I've been listening to quite a few rap CDs lately. However, I can't stand all those silly skits.

Now, if each track on a CD came with a few categories tied to them, such as "song", "skit", "ballad", "instrumental", "the hit song that made you buy this otherwise pointless album" etc, and you could tell your CD player to just ignore certain categories and play others, life would be so much nicer.

For practical reasons, there should be standardized categories, as well as per-CD-specific categories (such as "tracks produced by So-so" etc)

The categorization data should be possible to put on the CD in such a way that non-supporting CD players filter it out through the error correction algorithms.
-- Brummo, Nov 11 2003

Should be, could be, won't be. CD companies are mostly avoiding putting text on CDs, despite the equipment out there waiting to read it. That being said, +.
-- Worldgineer, Nov 11 2003


Baked...MP3 CDs with folders?. or just make a good mix?
-- FeelinPhine, Nov 11 2003


[FeelinPhine] This idea isn't baked. With an MP3 CD, to have a song bridge categories, you would have to have multiple instances of the song on the CD, but with Brummo's idea, the song would have an id tag (id4?) that contained category information relevant to the player.
-- Condiment, Nov 12 2003


I worry about ideas like this which seem to help me to close my mind, and make judgements against things I haven't heard yet.
-- Fishrat, Nov 12 2003


It's optional closure, Fishrat.
-- Condiment, Nov 12 2003


[jutta] - I *think* moodlogic (link) does the user-supplied categorisation.
-- hippo, Nov 12 2003


The last time something was half-baked for MINIDISC, everyone said, 'Who even *uses* md anymore.' Well I do, and it's perfect for what you want, Brummo.

• you can make your own track marks • after you cordon off those unwanted skits by defining them as their own tracks, you can - delete them - move them to the end of the md - or program the player to skip the skit tracks • you can also supply your own track names for easy identification of a song, skit, or favorite piece of an interview, film soundtrack or audiobook • many new md machines also let you group tracks into...groups. Voila, categories.
-- tharsaile, Nov 12 2003


With mp3s becoming ever more popular I really can't see companies bothering to change current CD technology, however easy it may be. If you load the CD onto your mp3 player you can attach whatever information you like and play it in whatever order you like.
-- BlueGiraffe, Nov 27 2005



random, halfbakery