music data base

[jon112]

hi all,
i have a question...

i have 800+ mp3s and i want to make a data base for them all. i can make the "template" but i dont no anycode at all appart from Print " hha" !!! shocking isnt it !

so if anyone has any helf or ideas they would be greatly appresheatted! [cant spell]

or for a more detailed tlk add me at [email protected] on msn messenger

or email me? [email protected]

thanks!

[myrrdan]

What kind of info do you want??
suggestions??

[jon112]

any code or suggestions or anything!

[ducky]

Hmm suggestion...Since you want a database. Create tables to hold the individual track info in your favorite database. Then write a program to read your mp3's find the ID tag info and insert into your tables. Instant databse without hand keying...

[myrrdan]

vb can read the tag info???
i didn't realize that..
any idea how to do it?

[ahara]

Well...I am a retired club DJ and Record Pool Director of 17 years and at present a VB database application developer, so I do have some thoughts to offer....

Indeed, reading the MP3 tags can be very useful - goto pscode.com and you will find classes that can read and write the tags as well. It would be easy to populate a database with one of these classes - use a FileSystemObject and retrieve all the files from a folder, use the class to dig the info out, and then use ADO to fire that info into your db...but what of the design for the DB??? This is where I can offer some sound advice ....First off, what fields are important:

Artist
Title
Style
Length
Year

The five fields above should be your minimum...anything after that is pretty much gravy (MP3 compression, codec, etc) and if you want to store that too, why not!! But make sure you have the minimum five....now let's talk about the format of these fields - and I cannot stress the importance of this enough:

ARTIST:

This is the big one - the one that MP3 tags tend to create problems for in terms of a db....let us look at the following examples:

The Rolling Stones
Jethro Tull
Avril Lavigne

Your average MP3 tag for the artist will display the above as they are. But what if you want to sort by artist name? (and yeah I know you can parse and workaround this problem but life can be much easier by following a little protocol) To find the Rolling Stones, you'll have to look under 'T'. Avril Lavigne would be found under 'A'. So a naming convention for artists can go a long way:

1. Artists with band names beginning with 'The' go like:

Rolling Stones, The

2. Proper names are placed first with a comma:

Lavigne, Avril

3. Band names remain band names even if they are named after a ficticious name, so Jethro Tull remains as is and not Tull, Jethro.

TITLE:

Personally I prefer to use mixed sentence case, but that's just my preference. I think one of the main concerns with titles is, how are you going to deal with apostrophes (aka single quote). You'll have to figure out a strategy when updating your table as the single quote throws off the sql unless you swap it out or something - and trust me - there are a lot of titles with apostrophes and they should show in the title

STYLE:

You should probably dtermine a set of song styles particular to your needs and always use the same ones - this way you can easilly query later by song style

LENGTH;

should represent time in mm:ss

YEAR:

should be always four digits and not two (remember y2k??) - sorting by year on two digits is a royal pain in the butt - stick with four and you will be able to generate queries based on period - which for anyone who knows anything about music - this is very key.

If by chance you are a DJ, there is a sixth field required - BPM - Beats Per Minute, although most MP3 tags do not have this info - you will probably have to get a stop watch out (I don't trust BPM readers)

What is the primary key in your Songs table? Of the five previously mentioned, it is all five of them together - becuase it is possible to have an artist release different versions of the same song within the same year. That said, I would recommend creating an ID field that can act as a unique identifier, and if your DB is not access, index the five main fields.


I myself have a simple Access db of my mp3's and this is how I do it:

1. I make sure to name the files like:

artist - title (ie. Lavigne, Avril - Sk8ter Boy.mp3)

and when I get a bunch of new ones, I drop them into a folder, go to the command line, and execute a simple batch command to pipe the directory to a text file. Then a program goes through the file and updates the db table - I just wanted a rudimentary way of keeping track of stuff - nothing fancy. I'd provide the code for this, but I wrote it in Java, and I assume you are looking for VB. At any rate, there is a lot of room for experimentation, and as far as DB data goes, I truly belive that working with music is an excellent way to learn and it will make your project fun!! Good luck with everything.