Best method for "firstname lastname" to "lastname, firstname"

[DavidHB]

(02-08-2017 22:31)paultaylor Wrote:  SortNames fields are designed exactly for this. My own view is that using a sortname provided from a 3rd party database such as MusicBrainz is more reliable then trying to do it manually because of exceptions, translations ectera.

This is a good point. For instance, the correct sort name for Josquin Desprez is - Josquin Desprez.

In fact, this approach and the technique I have been using are not mutually exclusive; you can mix and match according to circumstances. The key thing is to ensure that you use the same composer name (and sort name, if you use one). I have a couple of thoughts on this.

Firstly, CD rippers that insert metadata from the Internet often populate the ComposerSort tag. dBpoweramp is one example. This can provide a starting point for my next tip.

In MP3Tag, you will find that you cannot open multiple random folders at once, though, as folders open recursively, you can open all the album folders contained in ..\Music\Classical\Brahms\, for instance. You can also make a non-contiguous selection in Windows File Explorer, and right click to open them in MP3Tag. And in MP3Tag itself, next to the Folder>Open icon there is a Folder>Add icon, which you can use to add a folder and its sub-folders to the current grid. This extended selection may contain tracks you don't currently wish to work with, so opening the filter (F3) and putting in a condition such as 'Composer HAS Brahms' might give you the set of files you want to work with.

If you decide to have and populate a ComposerSort tag, it will make sense to display it in the tag panel on the left of the Mp3Tag window. (You can do this in Tools > Options > Tag Panel.) Suppose you want all the tracks currently in the grid to have a ComposerSort value of 'Brahms, Johannes' Select all the files in the grid. In the ComposerSort tag in the tag panel, you may see <keep>. This indicates that the tracks do not all have the same ComposerSort value (and MP3Tag will leave those different values unchanged when it saves the files).

The clever bit (one of the best features of MP3Tag, I think) is that the drop-down at the right hand end of the tag box gives you a list of all the values of that tag that are present in the current selection. If, in our example, one of those values is 'Brahms, Johannes' (maybe from an earlier tagging session), all you have to do is to select that value and press the Save icon to apply that value to every track in the selection. This means that you can reliably apply a particular tag value to hundreds or perhaps thousands of tracks in one action.

My own approach would be to use the procedure I have just described to ensure that all the tracks have the same Composer value, then use one of my pre-defined actions (see my previous post) to generate corresponding ComposerSort values. But you will have your own view on what is best for you.

I hope this is helpful.

David