add/remove tags for current playing track) and the filtering with the tag cloud (include/exclude tags) is working.
This is what it's looking right now:

--
Warning: Try this only in a sandboxed environment (separate profile, backed up media, etc). I'm not responsible for any damage or data loss!
--
If you aren't scared right now you can check out the source from public svn here . But beware: I'm not a programmer - only a hobbyist so be prepared ;).
I’m happy
4 people think
this is one of the best points
-
in my eyes, music tagging is absolutely what could make songbird stand way out and become even better than itunes.
but since noone wants to spend hours to sort his song-library, there should be an option to get tags for all selected songs from last.fm by one click.
I’m excited
3 people think
this is one of the best points
-
Well it depend, if it has to create new metadata fields there is a compatibility problem I guess. But that's not how I see the things. For me, you would tag your song genre like this : "classical, soundtrack, movie, 80s" and that's how would the other mediaplayer see it but intelligent songbird would parse the string and see the four different genres as separate.
In fact I think it's just a regular panel filter view with a string parser to distinguish multiple genre separed with commas in a single field (well said like this it seems simple but I'm sure it's not that simple)
I’m happy
6 people think
this is one of the best points
-
There already was this kind of discussion and I too think that music sorting and tagging needs to be the next big feature. But I think it should be rather the Tags on the files, that should be updated, rather then making it a media-player based thing. Interoperability is always a concern to me.
I don't want to spend hours of tagging my library, only to loose that information, when I switch players, or the code basis of songbird gets changed dramatically again and I have to start with a new profile.
No. For me, the gain would be less then the usage, if it would only be possible in the bird.
3 people think
this is one of the best points
-
Inappropriate?There already was this kind of discussion and I too think that music sorting and tagging needs to be the next big feature. But I think it should be rather the Tags on the files, that should be updated, rather then making it a media-player based thing. Interoperability is always a concern to me.
I don't want to spend hours of tagging my library, only to loose that information, when I switch players, or the code basis of songbird gets changed dramatically again and I have to start with a new profile.
No. For me, the gain would be less then the usage, if it would only be possible in the bird.
3 people think
this is one of the best points
-
Inappropriate?I totaly agree with you. That's why putting them in the "genre" metadata field of the id3 tag of the mp3 would avoid loosing everything while changing media player or updating songbird. It's just the way it should be handle like I said in my example (multiple genres separed by commas)
I’m happy
2 people think
this is one of the best points
-
Inappropriate?Problem then is, what happens, when you open that "modded" file in some other program?
It isn't that unlikely to cause problems, I guess. -
Inappropriate?Well it depend, if it has to create new metadata fields there is a compatibility problem I guess. But that's not how I see the things. For me, you would tag your song genre like this : "classical, soundtrack, movie, 80s" and that's how would the other mediaplayer see it but intelligent songbird would parse the string and see the four different genres as separate.
In fact I think it's just a regular panel filter view with a string parser to distinguish multiple genre separed with commas in a single field (well said like this it seems simple but I'm sure it's not that simple)
I’m happy
6 people think
this is one of the best points
-
I like this idea, you could use the comment field considering the stuff that usually goes there is mostly pointless stuff that doesn't matter so much. (And if you really wanted to you could use that stuff as tags) -
Inappropriate?Sounds plausible. You're right.
Any dev care to elaborate? -
Inappropriate?Cool idea. As far as metadata storage goes, tags aren't in the IDv3 spec, but we do have ways to store non-IDv3 data and associate it with particular tracks. We'll pop this one into the feature suggestions bucket.
-
Inappropriate?Nice!!! Really sounds like something. I really think, digital music lacks in this area, right now. Something the People behind creating the ID standard should think about for Version 4.
-
Inappropriate?Happy to see that my idea is raising interests. I hope it will be integrated one day or another
I’m thankful
-
Inappropriate?I've brought this up once before also and one key thing to add is the ability to use something like a checkbox table to filter playing from library. i.e. being able to uncheck "explicit" or "holiday" if you had files you tagged with those
Hopefully, someone can see the implied use in that availability. -
Inappropriate?If I remember correctly you can't have multiple Genre values in IDv3, but maybe the Comment space could be used for that (Comment would be displayed correctly also by other players).
2 people think
this is one of the best points
-
My thoughts exactly -
I also think this is a good idea. It is easier to use the comment field when creating smart playlist in other media players like winamp or in media servers like firefly. Moreover the tags should be wrapped by some "special chars" so that they could be used beside other information (e.g. "found this on a blog [tags-begin] explicit, holiday, rock [tags-end]") -
Inappropriate?More interesting to me would be the option to assign a song to multiple Albums/ Artists. Take a sampler. I like to keep my samplers whole, but that means that a song that is on this particular sampler gets into my library twice, for Example "To the world" by Strike Anywhere is in my Library once as part of Rock Against Bush I, and once as part of the album Exit English. And it's not even a different recording, it's the same song. I Also got a few songs that are joint ventures between bands, and I'm always unsure where to put them. I'd love to see the possibility to separate them by commas, as mentioned above, maybe the more mainstream players would pick it up someday... But one issue: What about Bands like "Defiance, Ohio"? maybe a comma isn't the best idea after all, maybe it should be either an exotic symbol or a combination of symbols, like &+ or something.
I’m curious
-
Inappropriate?1 - Concerning the "multiple album", I had this issue too, for example, when you have an album and the "best of" of an artist, you have tracks which are on both so you have only two options, ripping both versions (which cost space memory for nothing) or having missing tracks on one of the album which is indeed really sad.
2 - As said Ali rayl, it is possible to store metadata in file beside the idv3 standard. Just look at the amount of data iTunes is storing on files. So what would be interesting would be the possibility to store as much entry of one field as wanted (well almost as much ;-P). The first entry would respect the IDV3 standard and the others would be non IDV3 data exclusive to Songbird. So if you open your file in another browser you will be able to have info (but not as many). The problem is Songbird could be a lot slower to browse your library and it seems really complicated.
3 - I think the easiest way is to had tag as metadata on the file totally aside the idv3 system and have a "view" which allow to browse them smartly (for example to look to something like (song tagged "rock" or "jazz" and which are not tagged "soundtrack")). It would introduce a brand new way to browse your music, closer to what's currently done on internet (as i said, with last fm or firefox 3)
I’m excited
-
Inappropriate?Keep in mind that this is a "media" player, not an "mp3" player. Many file formats are not ID3 capable, let alone video. A tagging system would need to be handled by Songbird explicitly unless a container was used for all files which would break the ability to use them on other devices without support.
Hmm, just made me think of another reason to have multiple libraries again..... separate video and music. -
Inappropriate?Well, all modern music formats have Tags, right? ANd all of them got spare space to add Songbird exclusive metadata wirthout corrupting the file for other files. So I don't see any problems with that.
I’m not afraid
-
Inappropriate?I totally agree with flatten the skyline, I don't think the multiple filetype support is a problem as many other mediaplayer which custom datas on file without looking to its type.
I’m happy
-
Inappropriate?Two thoughts on that. First, what about video?
Second, does "Songbird exclusive" metadata really benefit anyone by not simply being stored elsewhere? Pros/Cons storing in metadata vs an external db?
Only thing I can see is extra overhead on the actual files. If you have a license that allows you to send that file to someone else, is the extra info you added able to be extracted by the receiver, let alone useful to them?
Thoughts? -
With metadata stored in the original file, if you move the file, you mantain your metadata (think about moving your songs to your laptop). If you store the metadata into an external db you should move the db also (and eventually import that db into another application) -
Inappropriate?Well, I think you're totally right Doom0r (Why do I think everybody's right?). If the tag's readable only by songbird, why should it be stored on the file. A db would be fine and, furthermore, it will solve the problem of video. As tags are usually personal, you don't really want everybody to get yours when you share your music (I mean free music). So database seems to be the best solution. the only inconvenient is that when you lose your songbird configuration file, you lose your tags and if your library is 10 000+ you could be a bit upset. Anyway, I'm sure that if such a fonctionnality pop up, their will be sooner or later an add-on to sync tags with your last fm tags so it would solve the problem. That's why, I'm totally for the database now ^^
I’m happy
1 person thinks
this is one of the best points
-
Inappropriate?I still don't see the problem in the metadata solution. Only perhaps that other programs would like to write their stuff at that particular point we started with ours, but if everything runs smooth they might even include compatibility. I envision a world where this is standard procedure, and where being limited to one of each tags is like only having 8 characters to name your file like in DOS.
I’m sounding like a hippy
-
Inappropriate?Rah venelux and flighten the sky are right too ^^. Well as long as tag system is available, I should be able to manage with either solution.
It's true that metadata is the best way if you want to move your data. on the other hand, most of the video formats don't support metadata (AFAIK) so db would be better. both have pros and cons.
Maybe the best solution is a mix between both. Media which can store metadata will be writter, others will have entry in db. I haven't try video on songbird since 0.2 but I supposed it's how it happens actually. If you fill metadata for an mp3 it writes it on the file but for a video it should be on a db, isn't it?
I’m happy
-
Inappropriate?The problem with using the metadata is some stupid players like WMP might screw it up if you edit the song details outside Songbird. But I think it's a great idea, this is the reason I wanted Last.fm to make a media player, but they apparently don't have the time. :( But having it in Songbird is even better.
-
Inappropriate?Are you sure Video formats don't have room for metadata? I mean some video players show info like composer and such, that must be in the file in my opinion (I think the dreaded WMP does it...) I guess songbird cannot control what non songbird-players do to the file, but neither should we care. Better to have this than to leave it out just because it might screw up at some point. Maybe we could have both in and outside of file solutions, and set priority to one of them...
I’m sounding like I know what I'm talking about
-
Inappropriate?I guess programmers are the best people to choose what solution to adopt as they really know their subject. Can someone throw light on this topic please?
Anyway, as long as there is a tag system, that'll be fine with me ;-P
I’m happy
-
Inappropriate?Yes! I'd love to be able to tag like this with checkboxes (like Firefox 3's bookmarks):
"Rehab" by Amy Winehouse:
tags:
- British
- Motown revival
- White lady soul singers
- Artist's 1st big hit
- Songs about drugs, drinking
- Addiction
- Mark Ronson
- Peer pressure
- Songs that don't do the whole album justice
- Artists that have been arrested
- Songs that I have seen performed live
"Valerie" by Amy Winehouse:
tags:
- British
- Motown revival
- White lady soul singers
- Cover song
- Included on a compilation
- Songs by girls to other girls
- "Thinking of you" songs
- Artists that have been arrested
- Mark Ronson
- Great song on "so so" album
Et cetera, et cetera... Unlimited personal tagging = the future. C'mon Songbird!!
I’m hopeful?
-
Inappropriate?Love the discussion. We've had lots of similar thoughts internally and talk about doing many of these things. Please, keep up the conversation! Try to keep in mind that powerful, but simple features are most likely to make it into the application in some form, someday. Also, I'd be very happy to help any addon developer interested in prototyping some of these things.
-
Inappropriate?Great idea! This feature would Singbirg become the killer application!
Also, I agree with faaaab's point, that tags are personal and should be stored locally. You can also think of tags like "heard in summer of 99" or something like that.
I think for the same reason, the rating information in singbird is not saved in the metadata (windows media player does that).
I’m excited
-
Inappropriate?quoting wikipedia :
"ID3v2.4 is the latest version of the standard, dated November 1, 2000. [...] It uses a null byte to separate multiple values, so the character "/" can appear in text data again."
Infact, as said Dan on bugzilla (http://bugzilla.songbirdnest.com/show...) we could consider this as a bug rather than a feature suggestion because Songbird doesn't support multiple values, which mean it isn't totally conform to the standard.
I’m happy
-
Inappropriate?This thread is really interesting. I have been looking for a way to add multiple genres and other tags to music files for a long time.
1) I think tags should not be songbird specific (as in songbird metadata). Songbird is free software; it should give its users the freedom to leave the player again. Also, any metadata should stay with the file and not some db.
2) ID3v2 genre tag (and or comments) and FLAC+Vorbis comments could be used.
3) The idea about using playlists as tags, getsatisfaction.com/songbird/topics/using_playlists_as_tags , are interesting, but I would really prefer some real tags.
I really hope this will become a feature soon. Thanks
I’m hopeful
-
Inappropriate?Couldn't songbird simply add the tag to the comment field and then use those to implement that whole play-this-tag-but-not-that-one thing?
I’m hopeful
-
Inappropriate?please make this non cored. or add-on or optional.
what i dont want is that if i play all soundtrack then add all female vocalist, some tracks would be duplicated, or is there any way to round this?
I’m unsure
-
Inappropriate?I was just about to add this as a feature request. If the standard doesn't already support it seems almost inevitable that it will as it's just a common sense feature.
Devs, is there a road map or an ETA on when such a feature will be available? Or are you waiting for an add-on? -
Inappropriate?Both foobar2000 and Quod Libet are able to handle this in such a way that files tagged in one show sensibly in the other. Maybe it's worth looking at the Quod Libet (or Ex Falso) source code?
Files I've tagged with more than one genre using fb2k or QL currently show in Songbird under a separate genre made up of both/all of them with a space between (for example Industrial Punk, or Jazz Cover Various). The same goes for artists.
Anyway I'm glad this is under consideration at least!
I’m thankful
-
Inappropriate?Hi, I think this is more than a great idea, to me it's really necessary before I switch from Quod Libet to Songbird. As others have noted, QL simply lets me declare the "genre" several times. Admittedly, QL isn't very user friendly -- it would be great to just be able to declare a comma-separated list of "genre" entries, but the idea is the same. Much more importantly, QL then lets me do powerful searches, such as "everything Rock that isn't also 60's" etc. Again, these searches are very cool once you have learned the syntax, but a good player would integrate a GUI that lets me put together the search in an intuitive way, then *show me the syntax* and let me enter the syntax directly for future searches, if I like -- this makes it much better for "power" users.
Since QL can do this for any tag, not just genre, this is very powerful. Really, sometimes there is more than one "artist".
Additionally, and much more importantly, QL lets the user define custom tags. I have a tag "language", for example, others could have "venue," "performer" etc. Maybe there's a classical music enthusiast who wants to enter who played the 1st violin wherever applicable. This information gets stored in the song, so it is portable, if other music players support it.
Please?
I’m hopeful
-
2 people think
this is one of the best points
-
Nice musical tastes, BRMC are the best. Nice picture too by the way ;-) -
Yeah good choice. I'm always scared of uploading pictures on GetSat in case I get ripped for having rubbish taste :P still, so far so good. Maybe we're all just a tolerant community! -
Inappropriate?Erm, where did you get this screenshot from, Remorak?
I don't get this tagging option, neither in when I right click on a song, nor do I get a "Tags" tab in in the "Edit Metadata" window.
I'm using:
Version: Songbird 1.0.0, Build 860 (20081124135530)
on Linux
In any case, I think tagging like that would be too crude, and potentially not compatible with other media players, right? How is it done? Does this get added to the "genre" tag? if so, it should be more transparent. Really, I think there should be (a) custom tags (not just "artist", "title", but free entry for anything, like "1st violin" "venue" ... whatever the user wants to come up with), and (b) multiple values allowed for any tag, that is, more than one "artist" or "genre" possible. -
It's a add-on .... i think =P
or Just a mockup
Metadata Tools -
Inappropriate?sorry, I should have comment it.
no this isn't a plug-in or so, it's only a picture that I made to demonstrate how I imagine this feature. sorry that I confused you ;)
I’m Sorry
-
Inappropriate?it's great to see this discussion here, i was hoping songbird would already have such a feature, so i was kind of disappointed when i tried it, but well, it looks like there is hope after all. :)
about two years or so someone posted almost the same idea on the winamp forums (http://forums.winamp.com/showthread.php?threadid=256539 if anyone is interested) and i thought "yes! i want that!". but well, nothing happend. so it would be cool to finally see this implemented.
I’m hopeful
-
Inappropriate?It would also be an absolutely incredible feature to pull these multiple tags straight from Last.fm. This is what I have been waiting for. This would CATAPULT Songbird into the absolute number one application for music discover/sorting/organizing/listening. It is the only thing missing. The only thing I want.
I’m stoked.
-
Inappropriate?in my eyes, music tagging is absolutely what could make songbird stand way out and become even better than itunes.
but since noone wants to spend hours to sort his song-library, there should be an option to get tags for all selected songs from last.fm by one click.
I’m excited
3 people think
this is one of the best points
-
Inappropriate?I like this idea with multiple genre tags and I hope this idea will also be added for composer and lyricist.
I use to tagging "Mp3tag" and when I added multiple genre or composer or lyricist with "/" (slash without space befor the other add) or ";" (semicolon with space befor another add) some player library selected each add separate.
Example: "Where do the children play?" - Cat Stevens (from the soundtrack "Harold and Maude")
My Genre: Soundtrack/Singer-Songwriter/70s
In some libraries you've three separate genres and in each of them you find this song. Songbird create an new own genre called "Soundtrack/Singer-Songwriter/70s.
The same problem I've got with edits "composer" or "lyricist".
Example: When I've added composer "Bryan Adams/Michael Kamen/Robert John "Mutt" Lange" Songbird create this edit in one own composer name. It will be better in my opinion when the library create 3 separate composer.
Why is the idea so good?
A lot of Songbird user have had a list with more than thousands of composers and more than hundreds of different genres. This will be confusing and the usability is not really good.
I’m in hope
-
Inappropriate?@ Joern
That's it, really - multiple genre tags do exist, and programs such as MP3Tag deal with them. Songbird doesn't. This should definitely be included. It can't be that hard. Now, I know that not all people use MP3 and so on - still.
The songbird-own tag system, especially the idea to fetch tags directly from Last.fm, sounds absolutely promising, I dare say revolutionary. But this idea should be followed separately from the multiple-genre-tag-issue. This thread actually covers two different ideas for features, both of which should - in my opinion - inevitably find their way into Songbird. And I want them fast! xD
I’m fidgety
1 person thinks
this is one of the best points
-
Inappropriate?@Trashcan
To add the genre automatically from Last.fm is not so good because the genre in Last.fm are not correct everytime. Better will be the option to choose from witch database the user want an automatically add.
For example the choose between musicbrainz and Last.fm or perhaps only a list of offers from this database and the user must select.
You're right when you said there are two different ideas in this thread. We both hope that the developer works fast to implement both.
Have a nice day, Trashcan -
Inappropriate?Before Songbird I used Mediamonkey 3.0 medialibrary to do this 'cause it's directly supported. They use ";" to deliminate static tags that get automatically divided up in a genre list displayed on the left left-side of the screen. There are however still some snags with this system:
*During editing there is no suggested tag (like when editing the artist) so you could run into duplicates or spelling mistakes.
*Changing a single tag in a row of tags on multiple files shows only a grey field because the system can't extrapolate the tags from all the different versions of tag-rows.
This could be solved by making the editor much more dynamic: suggested tag, existing tags, related tag. The interface could looke something like the one by Delicious.
Good things:
*In the genre-list deleting the tag or renaming it to nothing deletes the tag anywhere in your library. That's very handy if you have wacky tags that you want to remove, like after adding all the tags for some artist through Last.fm (please don't do this). -
Inappropriate?As for how to support this, the ID3v2.4 standard specifies the use of null values between multiple files. It seems like this solves a number of the problems mentioned above.
I’m excited
-
Inappropriate?More than just allowing for songs that defy genre, this tool would be amazing to people who like to get all biographical with their music.
My music collection is pretty massive. Uber massive. I have a lot of mash-ups, remixes, and all sorts of stuff that completely defies pinning it down to any one specific genre. Like many, music brings me memories. The first kiss, the loudest gig, that time we all got totally wasted, etc etc etc. Why not allow people to tag music biographically, the way they remember it? Tag it to events in your life, stuff it reminds you of, stuff it sounds similar to, how well it'd go down at a party, how it makes you feel etc.
I have a question about implementation. If this was implemented as a separate entity in its own right, maybe with something like sqlite or such, it could be packaged up as a module and kicked upstream for all the other GPL players to do with as they please for the sake of interopability. That way users migrating to and from computers, operating systems, and players won't have to keep retagging their songs. But I'm none too sure. Would this be do-able?
I've asked a few friends and they all agree it'd be a kick-ass feature to have. I'd browse my collection exclusively in tag-cloud mode if I could do all these things.
I’m excited
1 person thinks
this is one of the best points
-
Inappropriate?I'd really love if songbird would provide this feature. But I think this feature should not only be available in the genre tag, but in all tags with a configurable separator string. I think I'm not the only one already using this feature in a music library. E.g. the logitech (formerly slimdevices) squeezecenter music server provides the capability to use any character as a separator in any tag.
I make heavy use of this feature in the artist tag. E.g. I got two tracks
Laurent Garnier feat. Bugge Wesseltoft - The Man with the red Face
Laurent Garnier with Carl Craig - Demented (Laurent Garnier Edit)
My artist tags for the two tracks now look like:
Laurent Garnier; Bugge Wesseltoft
Laurent Garnier; Carl Craig
This gives my three different artists "Laurent Garnier", "Bugge Wesseltoft" and "Carl Craig" in my library, which I think is much better then having two artists "Laurent Garnier feat. Bugge Wesseltoft" and "Laurent Garnier with Carl Craig".
I believe this is a great feature which would be unique to songbird with regard to other desktop media managing software. But not making it incompatible with existing libraries. -
Inappropriate?I'd just like to throw my support out for this idea. The way things are now, "Genre" is a pretty useless field. The ability to "tag" files with multiple genres would be great.
-
Inappropriate?Actually the "Foobar 2000" player for Windows supports multiple genres, each seperated by ";" in the Genre tag. I think the Songbird developers should take a glance at Foobar if they wish to improve tagging since Foobar got an eminent tagging support.
I’m thankful
2 people think
this is one of the best points
-
Inappropriate?yes, foobar is cool
-
Inappropriate?Yep, I just tested Foobar2000
it is not such a nice and easy to use player, and lacks some other things too.
But it is possible to do what (at least I) want:
either create a new field in the tag (I called it "LABELS") or just use the old "genre" field.
Whatever way: it works, just change "genre" in the text below with "labels":
I got a Electropop Album, that is in German and sung by a female.
the old Genre was "Electropop" now i just enriched this by "German" and "Female Singer" (Genre = "Electropop, German, Female Singer")
in search field I just enter:
"genre HAS Electropop" - I get all songs containing Electropop in genre (even if there are more entries in it, like "Electropop, Instrumental")
"genre HAS German AND genre HAS Electropop" - I get all songs that have both in the genre description
"genre HAS German OR genre HAS Electropop" guess what i get...
SO IT IS WORKING
But I don't want to write search phrases all the time...
I want it the way I described it here:
http://getsatisfaction.com/songbird/t...
I’m very happy, because I know it is possible!
1 person thinks
this is one of the best points
-
Inappropriate?Would be sweet if there was a way to specify also multiple artists...
-
for example? -
-
Inappropriate?Hi there, I just stumbled over the discussion here. Maybe I have something to contribute :).
I'm currently working on a simple tagging solution. As already mentationed here it's based on comma seperated values stored in tag comments. I started this as an education project for me a while ago stopped the work on it and finally picked it up again.
The project started as a modification of the "divided tag cloud" extension. For now it's far from complete (I wouldn't even call it in alpha stage).
Currently the tagging (add/remove tags for current playing track) and the filtering with the tag cloud (include/exclude tags) is working.
This is what it's looking right now:

--
Warning: Try this only in a sandboxed environment (separate profile, backed up media, etc). I'm not responsible for any damage or data loss!
--
If you aren't scared right now you can check out the source from public svn here . But beware: I'm not a programmer - only a hobbyist so be prepared ;).
I’m happy
4 people think
this is one of the best points
-
What we all NEED!!!
So, when can we get beta to try it?;)) -
+1 schmidt -
@schmidt & Fr-zeb59:
There's currently the SVN version only. Basic things (like tagging, the cloud & last.fm) are working but it's still not time for a beta release.
Currently I have no time to set up a detailed project page, maybe when the beta version becomes ready.
(I've uploaded a current screenshot here: http://img29.imageshack.us/img29/2965...) -
Could you add a description to transform SVN in installable extension for testing ? :) -
@Fr-zeb59 Sorry for the late reply, I was on vacation the last week. I've added the XPI to the SVN for easier testing. You can get it from https://svn.xp-dev.com/svn/jlt157-com...
I'll add a version number with the next commit. -
Ok, thanks, I will try ! -
Inappropriate?isn't there just some way to sync up one's last.fm tags with a song's tags in songbird, and vice-versa? In other words, if I change a song's tags in songbird, it would be sent to last.fm. I'm not familiar with last.fm's api so I don't know, but I know one of the biggest downside's of their tagging is not being able to which songs have multiple tags. this would be a great way to manage both local library tags, and cloud tags at the same time. Are is this just a pipe dream?
I’m frustrated
-
Hi technomensch, that's exactly what i'm working at. If you look at the screenshot (http://img29.imageshack.us/img29/2965...) you can see three buttons between the tag boxes in the right pane. The top box contains local tags, the bottom one contains remote (last.fm) tags for the track. The arrow-buttons are for syncing these tags (currently manual only). -
I love that you can have both collections of tags. It would be awesome if you could have check boxes when you search for if you want to return results for 1 or the other, or both, or just metadata etc. Nice work, crisp :) -
I'm all for this. I don't think you can do that but syncing with last.fm tags would be awesome. Since I do tag all my artists on last.fm :) smart tagging would be really awesome too. -
Crisp, what you are working on looks really great. Is it going to be both an add-on that lets you tag songs, and also a media view that lets you display the tags? I think it would be a good idea to make them separated like that so that people can use your add-on to manage their tags, but then make different media views that could utilize the tags. I think it would also be useful to have an option to keep your tags permanently synced with last.fm, because that would provide a good solution for people who want to always keep their tags synced and backed up in the cloud. -
Murphy, yep it will be both, some media views (currently a cloud as shown in the screener above) and a tree (useful if you have a lot of tags). These components should be the basic stuff to build upon if they show to be usable and useful. Technically the tags should be readable from any extension. -
Murphy, yep it will be both, some media views (currently a cloud as shown in the screener above) and a tree (useful if you have a lot of tags). The tagger is actually a pane wich (when finished) can be shown in any SB pane. These components should be the basic stuff to build upon if they show to be usable and useful. Technically the tags should be readable from any extension. -
Inappropriate?What I think would be really cool is the ability to have hierarchal tags, tags that are part of another tag (and the could be user-assigned so people who don't use the feature won't have it getting in their way because all the tags could be top level)
For example, I organize my music in extremely general genre categories: Academic, Acoustic/Folk, Ambient/Electronic, Avantgarde, Experimental, Hip-Hop/Rap, Jazz?Blues, Metal, and so on. That way I don't have to decide what specific type of, say, Rock I want to listen to at any given moment, I can just listen to Rock. (Which I admit has some limitations) However given the ability to assign hierarchal tags I could choose to play general rock and/or pick a specific sub-genre I want to listen to.
An example of hierarchal tags:
Rock
-Indie Rock
--Indietronic
-Acoustic Rock
-Punk Rock
--Post Punk
Metal
-Folk Metal
-Heavy Metal
-Black Metal
(I'm afraid I'm not so well versed in the relationships between various forms of metal, sorry)
...and so on
I’m excited
1 person thinks
this is one of the best points
-
Hi Carlos, for now I do this by pre-filtering the genre tag with songbirds intelligent playlists (e.g. filter by Rock). Then I use the extension to specify wich sub-genre I want (e.g. 'Post' to get 'Post Rock' & 'Post Punk'). What also can be done is to set the filtering to match only substrings. So if you filter by 'Rock' all tags like 'Classic Rock', 'Post Rock' will be matched. Generally you may use any simple regular expression. The only problem is building a simple interface for this type of filtering (so there is only exact-match or substring-match for now). -
Inappropriate?Not sure if this has been mentioned yet, but making tags for all off my library would be a lot of work. I think that having a last.fm like tagging system would work best just by using last's already existing tag database. I'd like a way to just search through last's tags for my songs, and be able to tag them through songbird for my last account. It would save a lot of work for everybody.
1 person thinks
this is one of the best points
-
I don't think two way tag syncing is available yet but you can now add tags to your songs on last.fm via songbird. Next to the love/band button there should now be a tag button -
Inappropriate?I'd like to be able to create my own tags to organize my music, not have to deal with some of the crap tags on last.fm.
For example, an album I was listening to (and enjoying) the other day was tagged on last.fm as "douche".
I personally clean up all the metadata on all my music so I can have complete control. I'm really excited about the multiple tag system ideas put forth here, but if it gets tied to last.fm, I won't use it at all. Period. -
Inappropriate?I would agree with EasyMac... last.fm tags are useless.
-
Inappropriate?it should be possible to put certain wanted tags on a white list or unwanted tags on a black one.
tags would be fetched in dependency of those lists -
Inappropriate?Atreiu asked if I had any ideas about how a tagging system could work in Songbird, and I made a mockup of what I think it would look like if it were officially implemented. I thought it might be worth sharing to give anyone ideas.

I figured you should be able to add tags to songs quickly and frequently, so I made a tag bar separate from the metadata editing box because I thought it would be easier. I based it off of Firefox's Find bar. It could be shown or hidden by clicking on the tag button in the status bar or with a keyboard shortcut. I made it treat tags exactly like last.fm does; after typing a comma and space after a term, it turns it into a single item that can be removed by hitting the x on it. You should be able to tag whatever songs are selected, not just the currently playing one, because I'm sure people will want to be able to select a bunch of tracks and add a few tags to all of them.
As you add each term, it could be added to the Tag column in the song list. I thought this would be important to have, because it would allow you to see what tags your songs currently have. I also replaced the Genre filter in the media view with a Tag filter, because I think this tag system would basically be an improved genre system. I also thought it was important to have have the tag filter along side the usual Artist and Album filters, because I know I would be using them interchangeably, not just one or the other. For example, sometimes I would probably just want to listen to a specific album, but other times I might be in a certain mood and decide to listen to a particular tag.
Finally, I have the last.fm icon at the end of the tag bar because I figured last.fm could provide some important functionality to the tagging system. If you could click it, it could give you the option to sync the tags of the selected tracks to your profile. This would allow you to download tags if you have already added them on songs in last.fm, and if your last.fm profile didn't have any, it would add your library's tags to it, giving you a way to store your tags in the cloud. It could also give you the option to view the popular public tags that people have added to tracks and download them if you wish.
7 people think
this is one of the best points
-
this is the best I've seen so far.
When you select multiple items, the bar should only show the tags that all selected songs have in common -
Ah yes, great idea. I didn't even think about what would happen if you went to edit the tags for multiple items and they didn't share certain tags, which is a very likely scenario. I think just showing their shared ones, as you suggested, is a perfect solution. -
Inappropriate?This would push Songbird way ahead of iTunes as by far my favorite media player.
I’m excited
Loading Profile...





CHAMP





CHAMP








CHAMP