Misusing metadata to get the most out of your classical music

Metadata isn't something sacred, although I sometimes can't shake the feeling that using it incorrectly is violating some kind of unwritten cosmic law. It's a tool, and like most tools, you want to use it in the way that it was intended, or your results may skew from the expected. Musical metadata is no exception. Song titles, album titles, artists, composers, and genres are all informational tools that, when used properly, should organize your collection, collocate (or relate together) similar items, and make searching for, and locating, specific items an efficient and painless process.

But sometimes, your music software or device just doesn't work the way you want it to, and the only real solution is changing the metadata from something that's technically correct to something that works a little better in practice. This blog entry will touch on some of the reasons I've had to "fix" my metadata in ways that might not quite be right, but have provided me with the functionality I desired. Be warned though, brave souls, the Naxos Blog discourages you from going to too great a length in disturbing your musical metadata.


1. Problems with device or software functionality
Sometimes, you need to break your metadata because your device or software just won't work when it's entered correctly. Having recently purchased a Sansa Zip Clip mp3 player in my effort to throw off the Apple yoke (ok, I still patronize iTunes), I was unpleasantly surprised to learn that my new gem of a music player doesn't recognize the "Disc #" metadata field for a multi-disc set. By not recognizing this tag, my player could not understand that the six track 1s for the set actually belonged to six different discs, and instead treated them all as tracks from the same disc, completely compromising the player's ability to play tracks in the correct order. While perhaps less of a problem for rock or pop albums, for a set of symphonies, this was devastating.

To fix this, I was left with two alternatives: break the multi-disc set up so that each disc was treated as a separate album (i.e. Beethoven: The Symphonies [Disc 1], Beethoven: The Symphonies [Disc 2], etc...), or alter the track numbering scheme. The former, while perhaps doing less to compromise the integrity of the metadata, would have severe implications on my ability to quickly search or sort through albums (imagine adding an extra 30-40 album titles to your list), so I chose the latter. Employing a numbering scheme by which all tracks in the set were consecutively, and uniquely, numbered (i.e. disc 6 has tracks #35-43 rather than #1-8), I was able to restore the compilation to regain its proper ordering for both my iTunes-based devices, as well as my Zip Clip.

2. Customizing naming conventions
Consistency of metadata is vital to its effective use, both in enabling informational items to be grouped and sorted, but also searched for. When dealing with the description of classical works, naming conventions for an item can often vary wildly. Consider the final movement of Brahms' Third Symphony, titled, as most movements are, for its tempo, "Allegro." The number of classical movements entitled "Allegro" surely counts in the thousands, if not more, making the task of proper identification and retrieval of this particular piece extremely problematic if that is the only information used for the title. But what information should then be included in the title to ease the process? Potential options include:

Symphony No. 3-Allegro
Third Symphony-Allegro
Brahms' Third Symphony-Allegro
Brahms: Third Symphony-Allegro
Brahms: Symphony No. 3 in F major-Allegro
Brahms: Symphony No. 3 in F major, Op.90 - 4. Allegro

All are technically correct, and vary in description from relatively simple to rather complex. For my purposes, I used the last of the naming conventions listed, as I trend toward detailed descriptions. The format does have some drawbacks, however. The use of the composer name at the beginning of the description helps with sorting, but should only technically appear in the "Composer" field. Also of concern is the number of characters used, which could exceed the displayed character limit on certain devices, and prevent the full title from being seen. Additionally, ensuring that all pieces in the collection conform to this format is an extremely time consuming process, and with so much information being entered, attention to detail is vital to ensure each title is entered correctly.

This may be less a misuse of metadata then simply trying to get the most out of it, but custom naming conventions often require a significant amount of metadata to be altered. Whatever you may decide to use, try to pick a format early in the process, and stick to it.

3. Using incorrect fields to ease searching/sorting
One trick I've seen mentioned on many classical music blogs and forums is the deliberate use of metadata in improper fields to ease the searching/sorting process. For much modern music, albums will have a single artist, while possibly many songwriters or composers, making "Artist" a preferred sorting/search field. For classical music, this is reversed, with "Composer" being a relatively singular field for an album, while having many potential artists. This can leave the classical listener with a relatively more difficult search when using software and devices that place greater emphasis on the "Artist" field, especially if their collection contains both classical and modern music. To fix this problem, some classical collectors will swap the "Composer" and "Artist" metadata entries, greatly easing the browsing process.

These are a few of the "wrong" uses of metadata I've come across that can actually help the functionality of your devices or collections. While there are definitely some drawbacks to employing them, whether it be the time involved, or the difficulties caused by updates to software or devices, there are also some tangible benefits. I should also point out that if you upload your metadata to be used by other people, you should strongly consider NOT entering information incorrectly in your collection, so as to preserve the integrity of the metadata going out across the web. I would be greatly interested to hear of any fixes that any of you may have employed in your own music collections, or perhaps in other uses of metadata.