Best practices on tracking songs in a mix

General Discussion
1

Hi all!

I have been amassing a large collection of downloaded 30/60-minute mixes from DJs that include multiple songs. I’m curious if there is a community standard on how to list each of the individual songs within a mix in a single ID3 tag.

Historically, I’ve been using the Lyrics frame, since it’s one of the only ones supported by most players and supports long text. (And, as a bonus, works in playback on iOS.) The Synchronized Lyrics frame (SYLT) would probably be better, so you can identify WHEN each song starts, but I don’t know any players that support that yet (and I don’t have the patience to go back and put in all that information manually.)

I imagine something like this must exist for classical music that may contain multiple movements, and the spec even suggests - if I’m reading it right - that SYLT can incorporate that. But I looked through the whole ID3v2.4 (unofficial) spec and nothing seemed to really match this use case. So I’m wondering if other people have attempted this, and what they’ve used.

Thanks in advance,

Keith

2

I don't think there are any standards. One option is to use chapters (somewhat supported for MP4 and FLAC, but barely for MP3), it is also possible to use CUE/M3U files for the purpose. Otherwise it is using description or comment tags, or lyrics like you have done. None are really ideal, but it is what it is. There are also possibility to create markdown, plain text, pdf, json files, and use that, but for automatic display it is not so easy for most music players.

3

Thought so. On one hand, glad to know I already picked the best possible option. On the other hand…suggestion for ID3 version 2.5! :laughing: