Foobar2000:Encouraged Tag Standards

General Tag Construction

• Avoid the use of underscores. Spaces are easier to type, more legible, and as easily useable in Tagz. Spaces are also preferable to no spaces.
• Use an easily understood English field name.
• Prefix album-related information with "ALBUM ", ie. "ALBUM ARTIST", "ALBUM SUBTITLE".
• Avoid use of non-alphabetical characters. For serial fields (for a bad example, FIELD1, FIELD2, etc.), merely enter them in the order that you wish them to be read in.

Overview of Current Recommendations

FIELD NAME [format] (component)

• ALBUM ARTIST [e.g., Various Artists, The Foobar Collective] (none)
  Notes: Field name is ALBUM ARTIST, with no underscore. Tag should exist if and only if an album is by multiple artists, and be contained in every track. Track-specific artists should be entered in the ARTIST tag, never in the TITLE tag.
  (more about this standard)
• FIRST_PLAYED and LAST_PLAYED [2005-03-22 19:00:00...] (foo_playcount)
  Notes: These two tags use underscores instead of spaces - reason for this was to make it consistent with the already existing PLAY_COUNTER-tag. Any amount or type of data may be placed after the time. Compliant TAGZ code shall use $substr() instead of $right() when extracting substrings from this field.
  See also: Standardize my PLAY_DATE and PLAY_TIME fields
  (more about this standard)

ALBUM ARTIST

Basics:

• the tag-fieldname used for declaring and describing albums/split-EPs or split-singles which contain various artists is "ALBUM ARTIST" (seperated with space, not underscore)
• tag should only exist if an album contains various artists. It should NOT be created when an album does not contain various artists.
• the tag can contain the overall artist of an album(like i.e. "the foo-bar collective"), multiple artists(i.e. with split-EPs) or if an album does not have a clear overall artist (for example with compilations) just "Various Artists". Simply said: you're free to enter whatever you like as long as it describes the overall album-wide artist(s).
• every track in a V.A.-album has to contain this tag with the same value
• the track-specific artist should be entered into the ARTIST-tag
• the TITLE-tag should only contain the track-title

Reasons for this standard:

• it solves all issues regarding albums which contain multiple artists with just one tag
• it is already in widespread use
• sortable and searchable with low effort
• keeping the ARTIST-tag trackspecific allows to find tracks in V.A.-albums as well when searching for a certain artist (DB-friendly)
• keeping the TITLE-tag title-specific allows sorting and searching of V.A.-albums by title (DB-friendly)
• allows meaningful determination and display of V.A.-Albums with a minimum amount of code
• avoids resource-hungry and unsafe "guessing" of V.A.-albums via the filepath
• easy to remember and type in manually
• does not disrupt existing systems when the ARTIST- and TITLE-tag are already trackspecific (easy transition)
• can coexist with additional directory-based sorting and marking
• can be used for split-EPs and split-singles as well

Code snippets:

// check if an album is V.A.
$if(%album artist%,$puts(album_is_va,1))

// For sorting by artist in an album-context replace %artist% - %album% with:
$if2(%album artist%,%artist%) - %album%

// singlemode display without %album artist%-support
[%artist% - ][%album% - ][%title%]
// singlemode display with %album artist%-support
// note: if your display supports both, albummode and singlemode, then you
// may want to use the above version instead in singlemode - depends on taste
[$if2(%album artist%,%artist%) - ][%album% - ]$if(%album artist%,[%artist% - ])[%title%]

// How to easily integrate %album artist% into an albummode-display:
// in the albummode-column, replace %artist% with:
$if2(%album artist%,[%artist%])
// in the title-column, replace %title% with:
$if(%album artist%,[%artist% - ])[%title%]

FIRST_PLAYED and LAST_PLAYED

Basics:

• the tag-fieldname used for storing info when a song was played the last time is "LAST_PLAYED"
• tag contains date and time in the following format at the beginning: "YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS" (with 24hours-format)
• additional info may be appended after the above info

Reasons for this standard:

• the APE-dateformat (derived from ISO) is internationally neutral
• sortable
• easily readable and recognizable
• format can be verified with TAGZ
• can be included in formatting-strings without reformatting it (pro for amateur tagz-coders)
• choosing a new fieldname avoids confusion with the existing ambigious play_date tag
• field name is easy to understand/recognize/remember and short enough to type in manually

Code snippets:

// verify tag-format (we check the pos. of the first dash and ":")
// using $len for verification is strongly unrecommended!
$if(
$and($strcmp($strstr(%last_played%,-),5),$strcmp($strstr(%last_played%,:),14))
,$puts(last_played_is_valid,1)
)

// disassemble the timestamp for later reformatting or calcuations
$puts(last_played_year,$substr(%last played%,1,4))
$puts(last_played_month,$substr(%last played%,6,7))
$puts(last_played_day,$substr(%last played%,9,10))
$puts(last_played_hour,$substr(%last played%,12,13))
$puts(last_played_min,$substr(%last played%,15,16))
$puts(last_played_sec,$substr(%last played%,18,19))

// display only the date of last_played (without reformatting)
$left(%last_played%,10)

// display only the time of last_played (without reformatting)
// the use of $right is strongly unrecommended!
$substr(%last_played%,12,19)

The above code-snippets can be used for FIRST_PLAYED as well(just replace last_played with first_played).

Obsolete and Deprecated Tag Standards

PLAY_DATE and PLAY_TIME

Deprecated tags produced by old versions of foo_playcount. Default format DDMMYY for PLAY_DATE and HHMMSS (24hr) for PLAY_TIME. See LAST_PLAYED.