I’m looking for a bit of software that links to Beatport or some other good dance archive to get information about tracks such as the genre in order for me to sort my collection a little better.
I’ve been looking around and found a few programs but they don’t seem to offer what I’m after.
Mp3Tag has a plugin which allows you to scan single tracks but this isn’t really practical.
Trainspotter uses Traktor which I don’t use.
Beatport Pro uses Mac not Windows.
As you can see in the picture, that’s all the information that the auto-tagger will attach to the file (except BPM and Initial Key, Traktor added those.)
You’ll need to copy pasta the STYLE tag to the genre TAG, otherwise Discogs tags nearly every form of dance music as “Electronic.”
I also add the label to the comments field, for other programs, and edit the date so that it shows up properly in Traktor.
You probably won’t need to edit the year like that.
The auto-tagger will correct all the track tags as well. However, Discogs can sometimes be missing some releases.
Yeah I downloaded the script which uses Beatport as a reference source. Unfortunately this only does one at a time, however it’s the most accurate tool I’ve found so decided to use that.
I’ve never really trusted any software to do this well for me.
I ALWAYS populate the Genre tag myself, and really don’t use any extended tags (release year, label, Album, etc, are not important for me, so I don’t populate those Tags).
Using MP3Tag, you can set up “rules” that will populate the Genre Tag based on teh Artist Name. Not 100% accurate, but it’ll get you 90% of the way there.
PRO TIP: You will go MAD trying to get all tracks tagged completely. Work out a system that works for you, and stick to it. The ONLY tags I populate are:
ALBUM (This is where I keep my Camelot Key info)
TRACK (This is where I keep my BPM/Tempo info)
ARTIST NAME
TITLE
GENRE
SORT DATE (Autopulated using an action in MP3Tag, taken from the “Date Downloaded” info)
COMMENTS (Sometimes I put some (often more than one) descriptive “attributes” in here, like “Banger;”, “Happy;”, “Classic;”, “Noisy;”, etc… These are based on my own tastes, and you’d make your own “attributes” based on how and what you mix)
You should try beatport pro if on OSX or Trainspotter. BP Pro does not have batch ability but works very well. Trainspotter has batch capability and uses resources like discogs and beatport. However Trainspotter is very buggy in my opinion and not the most user friendly of applications.
My comments are actually comments to me so I can see more data at a glance for the track.
Comment1 says something like:
In:NSY Out:YSN
Comment2 then is something LIKE:
In/Out
Comment 1 indicates whether there are vocals in the 3 in and out region markers I have specified for my preferred mix points (No, Sort of - voice bites, but not lyrical singing, and Yes), and comment 2 indicates if the first/last mix points (always the first/last phrases of the track) are mostly only a beat so it will mix with almost anything with no concern for key or such.
I did try Trainspotter (I even donated) and I’m on Windows, so I can’t try Beatport Pro. I liked Trainspotter and the creator has put a lot of work in it. It’s just sad that the poor bloke can’t keep up with all the changes Beatport, Google and Discogs make to their search system. Every now and then it becomes completely useless. I just can’t rely on such a program.
Just wanted to note that I’ve been using Beatport Pro to amend tags and cover art on tracks I’ve been getting from a record pool, and it’s been saving a lot of time. It’s still not perfect, but I really like the improvements they made in performance. I stopped using it a while back because it destroyed the id3 tags on my tracks…looks like they fixed that and it’s turning into a nice little app to organize things.
Definitely worth a look if you haven’t used it in a while.
