DIYHA Digital Jukebox

["Keith Doxey" <lists.diyha@xxxxxxx>]

Hi All,

I "could" have posted this to just the DHA list but felt it was
more
appropriate here as almost all of us are using MP3 in one way or
another.

I am attampting to create a database from the DHA archive listing so that
my
Jukebox software can be used as the from end but have a few questions
about
what people want.....

At the moment my Jukebox is built round the following

Artists - a song has to be performed by someone!

Songs - the titles and different versions of the song, keyed to the
artist.
This means that the title "Power of Love" would exist a minimum
of 3 times
for
      Frankie Goes To Hollywood
      Huey Lewis and the news
      Jennifer Rush

Against the Song I store the following information, Duration, Genre,
Era,
MP3 file, etc.

Two other tables effectively "create" the collection.

Albums - the title, record label, number of tracks etc
Tracks - links the Songs to the Album

The problem I am up against at the moment is that I am getting old and
havent heard of several of the artists in the archive, and even some of
the
ones I have heard of, I have no knowledge of their work. This means that
I
dont know if the songs contained on different albums by the same artist
are
the same. I can take a guess at some of them but not all. Then there is
the
case when I suspect it is EXACTLY the same song despite being listed by
a
different artist eg

Artist      Album     
TrackNr      Title
The Police      Every Breath You Take - The
Singles      07      De
Do Do Do De Da Da Da
Sting and The Police      The Very Best
Of      00      De Do Do
Do, De Da Da Da
The Police      Message in a
Box      00      De Do Do
Do, De Da Da Da

I would guess that all the above are the same as the original single.

Currently my jukebox software lets you "create" an album by
selecting the
artist and songs from the database, an Artist only ever needs to be
entered
once as does a song title, after that you pick from a list so data entry
is
reasonably typing free. Even a different version of a song eg 12" mix
is
easily entered as most of the infromation is copied from the version
you
already have. It supports unlimited playlists and is self randomising
on
playback. It also keeps track of when a song was last played so it wont
reappear too quickly. At the moment the time played is stored against
the
playlist but I am changing it to be stored against the user along with
a
preference for the song eg 0-5
0=dont ever play me this song. that will allow you to listen to someone
elses playlist without hearing songs you cant stand :-)

Anyway.....to get to the point......

1. How do people primarily choose what to listen to ?
      by Artist
      by Title
      by Genre
      by Album
      by Playlist

2. If I can make a downloadable version of the software available with
loads
of Artists and Songs already populated are people interested. ?

Obviously it wont contain the MP3's or any actual Album details but most
of
the track data should be of use in speeding up data entry. At the UKHA
meet
I was asked several time why my Jukebox doesnt use the MP3 tags. The
reason
is the poor quality of the information in them. As an example look at
the
data below.....

Title
.. In That Quiet Earth'
... of Silence
... Und Es Regnet
...And Justice For All
...at The Village
...Into The Light
...Just Moving On
{Untitled}
0.28
0.34
01
01 - Big Guns
01 Cool Britannia
01 Hunting Tigers Out In 'INDI
01. Sea Of Desire
01-Hot Shot
02
02 - Sweet Little Sister
02 Shirt

Artist
Alan Parsons
Alan Parsons Live
Alan Parsons Project
Alan Parsons Project, The
Alanis Morissette
Alanis Morrisette
The Alan Parsons Project

.... and that is data that has already had a good deal of cleansing
performed by Ian Lowe. To achieve the search result that I demonstrated
at
the meeting is not possible with data like that. I also intend to create
a
VB application that will be able to use the cleansed data in the database
to
edit filennames and MP3 tags to the format that the end user wants.

If I can get the data import to work, what would be made available would
be
a semi-populated database containing over 1500 artists, 3000 albums,
30000
songs. It would be upto the end user to point the database at the
correct
MP3 file but that task would probably be semi automated just requiring
mouse
clicks to find the tracks.

Thoughts please

Keith

www.diyha.co.uk
www.kat5.tv

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