WebKittyn Warbles
Sunday, June 12, 2011
Cleaning Music? What the Hell is Cleaning Music?
A few people have asked me what the hell I've been ranting about on FB the past few weeks (besides the deadbeat in California) with this cleaning music stuff. I figured I'd lay it out in one place so people can see and I don't look like a complete lunatic blathering on about something stupid. I mean yes, I'll still look like a complete lunatic but at least now the lunacy will be explained.
To put it frankly, we've been lazy. We being the KMRL owners. In this case it's mostly me though, I'll wear the hat for this. Lazy. La-ZYYYYYY.
Two years ago we bought this amazing program called SAM. I've written about it before so I won't go gushing again but it brings an internet radio station to the next level. Live streaming news at the top of the hour, no limits on the size of the default rotation, the ability for listeners to make requests off the default rotation without anyone being on, etc. It does everything and it took me a while to pay for it in installments but we finally got it. Problem is, we never installed it.
I knew I should have worked it out with Meathe before he left the station but there was always some other immediate pressing matter of code so it got put off. Now it's all on me and I've been putting it off and putting it off because it's a massive install and I'm not that skilled. First it requires my SQL to be installed and working wherever you install SAM. I've got SQL on my domains but this isn't going on a domain, it's not a domain program.
I've managed, with help from a friend or two, to figure out the best place to do the install is on my 2nd drive on this computer. It's 500gb and completely empty. Put the SQL, SAM and all the songs on the drive and then figure out how to allow all the hosts to have remote access to that drive on my computer. We'd keep songs in the current default locale for when my power goes out but when things are normal it's a solid plan.
There's one thing we absolutely MUST have in order before we can install SAM and that's a clean playlist. SAM auto-generates a web page with the full list of default rotation songs and unless you're content to look like a really sloppy station, all the songs should be in alphabetical order/correctly named. There is also something called 'tagging' which is back-end stuff the listener doesn't need to know about but the station has to have each song tagged so the artist can be paid their royalties for our playing their music.
Now in most cased when you rip a CD you get track titles in the rip and if the band has 'The" in the name it reads it from "The" and there are a gazillion bands whose names start with "The.." So instead of it looking like this: Tomboy - OK2BGAY.mp3 which is how it should look you get 07 Tomboy - OK2BGAY.mp3 with 07 being the track number. When your list is created automatically, it reads the 07 first so your playlist has all the songs with track numbers on top which looks like crap and makes for tons of doubles. Bad juju. Ugly juju.
I've been pretty good with my stuff, I've done a lot of renaming of my own songs but I admit I've gotten lazy. I also did a major song merge with Darkstar a month or so ago and he's worse than me. Not ONE song is tagged properly, there are track numbers in every song.... So now between his mess and my mess we have a master list of 11,276 songs all over the place. When an auto-list is generated it looks like this:
BIG MESS
I'm not putting that up for SAM to make a web page out of, I'd be embarrassed to put that mess up and call it KMRL. My head may be up my ass but that doesn't mean I've shat out my pride.
Leaves me one option. Clean the music. Make the list pretty and functional for SAM and for the listener when they're looking over what we've got.
So this is the process:
Open master list of songs. Each step is song by song, there is no bulk option.
1. Check if song is a double of one already cleaned and one with a track number to make it appear as if it's a different song.
2. Check if song is .mp3 or .wma and if it's .wma convert it to qualty level .mp3 with Soundforge.
3. Rename song if needed. If the artist or title is wrong, rename it. If there is a track number in the title, remove it. Turn 06 Voltaire - If I Only Were a Goth.mp3 to Thou Shalt Not - If I Only Were a Goth.mp3. Also make sure the - is spaced right or it throws off the order as well.
4. Open song in Winamp and check tags. Make sure ID1 and 2 are checked and make sure there are NO TRACK NUMBERS in the tags.
5. Clear song from Winamp.
6. Transfer now pristine song to new directory.
7. Repeat 11,275 times.
When I said I've been lazy I wasn't kidding, I've got 52 cleaned songs. 52. Out of all of them.
Darkstar is due up here next Sunday night, the plan was to spend a full day attempting a SAM install. He talks to me and keeps me from throwing the computer in the pond when things don't work.
This means I have to have all the songs cleaned by Sunday night. One shiny master list free of doubles and track numbers (and you people wonder why I'd rather spend my time posting pictures of awesome boots on FB).
I'm not complaining, it's like climbing the Mt. Everest of song cleaning and it's time to get my ass out of Base Camp. It's tedious and I'll probably drive you people batshit with me as I desperately try to get this done in a week and lay off the footwear.
Oh, did I forget to mention I've also set a 'quit date' for my divorce from cigarettes and it happens to be inside the window of song-cleaning? Can we say batshit, boys and girls? BatSHIT.
So there it is, SAM and clean music for the masses.
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Master list of song is really great. Nice selection of songs are there.This is preety good post.This list would provide a chance to select nice songs.
CD distribution on 01/20 at 08:50 AM
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