Remark on 'Unknown' album (reprise)

MP3 players Sansa Clip | Clip+
1

(This has been brought up some months ago, so I’m
just posting this for the benefit of the good people
at Sansa working on the next firmware update.)

I wished, that if there is no ‘Album’ entry
in the ID3 tag, maybe because a user in his or her
infinite wisdom has chosen not to provide one,
the Clip would not display “/Unknown” as the name
of the album. Thank you.

2

here’s a kludge

 edit the id3 tag and on the album field key in alt + 0160.  it will put a no-break space on the album field and the same on the player… :wink:

3

So if you select Album from the Music menu there will be no way to find this track.  Is that acceptable?

Unknown is used as a placeholder so you can find all tracks which are missing the album tag.

You can certainly find the track other ways like Song title.

If all the ID3 tag info is missing,  then the device marks the fields unknown so you will at least be able to play those tracks using Play all.

Its merely a cosmetic fix to not show unknown in the album field,  but you need to consider the navigation aspect.

Your best bet is to apply tags to all the fields.

4

> So if you select Album from the Music menu there will be no way to find this track.  Is that acceptable?

Of course. The Album as a concept is dead anyway, a mere ploy by the industry to make you buy songs you would never buy as a single. For those rare albums where it matters I will use the album tags. Let _me_ decide, not the Clip. And I don’t want to use a workaround to comply to the setup of a specific player. Who knows if my next MP3 player will not add an extra display line if it comes across an Album tag with a no-break space?

> If all the ID3 tag info is missing,  then the device marks the fields unknown

That’s only logical. But it doesn’t necessitate to display the Album tag if it is unknown, yet Title and Artist tags are present.

> Its merely a cosmetic fix to not show unknown in the album field

That’s exactly what I want.

5

The album is dead?

For years, if an artist didn’t release music as an album, the resulting recording release was called a “single”.  Singles have been used in various ways, as “teasers” for an upcoming album, as remixes, and such. 

Just because a pop star runs out of steam, or had marginal work to start with, don’t blindly accept the “album is dead” concept, lest we encourage the publication of yet more marginal releases.

Nothing is more disappointing than one or two listenable tracks surrounded by drivel, I agree. 

On to the task at hand:

Why would you be annoyed by the Sansa’s display of “unknown” on the screen?  It’s a flag lettting you know that the data is missing from the file.  Why would you want to sweep the issue under the rug?  If it bothers you, fix the tag, allowing you to access that favorite track.

Bob  :smileyvery-happy:

6

  1. Why should I use the Album tag if I happen to like only one song on an otherwise terrible album. Why would I want the Sansa Clip to constantly remind me of the ‘drivel’ the album’s name stands for?

  2. Why should I use the Album tag if a song was never released on an album? “\Unknown” is wrong when we know there is no album, and also unstable (as is “\Does_Not_Exist” ) because the song could be released on one or more albums in the future.

  3. Why should I use a tag that in many cases doesn’t have one definite value? Say a specific song is released on an artist’s solo album, a movie soundtrack, and on “Now That’s What I Call Music! 30”, and you put all three albums on your Clip. To play the complete albums using the Album tag, you’d need to put three instances of the same song on your player.

  4. Why should I ‘fix’ the album tag with a placeholder-space if I cannot know how future MP3 players from other manufacturers will handle this. Maybe an extra empty line on the display will mean another tag is not displayed for lack of space. Should I have to adapt the tags to suit a specific player?

As I see it, the best way to handle ambigious or unstable data (‘Album’, ‘Genre’) is to keep it out of the tags and to put it into playlists.

For the Clip to display “\Unknown” smacks of ‘…the user is at fault for not providing data…’. But I have reasons not to. Why should the little machine be allowed to annoy me like that?

7

my suggestion would be replace ‘unknown’ with ‘-’. cause now the album title makes the whole line scroll even if the song is named short. and - is logically corrent ( for ‘none’ ) or even that, use ‘none’, still shorter…