Karaoke Forums

We interrupt you normally scheduled programming for this important rant and rave......

I am about 1/3 of the way through my song list fixing artist names and song titles to clean up my printed books and overall song listings. I am using the industry standard DiscID-Track# - Artist - Title.zip format (ie; SC8125-15 - Eagles, The - I Can't Tell You Why). The inconsistency and all out failure by some manufacturers to properly name tracks is mind-boggling. I am sure some of the blame resides also with the KJ Pro and CDDB services, but !@#$%^&*!@#$%^&* is all I can say in these forums without getting a permanent ban.

When I started this little project, my "By Artist" songbook was 348 pages (2 Columns using Song List Generator from Latshaw). I have since trimmed 31 pages just by correcting improperly formatted artists and titles thus eliminating duplicate and screwey listing. As noted, I am only 1/3 of the way through.

Then there is the issue of artists who collaborate......with EVERYONE - 50 Cent, Beyonce, Lil' Jon, etc. I estimate that the cluster F'ery of naming that the manufacturer's generate inflates to accomodate these collaboration inflates the size of song books by 15% or more.

Oh yeah.....is it supposed to be "Brooks and Dunn"???? or "Brooks & Dunn"????

Feelin' or Feeling?

'bout or About???

Is it Buddy Holly? Or Buddy Holly and The Crickets?????

Freddie Fender? or Freddy Fender?

Prince? Prince and the New Power Generation? TAFKAP??????? Pick a name and keep it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


The extend this vent session, this issue is one of many things that indicate how dysfunctional the major players in the karaoke industry are. If they can't even settle on a standard naming convention, how can we expect them to coordinate efforts to eliminate piracy? Get licensing for decent tracks in a timely manner? Get the Cloud right?

!@#$%^&^%$#!@#^%**&^%##@$%^&&&%#@@#$%%^^&&^!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

....and now, back your your regularly scheduled programming....

-Chris

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-Chris

hey i got a program as long as you have kjpro installed it will help you auto rename your files using the data from kjpro......

shoot me a P.M. with your email and I'll shoot the program to you......

if the disk is listed in kjpro it will rename the files within 1-2 seconds.

after you get good at using it, and learn all the little tricks.
you can rename 200-300 disc's in minutes....

i do wish kjpro was more consistant with naming cause they themselves have lots of errors

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It's all good!

I have used the following over time

Debbie's File Renamer
MP3+GToolz (my current standard)
CDGRipper pointed to CDDB

I am very proficient with the tools, the problem is - Garbage In, Garbage Out - The manufacturers and the karaoke databases use some mysterious naming scheme intrinsic to their own people. Look up Whitney Houston in your song listings......you can probably cut 1-2 pages from your book by cleaning up her songs alone.

-Chris

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-Chris

Its the same as them not getting a copy of the actual lyrics and seeming to do it by ear.

"My beard rests on a cold towel." (SGB "Gentle On My Mind")

Even after a few years of going through, I still find errors--just found one song where some manus titled it "Wanna..." and others called it "I Wanna...."

Dude, don't you know how databases like this are created? They paid someone $8.00 an hour to perform data entry.

Now, let's say you are making $8.00 an hour to enter songs into a database. It's 4:00 p.m. on a Friday, your fingers have been cramping since lunch, and you've got a hot date with that chick from the grocery store that's got most of her teeth and every other weekend free (<-- child custody humor). How much do you care about entering karaoke songs into a database at that point? Hence, the crappy data entry!

You really need to lower your expectations. KJPro is NOT Ernst and Young.

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C Mc
KJ, FL

I still find an occasional one of those in my books as well... and I manually typed out my entire list into a Microsoft Excel Spreadsheet.

Chris, as for Prince, etc... Just name the ones you know as either Prince or Prince and the New Power Generation. All others, just name it as Prince. They'll all come up in the same area of the page where people are looking anyway (and they'll see the key part... Prince). now as for names like Buddy Holly or Buddy Holly and the Crickets, are you listing your artists by Last Name,First Name, or are you listing them as is? If it's the latter, do the same thing as I suggested with Prince. If it's the former I would list it this way:
Holly, Buddy
Holly, Buddy and the Crickets
Again, they would come up on the same page where I was looking for a Buddy Holly song. As for Brooks & Dunn vs Brooks and Dunn, in my books, I never used the & anywhere (song or artist).... I used the word "and."

It took a long time to straighten out our books after my partner separated from his wife (who was inputting the data). I use "and" for the titles and "&" for the artist section (just a quirk ). For groups "Lewis, Huey & The News" but for other bands where there is no &, it is "Zac Brown Band". If I have any questions about titles of songs, I go to the artist home page or some other official site to get the proper name. Yes it takes time but it gives you a professional looking book or kiosk. We also use manufacturer numbers.

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You can be strange but not a stranger

I feel your pain Chris and I bet every KJ here has been just as frustrated at one point going through thier books.
Heck even after several printings I still seem to find something to correct. Right after it was printed of course.

Currently editing 20,000 tracks manually for the second time, thanks to CB. I feel ya.

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If you're going to eat my mic, do you at least want some condiments?

Not just Karaoke. This is a common problem in radio music scheduling DB's as well.

Think about how many ways you can spell "Earth, Wind & Fire" or Crosby, Stills & Nash (+- Young).

At least a dozen or more!

I just needed to vent after spending who knows how many hours working on this and knowing I still have many, many, many hours left to go. I am not expecting a magic bullet or any change in the industry. Just something I had to get out of my system and something I know all of us have pounded our heads against a wall over.

At first it actually fulfilled an OCD need organize things, now it is just tedious. Ultimately I will have one of the cleanest karaoke books I have ever seen, and it will reduce the page count significantly, but it is an unbelieveable amount of work to undertake if it isn't managed from the get go.

One major benefit of all this extra work is that I am going to be very organized with the music. I created folders for -

Standards
Duets
Irish Traditional
Foreign Language
Spanish
German
French
Chinese
Japanese
Korean
Children's
Religious
Wedding
Christmas

and more.....

I am going to print separate books for some of the categories that rarely get updated. I will only print 1 - Artist/1-Title book and keep those at the DJ stand. Christmas books come out only for a few weeks a year. Children's only for special engagements, etc....

For the Main Karaoke books, those will be significantly smaller and easier to manage with greatly reduced recurring printing costs as things get updated.

-Chris

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-Chris

Chris said "Oh yeah.....is it supposed to be "Brooks and Dunn"???? or "Brooks & Dunn"????

Feelin' or Feeling?

'bout or About???

Is it Buddy Holly? Or Buddy Holly and The Crickets?????

Freddie Fender? or Freddy Fender?"

I always use the & sign make everything shorter in the artist & song title columns.
It depends on the song sometimes it's Feelin' & sometimes its Feeling. Most of the time if it's country it's Feelin'.
Same goes for 'bout/About.
Its Buddy Holly & The Crickets I try and give credits to the band.

and its Freddy Fender every Texan knows that!

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I like everyone when I first meet them. If you don't like me that's not my problem it's YOURS!
A stranger is a friend you haven't met yet

I use KJFile manager from Latshaw, and have reduced my songbooks (4400 cd's or 56000 songs) down even more than that by doing all those items that everyone has brought up, and I have also made certain that:

all the duets have the same artist first in the duet

All duets have full names listed (Neil Diamond & Barbra Streisand)

checked all the 3 part names (ie: John Cougar Mellencamp, Carolyn Dawn Johnson, etc)

removed all the ",The and ,A"

changed all "and" to "&" (to find a duet just type "&")

Bachman Turner Overdrive, Creedence Clearwater Revival, etc to BTO, CCR, etc

removed all Mrs., Mr., Jr. etc and changed to Mrs, Mr, Jr (if you search I have no periods)

removed all "Feat" if it is not a real duet

removed all dashes from song and artist fields

removed all ( ) parethesis and their content

made all spellings such as everything......every thing

U. S. A. to USA, U.S.S.R to USSR, B.T.O to BTO, B T O to BTO, etc

K. T. Oslin to KT Oslin

And many many more ways to reduce book size

My books are (3) different books (each catagory has atrtist and title books)

1) Oldies (20's to 80's)
2) Pop (90's to present)
3) Country (all country)

The books are not absolutely accurate on the dates but close enough. Separating the Oldies, Pop, and Country greatly reduces searching through songs you are not interested in. My singers love my system.

I have a registered version of KJ File Manager, but I have never actually used it. i guess I will check it out after I finally finish me renaming.

-Chris

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-Chris

And let us not forget all the screwed up names today....
Sk8ter Boi
3ohi3
(had to google both)

Oh yeah, and now all the...
Featuring
Feat.
Ft.

Even seeing some music with Prod in the title, I assume it means produced.

@ Chris: That is what I used to fix the renaming issues. You can use it to swap fields, split names....way too much to list. But if you are still ripping and naming this will be the second step.

I'd wonder about you if you had periods....

I have to sit down and start my books. I am not looking forward to it. I have done it before, for my friend, so I know the pain of it.

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I am the ONLY SANE 1 HERE

@Cue: "I'd wonder about you if you had periods.... "

I'm on hormone therapy, and it's working well!

There is another program out there called Bulk File Utility. I have used it on a limited basis to move disc#'s and track names and artist names around. If you want to swap those around in the file, you can do the whole disc in about a minute.

It will do far more than that, but I just started using it, so I am about as far from proficient as you can get with it. Someone that's a pc whiz could probably learn more in five minutes than I could in two hours.