Separate different versions of the same song on scores

[Laserrobotics]

Where's the thread that had a really good explanation of why this is neither likely to happen nor a good idea?  Because we go over this same exact problem every 2-3 months.

[NaturalChemical]

Where's the thread that had a really good explanation of why this is neither likely to happen nor a good idea?  Because we go over this same exact problem every 2-3 months.

I can't find our last round of replies. Maybe someone should save them next time.

Reasons we wouldn't separate boards by album: greatest hits albums, reprints, etc.

[lavacano201014]

this is why audiosurf needs to also read what album the song come off of as well!

Scoreboards will die. Especially with Pink Floyd's Echoes album (for instance): Way too many ways to put it. For instance, I have five, from ripping different songs at different times:

"Echoes - The Best of Pink Floyd"
"Echoes - The Best of Pink Floyd 2"
"Echoes (disc 2)"
"Echoes - The Best of Pink Floyd (CD 1)"
"Echoes - The Best of Pink Floyd [Disc 1]"

[murlough23]

I think my request for a wildcard search would dovetail nicely with the solution to this problem. It would allow users to look up a song title and see what versions of it exist in the database. Not perfect, because someone could still play that extended live version of a song before realizing they were on the same scoreboard as folks who played the album version, but I'd at least be sure to check ahead of time for a live version/remix/alternate take of a song to see how others were tagging it.

I also think the suggestion was made somewhere to allow people to vote to merge or split songs when it became clear that two separate recordings were sharing a scoreboard. I appreciate that this would not be easy to implement. But maybe a good fix in the meantime would be to allow a player, immediately after playing a song, to correct the way that the song is listed. (This shouldn't be free-for-all - i.e. I can't score six digits on some 20-minute prog-metal epic and then try to pass it off as the latest Coldplay single. But maybe similar titles/spellings of the artist name could be suggested - sort of like the "Did you mean...?" when you misspell something in a Google search - and allow the player to move a score to that song when they realize they've got it in the wrong place. Sure, there's potential for abuse there, but no more than there already is when people intentionally tag their mp3 files in misleading ways.)

In the meantime, I try to re-tag to fit popular conventions where possible. Example: "Mutemath" without the space and "Mute Math" with the space both exist, with the same songs on separate scoreboards under each artist name. I'll tag accordingly so that I'm competing with whichever one has the highest score logged by another player thus far.

[PlanetBloopy]

I'm quite surprised that Audiosurf doesn't have checks in place to separate different versions of songs. Some of the suggestions in this thread sound really good. You wouldn't need to compare waveforms, just compare the Audiosurf track shapes and duration. If the track shape and duration are 96% the same, then it's probably the same song. As soon as 2 people have played the same version of a song, separate it out.

You could use the same checks to merge badly tagged song titles into the most popular tag.

For badly tagged artists, you could use Last.fm's redirection data.

[Passerby]

I'm quite surprised that Audiosurf doesn't have checks in place to separate different versions of songs. Some of the suggestions in this thread sound really good. You wouldn't need to compare waveforms, just compare the Audiosurf track shapes and duration. If the track shape and duration are 96% the same, then it's probably the same song. As soon as 2 people have played the same version of a song, separate it out.

You could use the same checks to merge badly tagged song titles into the most popular tag.

For badly tagged artists, you could use Last.fm's redirection data.

it would spilt up the score boards too much.

even small things like using different audio formats (lossy vs lossless) can really change the shape enough to make a scoring difference so would prolly also spilt the boards which would screw over competition since there will be so few people per board.

[buddharock]

The worst thing is that splitting them in the various ways suggestion won't help the opposite problem -- in cases where the scoreboards are split because of different names. Even a "the" will make different names, but especially with video game music the same track can have a wide variety of both artist and name entries:

For instance, all of the following are the same track:
Nobuo Uematsu - Terra
Final Fantasy III - Terra
SQUARE - Terra
Nobuo Uematsu - Tina
Final Fantasy VI - Tina
SQUARESOFT - Tina

I can imagine people using any of those combinations, as quite often people will use the game or the game company as the artist. Granted with FF most people know better, but it was a good example of a track that has two seperate but official names, as well as two seperate but official game names....so yeah.
I'm sure I've missed out on compteting with many tracks because of this.

A different idea in a situation like this is to classify all of those songs under one title. Perhaps code it so that, even if the tags are different... if the file and the track itself are the same, and the system recognizes that, it could classify them as one and combine the scores from all the titles. But, such an undertaking would likely take a lot of effort and I know it'll probably never see the light of day, nor would I expect it to unless the developers suddenly had a lot of time on their hands. It's just an idea.

[Passerby]

The worst thing is that splitting them in the various ways suggestion won't help the opposite problem -- in cases where the scoreboards are split because of different names. Even a "the" will make different names, but especially with video game music the same track can have a wide variety of both artist and name entries:

For instance, all of the following are the same track:
Nobuo Uematsu - Terra
Final Fantasy III - Terra
SQUARE - Terra
Nobuo Uematsu - Tina
Final Fantasy VI - Tina
SQUARESOFT - Tina

I can imagine people using any of those combinations, as quite often people will use the game or the game company as the artist. Granted with FF most people know better, but it was a good example of a track that has two seperate but official names, as well as two seperate but official game names....so yeah.
I'm sure I've missed out on compteting with many tracks because of this.

A different idea in a situation like this is to classify all of those songs under one title. Perhaps code it so that, even if the tags are different... if the file and the track itself are the same, and the system recognizes that, it could classify them as one and combine the scores from all the titles. But, such an undertaking would likely take a lot of effort and I know it'll probably never see the light of day, nor would I expect it to unless the developers suddenly had a lot of time on their hands. It's just an idea.

but the files will be different too it's not just the naming and metadata that is different since different people use different encoders and file formates for there music.

example most of what is floating around on torrents is mp3's but almost my whole collection is lossless FLAC so it would end up being separated out with your idea.

[blue_h3x]

To see if the tracks were the same, you would need to do some kind of check sum on the file. This would, as Passerby said, cause more of an issue depending on the codec used.

[buddharock]

True enough. I had forgotten about that, and I've played songs like that before. My mistake.

[Laserrobotics]

A better idea which has been mentioned elsewhere was to have a group of people decide what tags are the same song, and then tell the system to combine those scoreboards, kind of like what LibraryThing does with authors who had variations on their names in different books.