An Introduction to Tags
Overview
Quod Libet supports free-form tags for most of the common audio formats. This means you can name your tags in any way you want, but using common tag names for common purposes is advised because it helps QL to write the tags in a way that other media players can understand them and also helps QL understand certain tag values and make use of them.
Quod Libet also supports expressions using “tied tags” in several contexts - see Tied Tags
Sort Tags
Tags artistsort
, albumsort
, albumartistsort
, performersort
(including roles) will be used for sorting if they are present.
Lets say you have a song with an artist
tag The Beatles and want it
to be sorted as if it was named Beatles, The, you can add an
artistsort
tag containing Beatles, The.
QL includes a basic plugin for creating such sort tags automatically.
The musicbrainz plugin includes an option to write sort tags if found.
Programmatic Tags
A programmatic tag is one typically added by either Quod Libet / Ex Falso or
another program and not designed for human consumption. Examples are
replaygain_track_gain
or musicbrainz_albumid
. Note that to see
these, you must turn on “Show programmatic tags” in the relevant
preferences window.
Internal Tags
Internal tags are tags that start with a ~
like ~people
, ~length
or
~year
. They are either not stored in files themselves, or are derived
from the values in the files.
See Internal Tags for a complete list.
Performer Roles
Quod Libet supports performer roles, which let you associate a performer in a
song with a specific instrument. To use this feature, name a tag
performer:role. Quod Libet will display the roles alongside the names in
~people:roles
and ~performers:roles
.
Album Identification
Quod Libet uses various tags to define what songs are in the same album.
For songs to be in the same album, both album
and albumartist
have to
be the same. In addition the first non-empty value of the following tags have
to match (checked in this order): musicbrainz_albumid
, labelid
,
album_grouping_key
.
Common scenarios
‘’I have a two disc album and each disc is shown separately.’’
Make sure the album tags (and albumsort
if present) (remove ‘CD1/2’ etc.)
and albumartist tags are the same.
‘’Two albums have the same name and are merged.’’
Add an albumartist tag for at least one of them.
Common Questions
‘’Why doesn’t QL know that my albums are different ones by seeing that they don’t have the same artist?’’
There are many songs that have multiple artist, so this can’t be decided on the basis of artist tags.
Replay Gain Tags
The following (fairly standard) tags are used for volume adjustment:
replaygain_track_gain
replaygain_track_peak
replaygain_album_gain
replaygain_album_peak
See the Replay Gain section for further details.