Advanced modification of Classical Identification

One way that SongKong identifies classical releases is looking for releases that have credits to particular people known to work only on Classical music. This list is available within classical_people.txt, here is a small section, each line has the MusicBrainz Artist Id and then Artist Name


      1f9df192-a621-4f54-8850-2c5373b7eac9 = Ludwig van Beethoven
      d01c08ad-f09f-4396-b8a7-e27ae146ea27 = Ludwig von Széchényi
      5a4ae8d0-7ee4-4e83-bb89-1cfc9cf63d8b = Ludwik Osiński
      676bf1b0-b834-4117-86d2-ceba42fac051 = Luigi Badia
      688986c3-da7b-4465-92cb-f4736c94f2cd = Luigi Balestra
      cc272df6-a476-4d30-9ede-a47db04d8813 = Luigi Bassi
      5c1a3f8f-d5e5-4dcd-9e44-9443f06bb77d = Luigi Boccherini
      d6077dc7-7bdb-4cc8-9425-fb80bf2dff41 = Luigi Caracciolo
      375d52ad-5b7a-4f96-80e2-6d9ad13f5160 = Luigi Cherubini
      63b22cde-9b11-4465-83bf-ecf374eb490e = Luigi Gordigiani

The term Classical is used here in the most general sense so that anyone who died before music could be recorded is included plus Classical composers and conductors of the 19th and 20th century, in total there are about 6000 people listed. If you are finding that certain releases credited to a particular person are being classified as Classical when you do not want them to be you can search this file for that person and remove that line, you can also add people to this file using the format MusicBrainz Artist Id = Name

The first time you start SongKong the classical_people.txt file is copied from the installation folder into the user preferences location, and this is the file that SongKong will use. So you'll need to edit the file in this location for it to have any effect, see Section 12:Command Line for details of this location.

There is also a classical_composers.txt file, like all automated music taggers SongKong is always dealing with incomplete databases, a particular problem for classical music is that the database may have the list of credits for a release but not their particular role, e.g. Is Person B a composer, performer or conductor. SongKong has created a list of people who principal activity is composing so when we find this person credited on a release we can usually assume that they are the composer even if they do not have a composer credit on that particular release.

The smaller classical_conductors.txt list works the same way for conductors, both these files can be edited in the same way as the classical_people.txt file in order to fine tune your classical metadata requirements. If a person is a composer and conductors (or performer) then they will not be included in the composer/conductor list unless the vast majority of their credits are for one particular role.

The not_classical_release.txt list is an exception list to specify releases that should never be considered a Classical release. Some releases are borderline Classical and SongKongs algorithm can sometimes get it wrong, adding a MusicBrainz Release Id and a title to this list ensures that SongKong does not treat these releases as classical when using its identify classical algorithm.