Last Update: 3rd May 2008

Also at http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....showtopic=63045

This is my 1st guidelines so please give any comments to improvise it.

Introduction
I'm one of those million people with broadband connection out there that is trying to download mostly anime and game OST from various source, whether via bittorrent or http download.

Anyways, problems occured when your anime/game OST album exceeds a total of 300+. If you didn't tag your album name and the track list properly, you would find difficulty when you're trying to browse through your media library just to playback a certain album.

Prequel
Over the past few years, I had been tagging those albums I got by using various software and even media player such as Winamp, ID3TagIT, Windows Media Player, iTunes and now, foobar2000. Let's start with ALBUM TITLE tagging.

1. Album Title Tagging
I had been used to tag my album title accordingly to my own preference. For example, I like to capitalize the front alphabet for each album title even though the album cover (booklet) indicates that the album title is not capitalize. I had followed these habits until recently I notice that it was quite hard for me to tag the album title just according to my preference as some album title is very hard to tag just to suit my need. That's why when tagging album title, it is very important to tag it according to the title printed on the cover booklet.

Let's take drammatica - The Very Best of Yoko Shimomura (title as printed on the cover)
Tag it as 'drammatica - The Very Best of Yoko Shimomura' instead of 'Drammatica - The Very Best Of Yoko Shimomura'.

Why should you tag the album title exactly like what printed on the cover?
Well, in my opinion, I think that is the uniqueness for each album. If all the album title are printed in the same way, what's the point?

Anyways, don't always tag the album title EXACTLY like what printed on the album cover IF AND ONLY IF it can mess up your library sorting system.

Let's take 2 albums as example:
Album #1: "FINAL FANTASY VII" Original Soundtrack (title printed on cover page)
Album #2: FINAL FANTASY XII Original Soundtrack (title printed on cover page)

*Note that for album #1, there is a quotation "" mark on the album title. If you tag the album title with the "" mark, it would be sort on the top of your media library (above letter A) compared to the 2nd album which would be sorted just normally. Hence take extra caution for such cases.

Issues also occured for japanese album title as user may find it difficult to tag the album title to be japanese or english album title. To ease your 'pain', here's what you can do:
*The job will be quite easier if you can read native japanese kanji as most japanese album use kanji characters.

#1. Determine whether the english title is available for such album. If available, just use it. IF NOT,
#2. Use the alphabets to spell out the japanese kanji characters OR you can just use the original japanese album title.

2. Catalog Number
I'm sure if you had been downloading mp3's from the internet, you would know that many people often tag the catalog number for each album (each catalog number is unique for each album) under the 'Comment' column. For me, I prefer to create a new TAG Field, a Catalog tag field just to place the catalog number for easier search.

Why is Catalog Number so important?
For intermediate person, this may sound not so important. However, just as I mentioned above, if you had above 200+ album, this may be the critical information for you to tag your album more easily and efficiently.

If you had the Catalog Number for a certain album, you can:
-> Search for the cover art/scans easily just by entering the Catalog Number on POPULAR & EFFICIENT search engine such as Google Image. I prefer to use Google Image to return the search for cover arts for album as it usually yield unexpected results. (Remember to set the search result as 'Medium Image' or 'Larger Image') Note that the result is usually 0 for Larger Image.

-> Save time to search for album track list just by typing the catalog number on the search engine.
Explanation: As each website track their album title differently, whenever you try to search for a certain album track list just by typing their album title, you might miss out certain keywords. However, the catalog number will always remain the same for a certain album.

*Not many media player provide custom media library column view for custom tag field such as 'Catalog' field which I mentioned above. However, foobar2000 can do the job. So I guess that's another one good reason to use foobar2000 as my favorite music player.

3. Cover Image/Album Scans
It is undoubtedly true that cover scans, especially cover front image is essentially important when trying to organize the music library. With cover scans available for each album, you can view and browse through your album library with much self-satisfaction via components such as 'Graphical Browser'. Doesn't it much easier and fantastic to search for a certain album by their cover scans instead of the plain text of the album title?

However, searching for album scans is quite difficult if you don't know the tricks for doing so. Not to mention for high resolution album scans. Certain torrent uploaders may already include those cover scans (some may even include high res scans) but it is very unlikely that they will doing so for each album.

Till date I only manage to find some websites which provide good resolution for cover scans (front / back) and I'll be shortlisted them in the nearest time as I need to browse through my bookmarks all over again.

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Upcoming: Release Date, Track Listing

*If you have any other good website for cover image source, feel free to post it here or PM me and I'll add those link here for sharing propose.

P/S:
The guidelines above is purely my own personal opinion. There is no need to make agreement or disagreement over the statements above. If you have any comment on how to improve the guidelines above, feel free to post it here.

Note that the guidelines above is efficient for anime and game OST tagging only. Other types of album may need different type of tagging method such as 'Artist name - Album Title' or whatsoever.