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ARSCLIST  April 2010

ARSCLIST April 2010

Subject:

Re: article points to some of the problems with classical music and iTunes

From:

Michael Biel <[log in to unmask]>

Reply-To:

Association for Recorded Sound Discussion List <[log in to unmask]>

Date:

Sat, 10 Apr 2010 15:22:35 -0400

Content-Type:

text/plain

Parts/Attachments:

Parts/Attachments

text/plain (146 lines)

Sam wrote:
> And what a time-sucking vortex it is... I've been writing a discography for Columbia Masterworks 78 rpm recordings - one year down and 380 pages later!
>
> By the way - the W.E.R.M is full of errors. I've had to cross-reference everything to do with Columbia to get it sorted. Also- the Columbia record catalogs are also error ridden - particularly the mid 1940's editions.   Sam Hopper
>
>
>   
The best way to double check your great Masterworks discography (and to 
get photos) is to get to an archive with a large collection of classical 
albums and get permission to go to the shelves.  I did some of my 
photography at R&H for my album cover presentation at the upcoming ARSC, 
and your mouth will water at the picture I will be showing of Seth 
Winner in one of the aisles of classical albums which stretches as far 
as the eye can see.  R&H is short staffed and will not easily be able to 
help you but you might ask Chuck Haddix at the Marr archive at U of 
MO-Kansas City, or maybe Richard Warren at Yale (who is on this list) 
might take pity on you. 

I also STRONGLY recommend getting to one of these AAA archives that have 
the original LABEL MICROFILMS that were used for creating the 
Rigler-Deutsch Record Index.  This is a resource that I have not heard 
anybody talk or write about for 20 years.  Am I the only one left that 
remembers these and has used these???  I only wish I had the money to 
buy a set when ARSC was making them available.  Maybe THAT would be a 
good project for ARSC to tackle -- getting those films on-line.  Those 
are label and disc photos of 700,000 pre-microgroove discs, 
folks!!!!!!!!  One photo lit and filtered to clearly show the label and 
a second photo lit to show the grooves and matrix number embossings.

In addition to WERM (which is not too expensive on the book dealers web 
sites if you desire a paper copy)  there are also the three editions of 
the Gramophone Shop Encyclopedia which is what WERM was based, and was 
supposed to be used to supplement WERM.  Copies are also findable.  
Remember that these do not supply discographi data such as matrix 
numbers and recording dates.  They are catalogs, not discographies.  
Likewise you can get catalog info plus some commentary in David Hall and 
Irving Kolodin's books, and no classical library should be without a 
full set of all editions -- usually inexpensive. Kurtz Meyers' Record 
Ratings is also a good finding aid.  For discographical purposes,  John 
Bolig has been working on publishing the Victor classical discographies 
of red, purple and blue labels. I believe the acoustical years are done. 

And for European labels, there's all the Kelly discographies.

Mike Biel  [log in to unmask] 

>
>
>
> On 10/04/2010, at 7:16 PM, Tom Fine wrote:
>
>   
>> That's an interesting site. But how do you get it to correctly load information into MP3 tag fields? That's the point of my complaint -- that the existing load-in databases (Gracenote and freedb) are so sloppy and inconsistent with info for classical albums that they almost always require manual corrections. Another listmember pinged me off-list to ask if I had found anything to catalog my classical CD's, and I told him no because I just don't have the time to correct the data for every CD. With the jazz CD's, it was a 50+% rate of _something_ needing manual correction in order to have consistency. This was very time-consuming. With classical, I can only imagine the time-sucking vortex involved. So I just keep them organized on the shelf and sometimes surprise myself with "oh I didn't realize I already owned that disc" moments."
>>
>> -- Tom Fine
>>
>> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Baoshan Sheng | International Classical Music Database" <[log in to unmask]>
>> To: <[log in to unmask]>
>> Sent: Saturday, April 10, 2010 12:07 AM
>> Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] article points to some of the problems with classical music and iTunes
>>
>>
>>     
>>> Hi Tom:
>>>
>>> Have a look at a project: http://a9music.com (somewhat stale, we're working
>>> at it now).
>>> Try to make some search and exploration. I want to know if this is what you
>>> need.
>>>
>>> Any kinds of critics is truly welcomed.
>>>
>>> Regards,
>>> --
>>> Baoshan Sheng
>>> Director | International Classical Music Database
>>> + 86 10 5162 6468 | [log in to unmask]
>>>
>>>
>>> On Sat, Apr 10, 2010 at 11:53 AM, Steven C. Barr <[log in to unmask]>wrote:
>>>
>>>       
>>>> --------------------------------------------------
>>>> From: "Tom Fine" <[log in to unmask]>
>>>>
>>>> http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/04/arts/music/04download.html
>>>>         
>>>>> This article highlights an overall interesting trend. But the reviewer
>>>>> also points out the confusing and inconsistent tagging that happens with
>>>>> classical music in MP3 and other tag-enabled formats.
>>>>> I have found that cddb/Gracenote and freedb are fraught with problematic
>>>>> and inconsistent data-entry for classical titles. There are actually tags
>>>>> that work great for how classical music is generally understood --
>>>>> COMPOSER, ARTIST, ALBUM ARTIST and ALBUM TITLE for instance. You can
>>>>> customize iTunes and other database programs to list by whatever field you
>>>>> wish, for instance by artist and album title or by composer and title, so if
>>>>> the data is entered correctly, it need not be totally PITA to use classical
>>>>> music in an iTunes setting. But unfortunately, most of the pre-programmed
>>>>> metadata out there is garbage, typical of internet "group volunteer"
>>>>> operations with no oversight or quality control. Sometimes "help" is not
>>>>> helpful.
>>>>> What has surprised me is that the owners of copyrighted classical
>>>>> recordings haven't gotten together to standardize and publish correct
>>>>> tag-entry methods and to correct at least their active catalogs. I can
>>>>> understand how there's no economic incentive to fix out of print items, but
>>>>> the active catalog gets lost in the shuffle (ipod pun intended) if the tags
>>>>> aren't right.
>>>>> Classical titles are just the most glaring examples of the problems with
>>>>> the online auto-tag databases. I used the Catraxx catalog-database program
>>>>> to gather and organize my jazz, rock, country and popular CD's and I found
>>>>> that at least 50% of the auto-loaded tags needed tweaking for something.
>>>>> Either the recording year was wrong (most common), or something that was not
>>>>> a compilation was listed as one (also very common), or in the case of jazz,
>>>>> the musicians weren't listed in the MEMO field (this is a convenience and I
>>>>> don't hold it against the online databases that this information is usually
>>>>> missing or incorrect), or the record company was incorrectly or
>>>>> inconsistently named (very common), etc.
>>>>> Gracenote is a for-profit entity, so there should be better quality
>>>>> control. Apple's own database at the iTunes store has more errors than you'd
>>>>> think in the more obscure corners of jazz, and classical selections are
>>>>> harder to correctly indentify and locate than rock or jazz. For these
>>>>> for-profit entities, there's no excuse for the poor quality control. And
>>>>> what's particularly galling is, none of this should be necessary since CD
>>>>> Text was available from the beginning of CD's and should have been used to
>>>>> correctly identify artists and songs (which would then make filling in other
>>>>> tags much easier and more prone to be complete and correct).
>>>>> I wish I could propose an easy solution to this, but the only one I can
>>>>> think of is that buyers of digital downloads demand better tagging/database
>>>>> information from the highly profitable entities they buy from. As for
>>>>> cleaning up Gracenote and freedb, I won't hold my breath. I do submit
>>>>> corrected information to Gracenote from both Catraxx and the iTunes software
>>>>> most of the time, and appreciate all other users who do so too.
>>>>>
>>>>> What is needed is a ACD...a classical-based equivalent to the familiiar
>>>>>           
>>>> ADBD!!
>>>> Currently, there is NO discography covering the classical-music recordings
>>>> of 19??-1943...I discovered this when attempting to include classical discs
>>>> in my Dating Guide...?
>>>>
>>>> Steven C. Barr
>>>>         
>
>
>   

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