Tagging classical music

[classical11]

(30-04-2014 22:58)DavidHB Wrote:  

(30-04-2014 16:36)gnomus Wrote:  However, the only thing I really miss is the album notes, cast list and libretto, although with my worsening eyesight reading the liner notes on a CD is getting pretty tough.

It seems to me that this "liner note" issue cannot be too difficult to get around - it is surely a Control Point issue. All I need is a way of tapping within the CP to bring up a PDF (or similar) of "liner notes" that I have associated with the "Composition" to which I am listening. I could, of course, do this outside of the CP, but having that little "button" would be awfully helpful.

Its a lovely pipe dream. Sadly, I don't share your optimism. Getting CD booklets into PDF format at home is not a practical proposition (rendering small multi-page booklets as PDF on an A4 scanner is certainly not my idea of fun). Current tagging formats are not designed to support document formats, so any add-on to a control point has to work outside the normal tagging structure. This is probably not the kind of thing manufacturer-produced control points will readily support.

I accept that none of the technical problems are insuperable. The logistics are another matter. When the online libraries of basic metadata are so inadequate (see Simon's views on this and related issues in his previous post above), the likelihood that music companies will provide us with their back catalogue of classical CD booklets in PDF format seems very remote. And I don't see how accessing the booklet can become a normal part of the streamed music experience without such a library. But I'd love to be proved wrong.

David

Hi David, gnomus,

This has been the major issue (possibly the last) that's keeping me from fully embracing the streaming concept. Not being able to access album booklets via the control point means that I am reluctant to buy albums in digital format. Instead I continue to buy CDs so that I have access to the booklets. And at times when I have the CD that I want to listen to in front of me anyway, the benefits of a streaming system are less clear.

The situation of PDF booklets has improved somewhat - Chandos for example makes these available for free (you can download them even if you have not bought the digital album). Naxos makes theirs available but only if you have access to Naxos Music Library (which BTW is a great source of classical music and local libraries sometimes give away free accounts). The other classical music labels seem less keen to share the booklets for their back catalogues but going forward I think the situation should improve. I found that whenever I purchase a digital album it almost always comes with a PDF booklet (however I have not purchased that many digital albums so far).

I have entered a feature request a while ago about this issue and both Simon and the Bubble developer seemed very open to implementing this at some point in the future:
https://forum.minimserver.com/showthread.php?tid=567

I know this is a major feature request and it is difficult to implement properly but if it could be done it would make the streaming solution incredibly powerful - especially if the implementation was flexible enough to allow multiple PDF documents to be sent to the control point, such as CD booklet, libretto, sheet music, etc.