I have been using MP3Tag for many years and one thing has always bothered me, the Year tag. I have always used the Year tag as the year of the Title, after which the Track tag is used for the album and the Genre tag is used for the Genre of the title as the Genre of the album is. in some cases, rated different than the Title. I realize that the Tag Panel is left up to the individual's own preference, but in reality, what is the purpose of the Year tag, Title, or Album?
See these definitions from the ID3 standard:
Title:
TIT2
The 'Title/Songname/Content description' frame is the actual name of the piece (e.g. "Adagio", "Hurricane Donna").
Year:
TYER
The 'Year' frame is a numeric string with a year of the recording. This frames is always four characters long (until the year 10000).
Album: TALB
The 'Album/Movie/Show title' frame is intended for the title of the recording(/source of sound) which the audio in the file is taken from.
From my point of view these tags contains always information per file/song.
Just imagine a compilation of different songs from different artists, years and albums, collected on a new compilation:
Every track has his own release YEAR, his track TITLE and his original ALBUM name and also his own ARTIST name.
Of course the YEAR and ALBUM name can also be the same. For example if the tracks are all released in the same YEAR on the same ALBUM from the same ARTIST.
In practice, the most common use of the Date field is to identify the first release of the album (single or compilation) as a whole and should be the same for all tracks. Players may use this field to group tracks together, together with Album and Album Artist. If the dates are different, you may get the album split apart.
Consider how you might have multiple self-titled albums by Peter Gabriel. If you label them strictly according to their official (lack of) title instead of "Security" etc., their only distinct attribute becomes the date.
For most people the date of the remaster is not important. Ideally a remaster should add nothing. The recording date is usually close to the publication and uncertain. With compilations you often can't tell what the date of each track is, and still need to enter something for the date. If that information becomes available, you can expand the tag.
You can put the date of the track and the date of the remaster in other fields. You are no longer restricted to a small set of fields in modern formats.
Please note that there is also the field ORIGYEAR.
So it is reasonable to assume that
If you know more about the original release of that particular version, use ORIGYEAR.
I do appreciate all the input all of you have given me. I have my own way of doing things because at 76, you have a tough time changing a set ways of doing things.
But isn't it the wiseness of old age to overcome the foolishness of the youth?
I am missing a little bit what the consequence of all the input would be for you.
Did you want to get absolved for your way? Did you want to get reassured?
I dont quite understand.
I say use what is useful to you. From anecdotal evidence it is used in a wide variety of ways. The most common I have seen is the one of the date the combined collection (album, single, LP,EP, whatever) of a recording went to sale. When it comes to special versions or edits of the collection sometimes it is a new date and sometimes they reflect a “master” version. It also seems to depend on how far apart those years are. And how different, if it is so called rerelease, remaster, rerecording, live, unplugged, acoustic, instrumental, market variants, special markets release, japan version, remixed, mixed, cover, reprint, deluxe, extended, demo, radio recording or edit, bootleg, white, unlabelled, you name it version.