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Yep, that's my thoughts after a full 24 plus hours (probably higher) of matching song names and artist names so my book is clean and shows no dupes. I am now in the songbook preview window (fastTrack) which doesn't show dupes. I am STILL finding errors. I am halfway thru (M's) and hope to begin printing my 6 books tonight. I've added maybe another 700 non dupe songs since my last printing in September and yet I've dropped the number of pages down by 40 to 140. That was with a fairly clean book to start with. No dupes, no vocals.

These morons should go to a site that shows the name of the band the way the BAND has it on their sites and albums. For instance, "The Beatles" not the "Beatles"... "Four Tops" not "The Four Tops. "5th Dimension" not "The Fifth Dimension". Should I go on? I didn't even discuss screwed up song titles!

These companies want us to play by the rules but they give us crap to work with. Too bad fastTracks can't catch some of this!

Just sounding off, my back and eyes hurt!

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KingBing Entertainment C'mon Up! I have a song for you!!! [font=MS Sans Serif][/font]

The manus don't necessarily give the book makers the databases of their listings to work with - they are often created from their own research from some of the companies that i've talked with in the past. But as far as 'The' goes, I can see why they would pull them out, I know I do. When alphabatizing, I don't want a whole list of artists or titles beginning with "the". Nor do I like them at the end ie Beatles, The.
As far as Fifth Dimension, they've always had a The in front of them on the albums I have. Four Tops have had it listed either way on their albums covers with and without the The.

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My bad, I DO have "The 5th Dimension" listed.

I'm fine with that if they were at least consistent. I also find that when the compressed or uncompressed files are added to the software program, there are even more errors. These definitely have to come from the manus. Correct me if I'm wrong.

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KingBing Entertainment C'mon Up! I have a song for you!!! [font=MS Sans Serif][/font]

One other thing, when they do list "The", it's always after the name of the group which is a good thing, for instance,, "5th Dimension, The". However if that is from one manu's file and another has it listed as "5th Dimension", then it shows up as 2 separate artists. I know I will gain very little value out of being this anal, but I've seen some books (usually pirates who don't give a rat's azz about the books "just ask I have it") that are so cluttered and disorganized making it very confusing for the customer. I want mine to be user friendly.

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KingBing Entertainment C'mon Up! I have a song for you!!! [font=MS Sans Serif][/font]

Which is THE main reason I don't use the canned book databases - never found one yet that doesn't have that kind of errors. I hand type every new disc in & double check it with the listings of the way I already have it typed in previously. A little more work, but worth it IMO. I also have the numbers alphabatized so 5th Dimension would be found under the F's, 3 Doors Down would be found under the T's. I have seen books that have also spelled out the Fifth or Three and ALSO have the numbers as well that sort at the beginning of the list.

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I just spent two days trying to standardize that very thing so I could take out the dupes for a new printing. Have too much in the "New Additions" section. Was about to email it to myself but decided to save it to my thumb drive first. Pressed SAVE and got the "data lost "message. Boyfriend worked to get it back but nothing happening. Still have the original list but get to start over on fixing the mistakes and inconsistancies before I can de-dupe. One that was bugging me was ".38" vs "38"

Fairly easy, well easier for you lonnie, you've had your list established for quite some time. I'm just coming into my own, I've been adding in huge chunks. I've purchased a lot of "lots" of disks thru ebay and other sites. If I only add a disk or two a week, it wouldn't be much work to hand add. I think even though I'm at a point of great slow down (got lazy for awhile and hadn't added those disks) I will still use fastTracks. Saves a lot of typing, but will do as I go. I compare as you do by opening two windows of fastTracks with one showing my main songbook and one showing the new and then compare. If they (song or artist names) are different, I look up the proper name and change accordingly.

However saying that, the manus STILL suck when it comes to naming their disks. The digital names don't lie and they do come straight from the manus.

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KingBing Entertainment C'mon Up! I have a song for you!!! [font=MS Sans Serif][/font]

which is why I hand type every entry in and compare them to what I have already in my data base. It took a while when I took over the books for my partner but now have clean books with song titles and artists matching. There are things a human can do that computers and computer data bases can't do.

It's why I hate ABS because the computer on the braking system doesn't "see" what I see and doesn't know what I want I want my car to do.

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You can be strange but not a stranger

Ouch. Feel for you. Mcky helped me to pare off all my dupes for my website.

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KingBing Entertainment C'mon Up! I have a song for you!!! [font=MS Sans Serif][/font]

True, but you can't come close to doing what those brakes can do.

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KingBing Entertainment C'mon Up! I have a song for you!!! [font=MS Sans Serif][/font]

I had to start somewhere as well, there were absolutely no canned databases when I started, I hand typed over 2000 songs originally in my first book. I used to add a couple hundred songs every few weeks when I started, it's not a matter of fairly easy, it's a matter on how you want your final product to look. I've looked into the canned databases for simplicty sake, and haven't found ONE that i've liked the final output or accuracy that i've put the attention into that I can create with an Access report - it's all in how much time you are willing to spend on it - don't want to spend the time, then you spend time bitching & editing for errors all the time, i'd rather take the time & know it's right the first time all in the while getting to know what I actually have in my library. Take a canned database - hope it's correct & go through & edit each track that isn't right, or type it in by hand - get to know your database & know it's what you want to start with!


I do bulk purcahses on occasion as well. I found a site that sold SC discs for $5 or less last year & bought almost 100 discs, hand typed them all, doing so it helped me know what I have instead of just typing in a disc number & have to tell a customer - well I have to check and see as I have no clue what I actually have - with manually typing them in, I already know if I have it or not.

Again, the canned book makers do not necessarily get all their info from the manu - so you cannot put all the blame on them.

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Rip, obviously you've had no high speed pursuit training. ABS is completely useless. ABS is fine for the average driver but you'll find ABS is disabled on many police vehicles and pretty well non-existant on Formula 1 or any other race vehicles. Like KJPro they have their uses for the average person but not for a professional.

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You can be strange but not a stranger

Yep, kinda like the Airbus pilot that tried to abort a landing and do a go-around.... when he tried to increase the climb angle, the computer effectively responded "no way mister" and proceeded to fly the aircraft into the trees!


More on topic, having a high school education would not necessarily have the desired effect in resolving the listing problem you are having.... just reading most of the posts on this and any other forum on the net gives a good insight into the literacy levels of today's youth!

I hand type our list also--used to find that if I even cut and pasted from a song list that the actual disc might have a slightly different song order or replaced song so I double check against the disc label when it comes in. When I buy the close-outs, I've found those discs are sometimes on close-out for a reason--have had completely different songs be on them then on the label or the vocals not removed from the instrumental track, etc.

It seems like a lot of work now but decided to really clean it up while it is still down to 414 discs as it will only get more difficult later. I'm betting another thing that is bothering you, Rip, is someone like Eric Clapton who has solo work plus Cream plus Derek and the Dominos and some manus may put the same song under Eric Clapton while others list it as Cream. Or Eric Burdon and the Animals vs just The Animals, etc.

Layla is a perfect example, this was actually Derek & The Dominoes, have seen it listed under all 3 on various databases. Some of these were listed on the cheaper manu discs like All Hits I believe had it as Clapton (not the unplugged version), while I can't remember which one had it as Cream.

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Legends seems to be a big offender on this. They will put out a "Lovin' Spoonful" disc and list everything as Lovin' Spoonful even if it is a solo song by one of the members. (Welcome Back--John Sebastian). Same for their Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young disc. Neil Young's solo work is still listed under CSN&Y. They even have "For What It's Worth" listed as CSNY instead of Buffalo Springfield.

First of all. When I open up a cdg on my computer, or rip it, the naming method that shows up is not from a canned booked database. It is coming straight from the manu. That falls back on the manu. I've found that the number one offender is sound choice. Maybe they have the most realistic recordings overall, but their admin sucks. Period! Regardless of whether someone complains about it or not, it's just not professional.

According to fastTrack, they (fastTrack) get their info from the manu, I have no reason to not believe them when I see all the errors in the files themselves and they are the same type of errors.

When I use fastTracks to make my book, I still open up the files to see if they match what the listing on fastTracks says it is. If I find mistakes, I fix them. So I do know when I push the "go" button to play a song, it is the correct song. Learned that lesson the hard way a couple times last year when I first started. It's still a lot faster, maybe 5 times faster than entering each and every song by hand.

I understand the "layla" story and I'm experienced enough to know the difference in most cases. I correct this as well. Of course layla is just an example. How many solo artists have been with different groups which creates the same issue. This one is easy to spot for me.

My biggest beef is when the manus cant even spell the song OR artist correctly. When strange is spelled stange, that's just sloppy. Knowing when to use hyphens, commas, etc should be a professional's job when they list their merchandise. This is what makes duplicates show up after I filter them out. Am I bitching about it? Hell yes I am! Does that mean I won't fix the mistakes? What purpose will that serve me? Of course I WILL, it's just that I SHOULDN'T and so I am mentioning it here. This is no different than someone "cupping" the mic or one of the other things they do that makes us roll our eyes but we know we have to deal with it. So we come here and vent.

In the end what I want is for all my songbooks to be first of all, easy for the customers to find what they want, and for some accuracy. I want to use my time making this happen as little as possible with the least amount of errors.

I'm done with this subject. I'm printing out my book and they look DOG GONE GOOD if I say so myself.

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KingBing Entertainment C'mon Up! I have a song for you!!! [font=MS Sans Serif][/font]

Wait till you get to Earth, Wind & Fire.

There are about a half a dozen ways you can spell THAT!

While I agree that the manu's should get the information right it all comes down to who types in the info. Everyone makes typo's even the largest newspapers in the world and they have proof readers that still miss the mistakes.

When I rip if the disc is not in someone's data base I hand type it in, if it is I just double check it for spelling and let it go, if a lot of the titles start with THE I let it go and correct it with a program I have called Rename Master which can do a lot of changes in a short time like taking out the word THE at the beginning of a song title or band name or putting the disc number where ever you want it in the name and do all the files at once thus saving me the time to do it.

Then I use a program called Clone Spy to go through the database and look for dupes by the same name this will allow me to decide which of the dupes I want to put in a dupe file.

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