Gramophone – September 2019

HIGHFIDELITY

gramophone.co.uk GRAMOPHONE SEPTEMBER 2019 137

E S S AY

Tag-wrestling is no fun

Getting your music on to hard disk storage is easy –

the problems start when you want to ind it again.

One company thinks it has a solution

W

e’vebeenherebefore.From
iTunes–rememberthat?–
onwards,computer-based
musicstorageandplayback
havebeenbasedaroundthesimpleidea
ofthepopalbumorsingle:oneartist,
onealbumtitle,onetrackname.Based
inaworldwhereatrackisn’tatrackbut
a‘song’,andwherehardlyanyoneplays
analbumallthewaythroughanymore,
thatdoesn’tplacetoomuchstressonthe
metadatataggingsystemsusetoidentify
piecesofmusic.
Infact,justfourpiecesofdatawill
coverit:artist,album,tracknumber,
tracktitle,andyou’redone.Youcan
searchonanyofthosetextfieldsand
ifyouwanttoplayawholealbumthe
tracks will appear in the right order –
well, as long as track 1 is track ‘01’,
track 2 ‘02’ and so on (otherwise
some systems will play track 1, then
tracks 10-19, before getting to track 2).
The fi rst time you come across an album
that doesn’t conform to that single-artist
norm, you see how poorly this simple
approach serves real-world music listening.
Faced with a compilation, in which every
track is by a different artist, some indexing
systems will see each track as a separate
album by that artist, unless a box is ticked
in the metadata to indicate that the album
is a compilation – and even then the
performer is likely to be rendered as some
variation on ‘various artists’, which is
hardly conducive to accurate search.

The problem grows when each ‘song’ is

a movement of a symphony or one aria in

an opera or oratorio, and it is exacerbated

when that opera has different performers

on various tracks. Meanwhile, albums

containing works by different composers

bring their own problem, unless you can

remember that, say, the Bruch First Violin

Concerto is actually on an album whose

headline title is Bach Violin Concertos.

It’s no surprise that those of us with large

music collections on servers have got quite

adept at using tag editing software, such

as the excellent Mp3tag (from mp3tag.

de),whicheditsalotmorethantagson

MP3files,isfree(thoughdonationsare

encouraged)andworksonbothWindows

andOSXcomputers.Withthisyoucan

curemosttaggingproblems,although

occasionallyanomaliesoccur:Imusthave

spentadayonanear-forensicexamination

ofwhyonetrackfromthemiddleofan

albumrefusedtojoinupwithitsteammates

andinsistedonappearingasastand-alone

one-trackalbum!Theanswer,bytheway,

wasanerrantaccentonthenameofone

performerburieddeepinanextensive

list.Therearetimeswhentag-wrestling

isnofun.

Yes,thereareprogramsdesignedto

rationalise your library by improving

tagging. I’ve used and recommended Bliss

(blisshq.com) in the past, while the Roon

ecosystem (roonlabs.com) does a very good

job of sorting the music you have and

presenting it in a more logical and appealing

fashion, but requires a subscription and

compatible player hardware.

All of which explains why I am intrigued

by the new Melco Intelligent Music

Library software installed on the company’s

N100, reviewed opposite. The result of

a long development process involving

the Japanese hardware company and the

developers of the SongKong music tagger

(jthink.net/songkong) and music server

software MinimServer (minimserver.

com), this package, running on the Melco

music library devices, aims to rationalise

the differences between various kinds of

music and present extended data – and

thus improve search capability.

The unit I received was hot from

the software developers’ keyboards and

immediately showed what could be done

with the new package. You get a choice

of three modes – for classical music, rock/

pop and jazz – and, after loading a range of

music on to the N100 and using the menu

to rescan the content, the advantages of

the Melco approach when compared to

conventional tagging and serving became

clearly apparent.

For example, you get extended search

fi elds including ‘work’, ‘orchestra’

‘ensemble’ and ‘conductor’, and the

presence of that ‘work’ fi eld shows

another aspect of the set-up. Effectively

the Melco system breaks the limits of the

albums on your system, so no longer is

that Bruch hidden behind the Bach: the

library software sees your music in terms

of works, not the (sometimes seemingly

random) combinations record company

programmers create to fi ll up the running

time of a CD.

That alone creates a much smoother

browsing experience, as does the ability to

move between all the works of a composer,

performer or ensemble. Much the same

approach, by the way, will fi nd favour

with listeners to jazz, in which different

tracks on an album may have a variety of

combinations of sidemen performing with

the principal artist. Hear a track with a

drumming or bass line you like and you can

go off and search for other music within

your collection featuring that musician,

just as you could hear a soloist in a classical

work and perform the same search. And so

musical journeys begin.

Talking to Melco’s Alan Ainslie, who has

been instrumental in the development of

the Intelligent Music Library, I ventured

that the only drawback was the need

to set the musical genre preset – not a

problem for the purely classical listener

but requiring some attention for those of

us with mixed music libraries. It would be

useful, I suggested, if the software could

detect the kind of music playing and switch

its parameters automatically. His knowing

smile spoke volumes.

A track isn’t a track but a

‘song’ – and hardly anyone

plays an album all the way

through any more

How it works:gettingthemusic
and the metadata on to the Melco