Keep composer name in classical album title (as per Apple style guide)
When I use the "Check tag accuracy" feature for album title in classical music, most of the non-compliant results take the form of wanting to remove the composer name - for example Bliss wants to change "Abel: Music for flute and strings" to simply "Music for flute and strings". However, the iTunes style guide says "The album title should include the composers, followed by a colon, followed by the work titles, catalog numbers, or type of works such as Sonatas or Preludes" (https://help.apple.com/itc/musicstyleguide/en.lproj/static.html) This makes sense - otherwise albums called "Haydn: String Quartets", "Beethoven: String Quartets", "Debussy: String Quartets" will all become "String Quartets". I wonder what database is insisting on this? It means that most iTunes-compliant classical albums come up as non-compliant in Bliss. Any way to change this? Thanks!
John Croft
shared this idea
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It really depends on what the canonical release name is. In some cases, this will include the composer name, in others it won't. And in other cases the data from the databases might be wrong, as you identify.
I can see the value with this, just explaining why bliss does what it does.
One way of ignoring some releases would be with https://www.blisshq.com/music-library-management-blog/2017/08/01/ruleset-selecta/
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John Croft
commented
As an aside with regard to polluting data, I note that Bliss often wants to *add* the composer to the Album Artist field - e.g. it wants to change the album artist for Bach 4 Orchestral Suites from Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra, Ton Koopman (correct) to "Bach; Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra..." I know you don't control the databases, so this might be impossible to fix... but if the composer is going to pollute anything, it seems that the album title would be the place (as people would normally refer to a disc as "Haydn Sonatas" rather than as the (meaningless) "Sonatas").
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John Croft
commented
Thanks, Dan. I agree that iTunes is not the serious collector's application of choice, but as you note this will be the case for downloads from Apple, even if you never use iTunes for listening. I'm normally a purist but to me this seems right, as it avoids potentially dozens of albums with the same title (e.g. "Piano Trios"). Also, as it's just the composer's surname, it gets around problems of sorting by composer field, which will often be, unhelpfully, by first name.
Derived tags could well be a solution - except that you wouldn't want it on, say, classical recital CDs (a random example would be the disc "Soleils de Nuit" with piano music by about ten different composers). So you wouldn't necessarily want to always *add* a composer; just to *allow* <composer name>: at the start if it's already there when checking.
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Interesting, thanks.
That style guide is written for the benefit of the iTunes Music Store, not a music collector. Most music databases will seek to preserve the release name as the sole release title, removing any other polluting data. So I would start by assuming the current approach is the correct one.
That said, it doesn't help working with iTunes music store collections if consistency is key. This sounds like a good application of http://ideas.blisshq.com/forums/21939-bliss/suggestions/31738582-derived-tags
