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Topic: Album and Track Title metadata in []'s or ()'s (Read 2434 times) previous topic - next topic
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Album and Track Title metadata in []'s or ()'s

I need some opinions on how other people handle these types of situations so I can sleep at night!  I stress over the smallest things ...

I am struggling with the use of ()'s and []'s in album and track titles.  Things like Bonus Track, Remix, Demo, Live, Feat., etc .. should these be in []'s or ()'s?

I currently feel that anything that is not part of the actual title itself should be in brackets.  For albums, I think '[Special Edition]' or '[Live]' or '[Previously Unreleased]' is correct in brackets, since '(What's The Story) Morning Glory?' is part of the title and I wouldn't want to see '(What's The Story) Morning Glory? (Special Edition)'.  Although, how should '(Remixed By Nick Davis)' or '(Feat. Blah Blah)'?  Since that information isn't part of the title I feel it should be in []'s .. although, there are way too many variants of that to make scripting it 100% accurate, which is what I'm really after .. a way to script all the possible variants (within reason) so I don't have to go through a manual cleanup process every so often.

Does anyone else stress over this?  I've seen Musicbrainz' style guidelines and they don't seem to use []'s at all.  That would certainly make things easier.  I use foobar2000 and Neksus' Azrael, which darkens the color of anything between ()'s (which I've changed to []'s).  This is great since '[Bonus Track]' isn't part of the track title and is therefore less important to me visually.  But then would that extend to Live, Remix, Special Edition, etc .?  I don't want '(What's The Story) Morning Glory?' to be two different colors, but add a '[Special Edition]' on the end and I would want the '[Special Edition]' to be deemphasized.  Help!

Album and Track Title metadata in []'s or ()'s

Reply #2 –
Since you use foobar2000, you could make use of freeform tagging. Something like this.

ALBUM=In Blue
ALBUM.EDITION=Special Edition
TITLE=No More Cry
VERSION=Acoustic

[%album% - ]['['%album.edition%']' - ]$if2(%title%,%_filename%)[ - %version%]

Album and Track Title metadata in []'s or ()'s

Reply #3 –
I have a very simple simple system.  All extras information goes in ()'s after the title.  (Live) and (Single) are the only ones I use generally.  (Special Edition) is usually part of the album title, but if it's not, I wouldn't put in on there.  There's also (Disc 1) and (Disc 2).

I also list all artists in the artist field (even if they were only credited as feat. artists).
 

Album and Track Title metadata in []'s or ()'s

Reply #4 –
ERG has used the square brackets "[ ]" for mix or edit information in songs.  They make a series of compilation CDs for DJs, and I've taken to that system for myself.

I can quickly tell if the brackets contain a part of the song title (like an extended part of the title that isn't commonly used), or if it is information about a remix or edit of the song. 

So I use square brackets for that.  I'm not sure where you've seen it yourself, but it was ERG (Entertainment Resources Group) that got me into that system initially.