I hate you podcasters who cant standardized ID3 tags

[theforks]

I use a smart playlist in itunes to catch all my podcasts. Anything under genre "podcast" gets filtered in. The problem is that a few podcasts i listen to put "podcast" in the grouping catagory instead of "genre" so they need to manually be changed. Why cant these guys standardize and just use the genre field to label their files?

Im sick of double checking this every morning so im just going to unsubscribe to the casts that dont follow the rules. (unless someone has a tip on how to get them in my smart playlist...)

Smart Playlist Settings:

-Match ALL of following conditions
-GENRE contains PODCAST
-PLAY COUNT is 0
-Limit 50 SONGS selected by MOST RECENTLY ADDED
-LIVE UPDATING

[bigee]

One reason is that Audacity does not have 'podcast' as an available genre.

[speechless]

I support ID3 V.1 as well as ID3 V.2. Both of those standards have a predefined set of "standard" genres...of which "podcast" is not included.

I do an instrumental music podcast, and therefore label the genre "instrumental", which exists in both ID3 versions.

Can you make your smart list go by date/time? Have it include anything added in the last 24 hours, or something like that? (I'm not an iTunes user.)

I'm sorry about the pain...unsubscribing seems a bit harsh, your choice though.

:)

[jawbone]

I make sure I have the proper ID3 tags on my show. So, go ahead and subscribe to our show. :D

[Version3]

Yes, I think you will find completely compliant and useful tags for our podcasts... subscribe away!

http://www.switchedonshow.com/podcast/switchedonRSS.xml

[chubcreek]

At Chub Creek we do the same thing, putting the genre as "podcast" it seems only logical. But off the top of my head, here's a way to make sure anything with podcast in the field is included.

Create a smart playlist with every relevant field (genre, artist, album, song name, etc.) containing the word "podcast", use "any" under the match checkbox.

Call this "all podcasts". Then make another smart playlist that has criterion like you mention, such as listened to zero times, etc. and have the match checkbox say "all" and put another criterion, which is that the choices be from the "all podcasts" playlist. This way, you can have your cake and eat it too. And you won't miss anything, even if the podcast has no genre at all, assuming the podcaster isn't dumb enough to forget to use the word podcast at all. I use it in the title and the genre just to be paranoid.

Dave

I use a smart playlist in itunes to catch all my podcasts. Anything under genre "podcast" gets filtered in. The problem is that a few podcasts i listen to put "podcast" in the grouping catagory instead of "genre" so they need to manually be changed. Why cant these guys standardize and just use the genre field to label their files?

Im sick of double checking this every morning so im just going to unsubscribe to the casts that dont follow the rules. (unless someone has a tip on how to get them in my smart playlist...)

Smart Playlist Settings:

-Match ALL of following conditions
-GENRE contains PODCAST
-PLAY COUNT is 0
-Limit 50 SONGS selected by MOST RECENTLY ADDED
-LIVE UPDATING

[jeffoest]

Huh.... iTunes doesn't make me set up smartlists to capture pocasts - it automatically creates playlists with the name of the podcast.... it's all pretty transparent to me... guess I'm lucky? Didn't know other people had to set these up.

Hmmm... I have NOT been coding my tags with a genre at all ... I guess this means that I should - is there a standards doc that I should be having access to? Anything else out there..

My gripe as a listener has always been the placement of the date in the individual podcast title. Put the date first THEN any additional information. That way we're always assured of seeing the date (or number or whatever) no matter how large a tag window we have on our player...

[indiekid]

Hmmm... I have NOT been coding my tags with a genre at all ... I guess this means that I should - is there a standards doc that I should be having access to? Anything else out there..

yeah man get with the times! :wink:

[jeffoest]

i know - dang - I didn't get the memo...

Hmmm... I have NOT been coding my tags with a genre at all ... I guess this means that I should - is there a standards doc that I should be having access to? Anything else out there..

yeah man get with the times! :wink:

[ethornber]

Im sick of double checking this every morning so im just going to unsubscribe to the casts that dont follow the rules. (unless someone has a tip on how to get them in my smart playlist...)

What aggregator are you using? The good ones will let you override/add ID3 tags to downloaded files, I use 'em to send files to almost exactly the same smart playlist you do.

[FishTacoBob]

I use Doppler and it is the best podcast client available. It has the best feature set of any podcast client I have used so far, like the ability to add custom ID3 tags to every podcast you subscribe to, and you can tell it to delete a podcast based on rating. For example, I set every podcast to be deleted when I set the rating to 1 star. Doppler will also convert any podcast to .m4b format automatically, so when you want to listen to something else on your iPod, it will bookmark it so you can you can continue listening from where you left off. I highly suggest all windows user to check it out. Find it here: http://www.dopplerradio.net

FishTacoBob

[Craig]

There are plenty of programs that will let you edit your ID3 tags after your create your MP3 but before you upload it. iTunes is one of them and that's what I use to make sure all the podcasts I create have a genre of Podcast.

Because not everyone does this, however, I refuse to use a podcast client that doesn't let me override the genre of incoming podcasts on a podcast-by-podcast basis (some I set to Podcast, some I set to Godcast) and also specify the playlist on a podcast-by-podcast basis. This means that I've been using iPodderX on the Mac, even though there a other things I don't like about it.

Craig

[MeneGene]

I'm just stupid and never did it. We never put anything in the genre but I definitely will now. I'm just impressed that we were able to get this far with this whole podcast thing. We even just crashed our webserver because so many people were accessing the mp3s. That was the greatest feeling ever.

Will do from now on. So subscribe. So far everyone else likes us.

http://www.podcastalley.com/podcast_detail.php?pod_id=1765

www.hometowntales.com

www.hometowntales.com/htpodcast.xml

[feastoffools]

Well there obviously is a lot of debate on the matter. Even Adam Curry cant make up his mind on where to put what information. But the rule is: if you podcast, put Podcast in your genere field.

Case closed.

[yaz]

hate is a very strong and ugly word...

[speechless]

hate is a very strong and ugly word...

Yes. Kind of torqued me up...but I suppose I should bow to peer pressure. Good thing podcasting isn't crack smoking. :wink:

[yaz]

whats wrong with crack smoking...

[donmc]

I've spent some time putting down some detailed suggestions for how Podcasts should be tagged. This is mainly due to the frustration of trying to manage an ever expanding list of podcasts with some bizzare tagging schemes.

The end game should be to allow smart playlists to work properly, to allow Podcasts to be displayed properly in MP3 playlists on portable devices and just to remove the manual processes us Podcast consumers have to do to keep our podcasts in shape!

Check out my suggestions in my blog entry here:

http://www.donsblog.donmc.co.uk/?p=32

I've already had some good feedback and would welcome any ideas how to cascade these suggestions throughout the podcasting community.

[PupuStudios]

WHY IS EVERYBODY SO ANGRY!?!!?!?! STOP SCREAMING!!!

[yaz]

i don't see anyone yelling in here, there are other places...and lets get off moms because i...oh **** that...

[Barefoot Radio.com]

Hate's a strong word, dude.

[s]

My gripe as a listener has always been the placement of the date in the individual podcast title. Put the date first THEN any additional information. That way we're always assured of seeing the date (or number or whatever) no matter how large a tag window we have on our player...

Well, yeah, Jeff, that's an option - but I have to gripe at your very assertive statement about putting the date first. Your latest podcast shows up on my iPod as "04-09-2005-ThisAn..." Yeah, I can figure out what that means, but if I had a smaller window, I wouldn't WHAT it was a 4/9 episode of (in my initial search for songs under my Podcast playlist or genre). Of course on the other hand, sometimes I can't tell if "The Muffin for Thur..." is from last week or today. There's really no winning.

One suggestion I'd make to your date-first plan would be to list the date as 2005-04-09 so that if I had a list of podcasts sorted by title (sometimes I do that to look for something on iTunes and forget to change it when I sync my iPod), they'd all still be in the right order.

[docsnavely]

Im sick of double checking this every morning so im just going to unsubscribe to the casts that dont follow the rules. (unless someone has a tip on how to get them in my smart playlist...)

Hey dude, if you wanna gripe, make your own cast and do it your way. It really doesn't seem cool to come up in here and start blasting away on your first post telling everyone that their ID3 tags are F'd up!

If you're going to quit listeing to a cast because of the tag, and not the content, you're really missing out on the big picture. This is an (almost) all amateur type of broadcast. Things will always be taught and learned as time goes on. For you to unsubscibe because of a tag is pretty ignorant IMHO! Day in and day out, they guys and gals produce awesome content to please us, the consumer, for which we pay absoluetly nothing! It's their personal time they spend doing this. For the most part, no money is exchanging hands.

Start paying for your content, then you will have the right to bitch about a friggin tag.

[yaz]

hey barefoot, go back to the first page, i said that already...

[andy]

i wish i'd gotten the 'tags memo' earlier. note to self...

[Marilynfan]

So how would I go about getting my genre to be podcast when I use audacity? I've been selecting other since podcast is not a choice?

Thanks!

[charleyw]

Yeah! What should we Audacity users do about the tagging?

Charley

[theFerf]

I had emailed the Audacity team in hopes of getting some new (or at least one..Podcast) genres added to their application. here was their reply:

From Audacity
The genres used in the audacity tag dialogue are those laid down for standard ID3 tags - the list isn't chosen by us, so we can't add entries.

[owyn]

I had emailed the Audacity team in hopes of getting some new (or at least one..Podcast) genres added to their application. here was their reply:

From Audacity
The genres used in the audacity tag dialogue are those laid down for standard ID3 tags - the list isn't chosen by us, so we can't add entries.
Bollocks.

All they need to do is provide for the capability to enter text for the genre field. Real standard drop down list processing. Select from list OR enter value. It can even be made compatible with incremental search.

And there is more than one list of "standard" values for the tag.

[Twisted]

Just FYI. I use ID3 Tag It to change my ID3 tags. It's free and works great.
You can find it at http://www.id3-tagit.de/english/

[charleyw]

Just FYI. I use ID3 Tag It to change my ID3 tags. It's free and works great.
You can find it at http://www.id3-tagit.de/english/

Good tool. Thanks. I recommend this to all of us Audacity users. I downloaded the old version, and it's got everything I need.

Charley

[pzarquon]

Not exactly bollocks. AFAIK, the official ID3v1 specification does have a restricted, and limited, set of genres from which to choose. Hell, most of my non-podcast stuff is tagged as "Other" on that side. But ID3v2 was expanded to allow custom genres - whatever you type in the box goes. I'd guess that Audacity is limiting itself to what ID3v1 allows.

Notably, in WinAmp (http://www.winamp.com), you can see both ID3v1 and ID3v2 tags. For completeness, I include both in my podcast files. However, WinAmp also uses a strict interpretation and does not allow "Podcast" on the ID3v1 side, even when I specify it on ID3v2 and "copy" those fields over.

Even more bizarrely, iTunes doesn't seem to allow you to type in a custom genre... but as long as one file in your library has "Podcast" as a genre already, it becomes available as a choice in the drop-down genre menu.

This stuff is clear as mud, and I don't begrudge developers at this point for doing things inconsistently. I set "Podcast" as my genre via iTunes, but I don't rely on that tag as a listener.

It is interesting how picky I've gotten in so short a time, though. I do expect consistent album, artist, and title tagging (abbreviated if neccessary to fit the date on the standard iPod screen). But I listen to shows that use either the title or album field to set a unique-to-each-show title, which can get confusing (indeed, Adam Curry seems all over the place). Me, I don't need a clever title anywhere in ID3 for an episode - just show name and date, thank you.

Don't even get me started on file naming... or, for that matter, shows that barely tag at all!

[owyn]

Not exactly bollocks. AFAIK, the official ID3v1 specification does have a restricted, and limited, set of genres from which to choose. Hell, most of my non-podcast stuff is tagged as "Other" on that side. But ID3v2 was expanded to allow custom genres - whatever you type in the box goes. I'd guess that Audacity is limiting itself to what ID3v1 allows.

Correct. I am so used to ID3v2 that I forgot about the limits in ID3v1. I am also spoiled. I have been using Musicmatch Jukebox Pro as my primary player/librarian for so long that I just expect easy library/tag maintenance.

[bjason.com]

Well there obviously is a lot of debate on the matter. Even Adam Curry cant make up his mind on where to put what information. But the rule is: if you podcast, put Podcast in your genere field.

Case closed.

Yeah, I love those guys who think they're being cute when they put "Death Metal," or "Gangsta Rap" in that field.

Chuckle chortle guffaw.

[owyn]

My prefence is for an ID3V2 genre starting with "Podcast" and followed by an optional category. Preferred values for category would be one of the categories at iPodder.

eg. "Podcast Music"