The Song Blog

Has AOL been quitely listening to consumers? I am amazed that I would be talking positive about AOL. Well, I am specificly speaking about the AOL Music section.
You can:
1. Listen to whole albums of featured artist. (Hint: Search for your favorite artist, they may have a link to listen to there newest release if not on the “Listening Party” page)
2. Free Music Downloads (don’t need to supply email, just gender and birthdate)
3. XM Radio Stations (From what I can tell they are free!)
4. Indepth artist information. (Comparable to MTV.com)
5. Tons of Music Videos
6. Streaming Live Concerts
7. Interviews and Sessions
8. Internet Reality Show

So what if you signed up for an AOL account to get that free computer, because you paid more for your AOL account then what the computer was worth. You can access AOL Music without being a member.

There is not much to say, but listen to this disc on AOL before you buy it. Korn “See you on the otherside”, They blow there load on “Twisted Transistor” and the next song they TRY to sing with harmony. I don’t know if they are trying to do a System of the Down thing but…
they didn’t do it!
I forgot I was supposed to be reviewing this disc and listening intently. Instead it became white noise and I was surfing all over…I even got up to eat dinner!
If you buy this disc you will be disappointed!

I am sure every city has a great music scene. Ten years ago I contiplated moving to Seattle, WA just because I was into grunge. I did evently make it to Portland, OR but not for music. Why did I want to try to get out of my hometown so bad? Omaha ten years ago, boring. When you planned a night out, it always involved going to dinner.

Ten years later there are more resturants but Omahains also want more music entertainment. We have bigger named bands stopping to play at the Qwest Center. Even though we took the bait, that the arena will turn Omaha into a Metropolitan City. It is the underground music scene that is turning heads. When speaking about our “scene” and the growth it has seen, you can not continue the conversation without giving props to Saddle Creek Records.

Omaha doesn’t have the artistic reputation of New York, or the liberal tendencies of San Francisco. It’s just an average, conservative town in the conservative heartland of America. But it’s knocking out amazing artists and bands at an alarming rate. [via Radio 1 on bbc.co.uk ]

The more bands I discover with roots in Omaha, the more hype I am going to spew about this city. I don’t expect Omaha to turn into a Seattle. I do have faith that Saddle Creek Records will impact the music industry as much as Sub Pop did during the grunge area. With bands like Cursive, Bright Eyes, and Broken Spindles the quality is definetly there. I apologize for not mentioning other bands, I just haven’t finished listening to all the bands and music on the site. So, I can’t offer anything now. I am however going to keep informing everyone about Saddle Creek and the quality bands on this label.

Off to a bad start. I took to much time going through my own music library, learning which software was right, and implementing. So I apologize, and will double up on the next day or so.

ID3 Tags is the IMPORTANT information contained in an audio file. I say it is important because it tells you what you are listening to. So, if you are listening to a digital song on your IPod or other portable device you can see:

• Artist Name
• Album
• Track Name
• Track Number
• Year
• Genre

This information is also important because it is used to organize your digital song files. With most anal people there is a wrong way and a right way. I however chose the right easy way. I am going to teach you how to do it my way! I researched first, to find out everyone elses opinion on what the right way was. I choose Gary Hendricks’ site Digital Music Guide.

Some of you are probably thinking “Redd is a cheater, he is just regurgitate someone elses ideas!” Well yeah, but I put a little bit of a twist and tried different software. All free! Lets get it on…

You’ll Need

1. Digital song files (MP3’s)
2. The Godfather or Music Brainz
3. Unlimited Amount of free time.

Attention Span:
1 hour (at least, then you can restart when you feel like wasting some more time)

Music Brainz

Step One

Review your digital music files and locate them in one central folder.

Step Two

Be sure all the files in the folder you created are songs. If you use Itunes and listen to podcast, be sure to remove the folder to it’s own. You will not be able to locate the information in the databases and it will slow you down.

Step Three

Download Music Brainz and follow all setup prompts. (it is going to ask you to setup an account, do so, otherwise they won’t let you use their database. According to the disclaimer no identifiable information is shared)

Step Four

In the menu bar, click File, Open Folder. Locate the folder you just created above. As soon as you do, you will see your files adding up in the Pending Tab. Be patient, and pay attention to what the Music Brainz software is doing. It is going through and identifying your songs, verifying them with theres, and filling in any missing info.

Step Five

So now a few minutes has passed, maybe even an hour, depending the size of your music library. You will have files in the Unidentified, Identified, and probably Error. Note: They are going to tell you their servers are busy and ask you to donate…Well, if you can do so now to support the developer…Hint: you don’t have to now.

Step Six

Hit the Identified Tab, highlight any file, and go to the button that looks like a disk with a red arrow, click it. You are now saving their ID3 tag information to your files. You may notice a percentage of correctness, ignore it, more than likely they have more information then you do, and we are using Music Brainz to cut our work in The Godfather by half. The songs filed in the Unidentified and Errors will be the ones that get fixed in The Godfather.

Status: Unidentified (192) Identified (477) Saved (477) Errors (11)
Moving on, My work will be the (192) plus (11) for 203 files out of 680 files that need some information added to the ID3 Tags.

The Godfather

Step One

Review your digital music files and locate them in one central folder.

Step Two

Be sure all the files in the folder you created are songs. If you use Itunes and listen to podcast, be sure to remove the folder to it’s own. You will not be able to locate the information in the databases and it will slow you down.

Step Three

go to The Godfather (assuming you have installed, if not do so….Geez!)

Step Four

In The Godfather, the GUI is laid out by the steps you should take when organizing your library. So we will be starting at the top, hit the Main tab and locate the file folder containing all your music files.

Step Five

So to the right of the Filter Explorer, you will see buttons for Rename, Tag, Manual Edit, etc…. Go to the Organize and click it.

Step Six

There will be another row of buttons, click the Find Duplicates, then next row down of buttons and to the left you will see Scan, go ahead and click Scan.

Step Seven

Go through your sets and visually see which of the duplicates you have and delete those you don’t want. That should eliminate all errors you have in your library.

Step Eight

Skip the Rename button, go to the Tag button, click it, then go to the scan button and click it. Note: If you were to use the Rename Button in Godfather, it will undo the work Music Brainz did for you.

Step Nine

Now you have Identified which of your files needs tag information, and what is missing.

To determine what is missing, look at the other files in your folder, what information is their and do you know? (don’t put in any information you do not know, you want to have an accurate tag.)

Step 10

(the hardest part)
Go to the Manual Edit button. Before you do that, go to your windows explorer, study the file names. You’ll notice that Music Brainz renamed some of the files, this is how you will be labeling your music from now on. Let me say that again,
THIS IS HOW YOU ARE GOING TO NAME YOUR DIGITAL MUSIC FILES FROM NOW ON!

Example: Music Brainz named my song files as:
Artist-Album-Track #- Song.mp3

This is how you are going to edit the rest of your files using the manual edit tool in The Godfather. Take the ID3 Tag information you have and change the file names, you are also going to sync your ID3v1 with ID3v2 (ID3v1 is the most common format, ID3v2 is not always supported but becoming more standard. Since it is so easy to make both I would suggest doing so). So lets go through an example together:

Starting with a file name of:
Alfie-14-Joss Stone-Alfie.mp3

I have to rename it to:
Artist-Album-Track #- Song.mp3 (because the other 486 files I have are named this way)
or
Joss Stone-Alfie-14-Alfie.mp3

There are additional features to Godfather, would allow you to eliminate the use of Music Brainz if you like. If you notice, there is a Online Button in Godfather, that allows you to look up the same ID3 information that Music Brainz uses, but Godfather will not automatically fill it in for you. That is why I choose to add the use of Music Brainz.

Conclusion

Why in the HELL do I want to spend the time doing this? Well, you are going to have a consistent and organized alphabetic library. Also, the community will be grateful, because when you share, then everyone knows what they actually have, and they will be grateful.

SoFantastic put up the challenge. She first heard of this idea from the Problogger. As the name would suggest, Problogger wrote a post about how to jazz up your posts, or cure blog block. SoFantastic took that suggestion, and one upped the Problogger by making it a community challenge. If you are into blogging, the angle is obvious…Generate traffic, ideas, improve your techniques, and meet some other bloggers in general. How do I do this? or what are the guideline you say…

The 20 Types of blog posts are:

1) Instructional
2) Informational
3) Reviews
4) Lists
5) Interviews
6) Case Studies
7) Profiles
8) Link Posts
9) ‘Problem’ Posts
10) Contrasting Two Options
11) Rant (this one should be easy)
12) Inspirational
13) Research
14) Collation Posts
15) Prediction and Review Posts
16) Critique Posts
17) Debate
18) Hypothetical Posts
19) Satirical
20) Memes and Projects

The above was lifted off SoFantastic’s post, for even more detail go to Problogger.

So…Well join in, not that it is going to be easy but, this post alone could count toward 1 or 2!

TSB Sounds Like

[ Garageband.com ]
The Dent : “Fantastic”
High Speed Chase : “Six Figure Girl” or “Queen of the Dead”