Often times when I acquire an unofficial remix I will add that track to the same album as the original but on a new disc. Any Album / Artist info (if available) from the remix is placed in tags like Original Album…etc.
Recently I ran into a mashup. It was a Mashup of 3 songs I happen to have in my library. My first thought was “man it would be cool if this track could be a part of each of the Albums from the Original songs.”
Unfortunately AFAIK no music player supports that madness & its likely none ever never will.
That immediate realization sparked an idea though. Samples
I currently already have a custom tag for samples that I utilize in mp3tag. Until now this was pretty much info that I could only really see & interact with in mp3tag.
So I got to looking at fields that are displayed at track level and easily accessible. On any given track you can quicky get to “More Actions” which shows you Artists, Album Artists, & Composers among other things like the genres & the “Album” shortcut.
Personally the composer field is a bit less utilized for me as classical music is not my primary musical taste. So I decided to add my samples there.
My idea was simple (sort of)…if every track had its own “sample” tag then any other tracks with matching “sample” tags can be grouped or searched together. The same way you can find all the tracks an Artist is on / a part of.
Originally I only added sample Tags to non-original track, IE remixes, mashups & tracks of the like, but adding a sample tag to the original track means that If a tap “Whoa by Snoh Aalegra” for example, all the songs in my library that sample that track as well as the original track will appear which is nice.
In order to do this I did need to create an action in MP3TAG that trims the Titles & Artist(s) of Tracks a bit & then prints that info into the composer field. There were definitely some kinks to work out there but overall I’m very happy with how this makeshift Action turned out.
In this next update I’m looking forward to seeing how TRACK_TAGS are implemented. If they are available to be quickly accessed like the composer field is under the “more actions” area (3 dots / menu button) then I will happily move the sample tags over there instead of clogging up my composer tag but we shall see.
I’d love to hear any wacky ideas you all have had or implemented in your music libraries.