Released year or recorded year?

[A11ectis]

What do individuals like yourselves use for the year attribute in track metadata? Do you use the year the track/album was released, or the year it was recorded.

I get this is a silly question, but this place is... kinda dead. So who cares?!

[Victhor]

Released year

[k_rock923]

Released year, mostly. However, for classical, I sometimes care more about recorded year, since re-releases are so common.

[A11ectis]

I mostly posted this because I started to use a 90's Smart View and began to question how I should be giving dates to tracks.

[Victhor]

I would advice you to check in your file's tags the year format, if I don't remember wrong, Winamp accepts xx/xx/xxxx format but is not good handling it.. (I could be wrong though, I always cleared those formats on the fly)

[Aminifu]

Originally Posted by Victhor

I would advice you to check in your file's tags the year format, if I don't remember wrong, Winamp accepts xx/xx/xxxx format but is not good handling it.. (I could be wrong though, I always cleared those formats on the fly)

You are basically correct, Winamp will accept a string of 1 or more numbers (so the month, day, or year could be entered first leading to sorting differences), but I just use the 4-digit year of release.

[Warrior of the Light]

release date, also for compilation albums. So I could have the same track twice with two different dates

[thunderhayes]

Greatest Hits/Various Artist compilations (Now That's What I Call Music, movie soundtracks), the year that particular collection was released.

Re-released/remastered albums (Beatles 2009, AC/DC 2003, the expanded reissues of some albums), the year the original album was released, unless it is a version that has remixes or new tracks recorded later than the original issue. Live tracks of indeterminate date don't count.

Live recordings, depends.
Live recording of ONE concert, the year the concert happened.
Live recording of multiple concerts, if bootleg, the year the concert happened.
If it is an official compilation of live tracks from various concerts, released in a certain year, the year of the release.
If it is a recording of one concert, released officially in a different year than the concert, I'm likely to lean toward the year of the concert.

Essentially this keeps all officially released materials bundled together while keeping all single concert recordings in line with when the concert actually happened.