Starting a music collection...

[CharmingNathan]

Hello All,

This is probably a very simple question, but I am curious...

I've come across people involved in Internet Radio before who've boasted about having collections of .mp3's in the thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, or even millions - my question is how are these collections accumulated? (Or are these peole just exaggerating the truth?! )

Are there sites where one can buy collections of .mp3's's all 'topped n tailed'; and normalised, and therefore ready for broadcast, or is it just a question of downloading these files over years and years (no pun intended!)?

Also, I've heard some stations boast that they are ".mp3 free" - how is this achieved? I was recommended sometime ago to use .aac (I think) type files, but the problem I have is the station is dedicated to playing the new and emerging artist/bands who tend to release their material in .mp3 format, and sometimes can be hard to track down in their own right ...

So, what am I missing?

 

[Support]

Hi Nathan,

No we do not think some of these people are exaggerating the truth at all. My personal "digital" music collection is about 500+ GB's worth. It's been built up since the very early days of Mp3 (1999 / 2000ish), some of it is from my own large CD collection that I have ripped to Mp3 or wav, some stuff which was purchased online, stuff given to me by friends and a lot of DJ mixes which were free downloads from over the years. It was probably larger than 500GB but I deleted some stuff or its been backed up on one of many hard drives that are kicking about.

Yes you could stream in AAC instead of Mp3 with Shoutcast (Icecast does not support AAC). It does not matter what format the tracks are in if you are live streaming as your encoder encodes it to AAC. And even with the AutoDJ feature you can upload Mp3 files and the server will re-encode and play this back in the AAC format.

 

[CharmingNathan]

Hello Support,

Thanks for your reply.

However, your comment about the music collection either does not compute or is very worrying for me...let's see if I have the Maths right here:

Let's say, for the sake of argument, that the average song lasts four minutes, then to 'top 'n' tail and normalise is a further minute, give or take, so for every song downloaded it's about five minutes to prepare for uploading to the radio station's playout system.

If I really push myself, I can just about prepare 500 songs per month for upload in this fashion, which equates to about 5,000 songs per year.

So bearing in mind these people who brag they have hundreds of thousands or even millions of songs uploaded, it should take me roughly the next 10 years to get even vaguely near this number, i.e. 50,000.

Am I missing something?!

Thanks also for the advice regarding .mp3 and AAC.

 

[Support]

We were not talking about music collections being uploaded to a radio server for playout. We were talking about personal music collections. Its very feasible that a lot of people will personally have huge collections of Mp3 files. Your original post asked how such large collections are accumulated.

You could prepare about 500 tracks for upload in an about two / three hours with the some decent Mp3 encoding (with meta-data retrieval) software. Software such as "Easy CD Audio Converter" (an old personal favourite of mine) can encode tracks to Mp3 all at the same bitrate by bulk very quickly and it has great meta-data retrieval from a large database. Then uploading these files to the server may take another hour or two, so with a fairly good PC to handle the encoding and a decent internet connection for uploading them, you could have this all ready to go with an afternoons work.

Also, unfortunately not everyone pays for their music collections and in this day in age it's ever so easy to just download an artists / bands entire discography in minutes from torrent sites which are already encoded to Mp3 with the meta-data embedded. Not that everyone does this and we do not condone this ourselves, but that could easily be a few hundred tracks all ready to go for upload.

We would not worry too much about what others are doing or how large their collections are and just stick with what works well for you.

 

[CharmingNathan]

Hello Support,

Thanks for a very detailed reply and I apologise for not explaining the situation more clearly, and that you were literally talking about people's music collections rather than those which had to be processed for playout.

Thanks also for the tip of "Easy C.D. Audio Converter", and explaining about downloading artists/bands discographies - I hadn't thought of that, but it doesn't really 'fit in' with what I am trying to achieve.

The station I am involved in champions new artists and bands, so downloading the entire discography would be out for a start, but not only that obviously the song needs to be listened to to establish if it is good enough for airplay, and also to check there is no swearing on it!

The meta-data is a pain as information such as artist/band, song title, record label, etc., is perhaps more important to our listeners than for some mainstream stations. Also, I presume that there is no 'quick way' of 'topping 'n' tailing' or normalising the mp3's even with "Easy C.D. Audio Converter" or similar software? Would the meta-data be available for some of the newer artists/bands? In the music I already have, a lot if not all, the fields are blank...?!

Would it be that the quickest method for me then would be to 'top 'n' tail' and normalise as I am doing at the moment, then run the software you recommend to fill in all the meta-data once I have collected a large number of files? Even a small amount of time saved would be great.

As for worrying about others music collections, the enquiry isn't based on "my collections bigger than yours", or anything like that! Just a need to get as many music files uploaded to the playout system in as quick and efficient manner as possible.

I really appreciate your help, thank you.

 

[Support]

No problem, happy to help.

explaining about downloading artists/bands discographies - I hadn't thought of that

Please do not take that as a suggestion (or anyone else for that matter), as it wasn't. Pirating music is illegal as you are most likely aware. Our point was that this is how some people illegally accumulate large collections of Mp3's very easily. But anyway....

What do you mean exactly when you say "topping 'n' tailing". We do not understand what you mean by this?

'Easy CD Audio Converter' (and most likely other similar software) has various features to adjust the replay gain / normalisation / remove gaps of silence etc. But no, it's very unlikely with newer and especially with unsigned artists that you are going to be able to retrieve such meta-data from their databases, this you would have to manually add yourself. You would just find something like this more helpful for converting your files in bulk rather than doing them individually with something like Audacity. That in itself would speed things up for you, 'Easy CD Audio Converter' for example can convert up to 8 files in parallel.

 

[CharmingNathan]

Jolly good, nice to hear you're there!

No, don't worry, I don't, wouldn't, and haven't downloaded albums in the way you suggest, always been more of a single man anyway, especially 7" vinyl....hhhhmmmmmm those were the days....

Okay, the process I go through is as follows: 1. Open the file in Audacity (well guessed!) 2. Normalise it. 3. 'Top 'n' Tail' it - this is where I navigate to the beginning and end of the file, and remove any silence, unwanted and/or pointless noise, etc., that just doesn't need to be there. 4. Listen to the song in its entirety. 5. Export the file, filling in the meta-data as I go.

And you're quite right about newer and unsigned artists and bands - during the time I've been typing this message I've opened five files in a row, and none of them had ANY meta data in their fields at all.

So do you think "Easy C.D. Audio Converter", could be of help to me, and increase my chances of being able to upload more than 500 .mp3's per month in a row?

 

[Support]

Yes, some software along those lines will definitely speed things up for you. There are other alternatives to the one that we mentioned, so its worth having a search about for one that suits your own needs best. Ideally you want something that can auto-normalise tracks, auto-crop unwanted silence and can also process multiple files at one time.

Audacity is good and its free, but only converting one track at a time can slow things down a fair bit. Maybe just try some demo's of such software before you go spending money on it. See if it helps to speed up your current process.

 

[CharmingNathan]

Thanks very much for that, the software you suggested previously, is this it?
https://www.poikosoft.com/

I think probably the best route to go down, along with that which you suggested, is to identify areas of the task that - to the best of your knowledge - CANNOT be automated or sped up using other software?

Obviously listening to each song cannot be automated, and as you suggested, I'm guessing for the newer and unsigned artists and bands the meta-data will need to be filled in manually, anything else?

As a matter of interest, and I realise you don't know every piece of audio editing software available, speaking generally, would the meta-data be 'corrected' the the original data for a song taken from a compilation?

For example, if the meta-data scanner saw:

Artist: Nirvana
Title: Smells Like Teen Spirit.
Album: Now That's What I Call Music 90's
Year: 1999
Label Virgin/EMI

Would it replace it with this:

Artist: Nirvana
Title: Smells Like Teen Spirit
Album: Nevermind
Year: 1991
Label: Geffen Records

Also, with files that have already been through the "Audacity process", presumably I could run these through the 'new' software, to have their meta-data 'corrected'?

I have a feeling I already know the answer to this and that a certain someone has a LOT of manual work to do...

 

[Support]

Yes https://www.poikosoft.com/ is the one.

If for example you are ripping a compilation CD then it will create the meta-data based on that CD usually. A lot of the database (to our knowledge) is where people have ripped a CD album in the past and manually filled out the tracks meta-data and then submitted this information to the database, so in future when anyone else extracts tracks from that same CD the meta-data is auto-filled for them.

But according to their website:

Metadata Editor
Integrated to the Audio Converter. Allows editing the metadata of existing audio files. Download metadata and cover art from multiple services. Rename files based on metadata. Calculate and save ReplayGain values of existing files.

So perhaps this will work with correcting some meta-data from its various sources? I have only ever ripped CD's and converted wav files into Mp3 with it... So as before, we suggest just demo'ing some software to see what its capable of. There will still be some manual work that needs to be done here, but as far as converting the files that will speed things up for you.

 

[CharmingNathan]

Thanks for that Support.

This post will sound like one long list of complaint, but it isn't, this is genuinely what I have found!

I have downloaded and installed the free trial version of "Easy C.D. Audio Converter", and applied its Scan Replay Gain, Rename Files, and Get Metadata to Polica - "Wedding" and Nirvana - "Come As You Are". From DSP(3) I selected Delete Digital Silence from beginning and end as well as Prevent Clipping and Scan Apply Regain. I opened both files in Audacity first without making any changes and observed the meta-data and the volume graphics. I left all settings, as I have with Audacity, at default.

No meta-data was found for Polica and no other changes were made after processing through the other software.

For Nirvana, it found James Morrisson to be appropriate meta-data (and no, I am not making that up!!! ) but made no changes to normalise the music or remove the beginning and end silence of either file. How efficient is this, does it normally delete to the first and last audible sound?

Am I doing something wrong? For instance, I am running out of hard drive space, and does one have to export the file for the amendments to be made, like I know some software does.

Sudden thought: would it affect the software either the filename or pre-existing data were corrupt? For example, Nir-ana instead of Nirvana?

Again, thanks for your help - I hope it is me doing something wrong or not doing something at all, as it does seem like a nice piece of software!

 

[Support]

You're welcome

Perhaps the demo version has a limited feature set until if you fully purchase it? Besides, it's very unlikely they would sell some software that does not do it's advertised job correctly, so it's likely something you are doing wrong yourself.

Generally a professionally recorded piece of music is not going to need normalising as it would have already been mastered before release. Something modern like Nirvana probably wouldn't really need this and even more so if it was a track released in the last 10 years or so (modern loudness wars etc), but some older recording from decades ago perhaps would.

Either way, we cannot support you with this software. It was just a recommendation! We just provide the server hosting and control panel for you.

Best of luck with it all and we hope that you find a suitable solution to this.

 

[CharmingNathan]

Thanks Support, very nice of you!

I did realise my message was borderline off-topic - if not over the border - but I thought I would ask in case it was one of those queries that takes a fortnight to find in the company's own knowledgebase. I thought it maybe one of those queries when you came back with an "...oh yeah, you need to press the return key twice, and the spacebar once...", but obviously not!

The limited features during demo period is a possibility, I will bear that in mind.

Whereas what you state about normalising is true, you have to remember that a good deal of the artists and bands I deal with do not produce their music in professional studios, so whereas the meta-data is more important, perhaps not quite so much in this case.

I'll carry out a search for audio editing software and see what comes up, though have a feeling Audacity will be the most obvious to use, but it would be good to speed the process up!

Thanks again, for all your help with this, much appreciated.

 

[Support]

No problem, happy to have been of some help.