Music Catalogue Edge Cases ⇥ dustri.org

This list of music organization edge cases from Julien Voisin checks so many of the boxes of stuff I am interested in. Music? I love it. Bizarre computer behaviour? That sounds fun. Nitpicky questions about catagorization? Sign me up.

Voisin’s list is extensive, but let me add a few entries:

• Voisin mentions multiple versions of the same album, like international versions or different masters. Along similar lines, there are iterative albums, like Kanye West’s “The Life of Pablo”. I have four versions of that album, as West made significant changes between each release — and that is not every version of “Pablo” I could have in my library.

• One release could also be stored in multiple file types — for example, lossless and lossy versions.

• Multiple artists may appear on all album tracks. For example, Jay-Z and Kayne West’s “Watch the Throne”, or the multiple collaborations between Burial, Four Tet, and sometimes Thom Yorke. I would love to see those albums under each artist’s releases in my library. This could be corrected if each artist on a release was treated more like a tag.

• Genres are weird, too. For example, the latest Swallow the Sun record has a metal first “disc”, and modern classical on its second “disc”. Some albums are all over the place genre-wise. Treating genres as tags, too, would help.

My experience is primarily with Apple’s own music apps, and these things may be improved in other applications.