Add support for Original Release Date

[certuna]

Navidrome should import the Original Release Date tag (id3v2.3: TORY, id3v2.4: TDOR Vorbis: ORIGINALDATE). If this field is found empty, then populate the field in the navidrome database with the Release Date/Year (which navidrome already supports)

It should be used when:

• [ ] Showing it in song details, if different from Year
• [ ] future Smart Playlist functionality (i.e., so that a "Rock from the 1990s" playlist doesn't include Elvis tracks from a retrospective album that happened to be released in 1995)
• [ ] (optionally?) sorting albums/songs by Original Release Date rather than Release Date/Year

[deluan]

How would we support this through the Subsonic API? An option (per user?) to select which year field to report int the API responses?

[certuna]

Probably, yes, or just default it to one or the other. There's nothing we can do about the limitations of the Subsonic API...

[arg274]

I'd also also like to add that if the original release date is not found, it should fallback to the release date; I pretty much have to add this custom rule to all the other players I use.

[certuna]

Any timeline on when you could get this done? Would be really great to have a nullsafe release

[deluan]

@certuna Thanks for the detailed investigation. Yeah, I think your suggestion make sense. Will probably base the implementation on that.

[certuna]

Note: having this fourth field for "original versions released" would be valuable for querying/browsing classical music, opera, jazz etc where there's a strong emphasis on interpretations of "standards" and historic compositions. Live albums would also benefit.

[SteveDinn]

I've also run into this issue when bands release "remastered" versions of older albums. It's like, "Yeah, I know it technically released in 2018, but this music is from 1992."

Edit: And the original post basically says this, I didn't read it all :)

[certuna]

We're mostly in this mess because id3 never explicitly defined a "reissue date" field, and the Vorbis people never bothered to define anything.

So people started to put 2018 in the "release date" field (which was actually meant for the first release date: 1992). And then put that 1992 date into the "original date" field (which was actually meant for the date of the originals, in the case of covers/live versions). So now there's no field anymore to store those dates...

[iophobia]

Just came here to comment on how needed this would be at least for my library. There's tons of remastered albums in there - multiple for some artists - and at least on my PC, I've been quite happy with the "Picard way" of organizing it in MusicBee, so that I can sort by original year. I very much support @certuna's proposition. This would eventually also allow for an easy differentiation of the dreaded "multiple album versions" issue since.

As for how to deal with empty "original year" tags: In MB, I have custom tag that falls back to release year when original year is not populated.

[onthecliff]

So any updates on this getting implemented? Is it possible? I would love for my library to look more organized. @deluan

[Maypul]

Also interested in this feature.

[certuna]

Been thinking about this some more. Updated the start post with more details.

Hope I can find some time to work on this in the near future.

[hayesti]

Very interested in this feature, particularly to tackle the remasters/re-releases in my collection.

[koehntopp]

I'd like to add a UI change:

If GroupAlbumEditions = false:

in AlbumGrid / AlbumList sort by ORIGINALDATE (which keeps different releases of the same album together)

[certuna]

That's already how it's implemented in the PR: if an album is tagged "the Picard way" (ie, with 'originaldate' + 'date'), Navidrome will automatically use originaldate as the sorting/filtering date.

[koehntopp]

That's how it's implemented in the PR: if an album is tagged "the Picard way" (ie, with 'originaldate' + 'date'), Navidrome will automatically use originaldate as the sorting/filtering date.

Perfect. I had read "AlbumGrid: no changes needed" as "no change to standard UI", which does not work well.

[Maypul]

@certuna would you tell me how to do it? For me it always use year from 'date' field. https://prnt.sc/wXWgBQbMej3O I would love to use original release date everywhere. Using latest version on docker as of today. Files are fully tagged by MusicBrainz, manual edits, if any, are only on some titles.

Edit: Noticed that latest tag is 4 month old, changed it to develop and seems to be working as expected now.

[koehntopp]

I must be doing something wrong - I would expect Piano Man to appear as the first album, but the list seems to be sorted by RELEASEDATE instead of ORIGINALDATE?

[certuna]

Ah - yes this happens in the case where there is no DATE. I'll fix that.

[koehntopp]

Before you're fixing the wrong path - there is a DATE ;)

Maybe the implementation assumes that DATE is equal to ORIGINALDATE then?

I started tagging like this a while ago, if there is a proper definition that says which one DATE is supposed to be I can easily change that, all tagging in my files happens automatically based on Discogs tags.

[certuna]

Ah yes but then it sorts correctly - DATE (=recording date) is set to 2013, where it should presumably be 1973 (that's when Piano Man was recorded, right)?

From the Vorbis specs: DATE Date the track was recorded

But I checked the code, there was an actual bug: in the case where ORIGINALDATE = 1973 and RELEASEDATE = 2013 but there is no DATE, then it uses 0 for sorting, that's clearly wrong and I'll fix it.

[koehntopp]

Perfect - then I'll re-tag, and everything should be fine.

[certuna]

ORIGINALDATE is a bit of a minefield, because there's different implementations what this field should hold - if you go by the id3v2.4 specs, it should hold the date of the original song, in the case of a cover/live version/etc. So if you follow that definition, for example, the 1987 Piano Man live recording on Billy Joel's live album A Matter of Trust should have ORIGINALDATE = 1973, DATE = 1987-10, RELEASEDATE = 2014-02-25. And you would probably expect to see it sorted as October 1987, and not 1973 or 2014.

But if you let Musicbrainz Picard tag the same album (with its default settings), all songs would have ORIGINALDATE = 1987-10, DATE = 2014-02-25, RELEASEDATE = empty - so if you expect it to be sorted as well it as October 1987, Navidrome needs to map the fields differently.

(ah, I already said all this further upthread...)

[tsnavi]

What do I need to do to solve this on my server? I still see the newer 'reissue' date as the only date, rather than the original release date as I would prefer to.

[tommyalatalo]

Can we get some clear docs for how files are supposed to be tagged in the end? I've read through the thread but there's so much back and forth that it's hard to see what tags Navidrome expects in the end to sort according to the original release date.

[rfunk]

This documents the default setting for GroupAlbumEditions to be true, but in version 0.50.0 the default is false. I think this is not a good default, since it splits up albums if the tracks have been tagged for dates instead of for the entire album.

When the default changed to false it started splitting my anthology albums (flac) where I had used originaldate per-song (only where available) and not used releasedate (because my other software only supports date). Setting GroupAlbumEditions to true does seem to have fixed my problem though.

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