A way to find release year for 1000s of single tracks on a Mac?
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  1. #1
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    Default A way to find release year for 1000s of single tracks on a Mac?

    Does anyone know of a way to find the release year for a collection of thousands of single tracks (not albums) on Mac?

    I'm a DJ who for many years have downloaded and ripped just my favourite tracks from albums, and have tagged them mostly correctly - though mainly removing the album name and replaced it with my own ("DJ Lounge", "DJ - Hip Hop" and so on.)

    Now I have a Mac and need a way to automate tagging the correct "year" for all these tracks, since many/most of them don't have that correctly tagged (or they have the year from the compilation album they were on).

    So what I need is to find out the original release year for each track, and have a script/software tag that for me. It can be a solution for iTunes, or a separate software.

    I tried MusicBrainz Picard and it works OK - but it finds many of the tracks on compilations, which is not what I want, since that's not the original release year. So I want the software to find the original/first releases for tracks, whether they be singles or albums.

    Any info would be appreciated, thanks!

  2. #2
    Tech Guru papo's Avatar
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    Tagalicious has worked great for me. It is integrated to work with your iTunes collection.

    I use this when I am working with non-EDM tracks. For EDM tracks, I use Trainspotter w/ Beatport plug-in.

  3. #3
    RGAS Guru Xonetacular's Avatar
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    trainspotter works pretty great. It takes a little work but is well worth it to get all the tags from beatport and discogs.

    http://www.tspotter.net/

  4. #4
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    So I ran a few albums and singles through Tagalicious, but it seems to mostly catch tracks from compilations and thus get the year for the compilation, not the original release year...

    Trainspotter looks very powerful - but I don't understand what I have to do to actually SEARCH for anything?
    1) On the left I choose tracks from the iTunes playlists I have made, and then on the right click "Discogs Tagging" - and then what? There is no button or option to search, or at least I can't see anything.
    2) Also, under the "File" menu, both "Import Tracks" and "Import Music Folders" are greyed out and un-clickable.
    3) Do I HAVE to use Traktor at all here, or can I just use the program itself to edit tracks before I import them to iTunes?

    Thanks!

  5. #5
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    Hi,

    1.

    Click on "Manage Playlists" on the top right. Open the playlist containing tracks you want to tag. Click "Discogs Tagging".

    Searching in Trainspotter is done when you click on a track in a playlist or your track collection. Click on "Discogs Tagging" and click on a track in one of your playlists. The Discogs Search Results view should come up with some matches given the current tags in your track. If this doesn't give you any results, highlight some of the tracks name and click the search button. If all else fails, click on the Discogs browser and find the release page on the discogs website.

    Once you've selected the matching release, go to the Match Tracks in Discogs Release view and pick the tracks you want to update and click the Update button.

    2. The import functions only work when you are using your Traktor collection.

    3. You don't have to use Traktor, but your tracks do need to be in iTunes or Traktor before you can edit the tags

  6. #6
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    Default Trainspotter ALMOST working...

    Thanks for the walk-through, wys, but as you can see from the included screenshot, it doesn't find relevant results in Discogs...

    Any ideas?

  7. #7
    RGAS Guru Xonetacular's Avatar
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    I can never get discogs tagging to work just use beatport tagging

  8. #8
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    In the screenshot I can see that the Release tag is set to "DJ Collection" for all those tracks and trainspotter going to use that in its search. If you delete that release tag for all your tracks, then you'll stand a much better chance of getting matches back.

  9. #9
    Tech Guru Steve Zorilow's Avatar
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    Sometime the automated Amazon, Discogs, & all other database thing works, but like you said, it can also screw things up big time...

    I have a pretty wide collection who's include all type of genre. I never found a working application myself so I gave up. I've decided to go on the manually route instead.... doing a couple each day or when I feel doing it... baby steps.
    Steve Zorilow: Facebook - Soundcloud - Mixcloud - Twitter

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