Why tag?

[RichM]

Hi all,

There is a lot of discussion on here about tags and I'm not sure whether I need to be trying to tag my collection of c. 700 albums which I basically ripped and renamed to bring a bit of structure. I am mainly classical, but with some folk, jazz, blues etc. I have created about 10 playlists, mainly around genre e.g. opera, folk, jazz, but not very detailed. I don't use Sonos.

I've installed MP3tag - what benefit would I get from getting sufficiently proficient to use it on my B2 collection?

Thanks,

Rich

[Daniel Taylor]

The primary reason to add tagging information is for use by another system, such as Sonos.  When you avail yourself of the B2's NAS capability, and system that can access a NAS drive should be able to use the B2's HDD as a music source.  But those systems are more likely to use the tagging information, rather than the way the B2 uses folder and filenames.

[Jasper Warwick]

The B2 on its own makes no use of tagging whatsoever. It is, however, very useful if you play your music through other devices such as Sonos or if you export you library to your phone or car.

I use tagging to auto generate playlists for the B2 based on genre, search "Excel" in this forum for more information how I did this and I have to say that it has transformed how I listen to music. 

I think it really depends on how geeky you want to be with your music collection. If all you want to do is have an easy way of playing CDs then tagging all your music is not going to benefit you much. If you are sharing your library across multiple devices or you want to segment your music then having a fully tagged library will help enormously.

[RichM]

Hi Jasper,

Yes, I looked at your spreadsheet a few months back but my lack of tags meant it didn't offer me much other than a file of my collection which I could manipulate on my PC. I do have NAS which is very useful, but generally I just use the B2 or a tablet to play music. However, I can see some benefit in classifying by genre and being able to generate playlists.

So, I might have a play around. It can't do any harm although from my initial use of Discogs with MP3tag, quite a lot of my albums may have to processed manually.

Thanks,

Rich