Unless you have more CUSTOM discs than regular (off the shelf) discs, you DEFINATELY have more duplicates than 3000 out of 70,000. I also use a songbook creator, (not sure if I can mention the brand on this forum), but it is a Major brand songbook creator. It will automatically take out duplicates, except for custom discs. I just took out all of my duplicates, I started with 12,265 songs. I ended up with 7,658 INDIVIDUAL TITLES. That means that I may have 17 versions of "New York, New York", by different manufacturers, OR even the SAME manufacturer, but I only need to list the title Once in my songbook. I did mine manually, because I had some custom discs, but I was REALLY surprised with the final number.
Rosario
Couple of questions about shows
I had 22,000 and after manual deletion ended up with 12,000. 10,000 dupes and multi dupes. 
At $2-3 per song. Figure out the wasted dollars. Most of that was in an attempt to get more one of a kind songs. Usually you have to buy a lot of useless songs to get the good ones.
My dupe ratio is almost half. I could be on the high side. I know for fact that I bought many discs just to get one song for myself or a customer. It's part of the game.
At $2-3 per song. Figure out the wasted dollars. Most of that was in an attempt to get more one of a kind songs. Usually you have to buy a lot of useless songs to get the good ones.My dupe ratio is almost half. I could be on the high side. I know for fact that I bought many discs just to get one song for myself or a customer. It's part of the game.
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KnoxvilleKaraoke
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- Joined: Thu May 07, 2009 10:22 pm
Hi.srnitynow wrote:Unless you have more CUSTOM discs than regular (off the shelf) discs, you DEFINATELY have more duplicates than 3000 out of 70,000. I also use a songbook creator, (not sure if I can mention the brand on this forum), but it is a Major brand songbook creator. It will automatically take out duplicates, except for custom discs. I just took out all of my duplicates, I started with 12,265 songs. I ended up with 7,658 INDIVIDUAL TITLES. That means that I may have 17 versions of "New York, New York", by different manufacturers, OR even the SAME manufacturer, but I only need to list the title Once in my songbook. I did mine manually, because I had some custom discs, but I was REALLY surprised with the final number.
Rosario
The problem I have with duplicate finders is simply that they are just that! Duplicate finders!
They can't find essentially the same song by the same singer on the same manufacturer's CD if there is the slightest spelling mistake, or if you have elected to look at content and file size as well, they are pretty much useles for tracking dupes in a big list.
Assume the track is in this format;
Disc I.D. (separator) Artist (separator) Song Title.EXT (where EXT can be any of the usual suspects, i.e. ZIP, CDG or MP3) and the separartor can be - , _ or anything else as long as it's consistant.
My initial idea in writing the Excel VBA code was to weed out the actual duplicate tracks from any manufacturer by looking ONLY at the disc I.D.!
My code will look through 70,000+ tracks and remove duplicate disc I.D. files in a matter of 30 seconds.
This immediatey eliminates the problem with spelling errors, assuming the disc I.D.s are accurate, of course.
Next, I want to write some code that will make up a list of every different artist name and unfortunately, this is where things start to get complicated as some files have the names not just spelled incorrectly but in different formats, i.e. Forename Surname, or Surname Forename and for example
SF001-01 - Rod Stewart - Maggie Mae.ZIP
SF001-01 - Stewart Rod - Maggie Mae.ZIP
This will never be found by any duplicate finder that I am aware of and believe me, I've looked!!!
The list would have to be looked through and a "Master" name selected to be compared against the other variations of the name and song titles to get rid of "real" duplicates.
Sounds complicated? IT IS!
Not worth the effort? IT IS!
It will take some time to achieve good results but manually searching through thousands of tracks is a recipe for madness and it is virtually certain that mistakes will happen.
I know that there are places in the States where KJ's regularly list 500,000 tracks and looking through that lot manually is insane. It would take months and you would end up in the Loony Bin long before you finished.
If a relatively simple VBA code can do the same thing in a matter of minutes, it works for me.
Essentially, I'm a lazy sod and don't believe in working, when I can get a PC to do the job for me.
Sandy
Being that many manufacturers release the same song on multiple discs renders this idea practically useless.My initial idea in writing the Excel VBA code was to weed out the actual duplicate tracks from any manufacturer by looking ONLY at the disc I.D.!
Complicated is putting it mildly. Beyond the misspellings and artist name formats there are many other inconsistencies to deal with. A song like "Big Girls Don't Cry" by Frankie Valli And The Four Seasons can and will be listed in any of these ways.Next, I want to write some code that will make up a list of every different artist name and unfortunately, this is where things start to get complicated as some files have the names not just spelled incorrectly but in different formats, i.e. Forename Surname, or Surname Forename and for example
SF001-01 - Rod Stewart - Maggie Mae.ZIP
SF001-01 - Stewart Rod - Maggie Mae.ZIP
Big Girls Don't Cry - Valli, Frankie And The Four Seasons
Big Girls Don't Cry - Frankie Valli And The Four Seasons
Big Girls Don't Cry - Valli, Frankie And Four Seasons, The
Big Girls Don't Cry - Frankie Valli And Four Seasons, The
Big Girls Don't Cry - Four Seasons
Big Girls Don't Cry - Four Seasons, The
Big Girls Don't Cry - The Four Seasons
Big Girls Don't Cry - Valli, Frankie
Big Girls Don't Cry - Frankie Valli
Big Girls Don't Cry - Valli, Frankie And The 4 Seasons
Big Girls Don't Cry - Frankie Valli And The 4 Seasons
Big Girls Don't Cry - 4 Seasons, The
Big Girls Don't Cry - The 4 Seasons
and so on...
I'm not making this stuff up. This is what you will find in the song databases used to automatically name song tracks. There is absolutely no standard naming convention. Laziness is the reason these databases are all screwed up. No human intervention. Everyone just thinks they can do a "good enough" job with a computer.
The ONLY way to accurately remove duplicate song titles is to do it manually. Nobody that I know of has more "unique song titles" in their song books than I do. Every single song in my song book database has been manually entered by me. There are absolutely NO duplicates.
Now I'm going through the KJ Pro master database song by song leaving only one instance of any unique song title. When finished I will be able to project a very close estimate of the total number of unique karaoke song titles in circulation today. Stay tuned.
Different correct spellings many different ways is only one problem. Another major problem is the different mispelling many different ways.
Having just completed a check of my 22,000 files, there are hundreds of mispellings. Everything from the wrong name mispellings to wrong title mispellings. There are also the title names in the wrong order or wrong words listed. One word wrong or out of place makes it a new song.
It has taken hours to go through a hundred songs using the internet to do 2-3 cross references because there is even wrong spellings on the different sites. I have used the actual artists sites and checked the way the songs and names are spelled on the albums.
Spelling is the last thing I expect to be right. Some words in song titles end in (ing) some and some use (in') dropping the g. That would list as a different song. Leaving out an (') can make it come up different. The Beatles Help! ends with (!) leave it out and you have a different song. Punctuation marks and contractions like (can't / can not) other spelling things like (leaving/ leavin') all make it a new song.
Manualing checking each song by artist and title is the only way I know to do it. Yes it takes a lot of time. I have used KJ Pro for at least 10 years. There are thousands of mispelling in it.
Buying the same program 7 years later, they haven't fixed one of the mispellings in their data base in ten years.
Having just completed a check of my 22,000 files, there are hundreds of mispellings. Everything from the wrong name mispellings to wrong title mispellings. There are also the title names in the wrong order or wrong words listed. One word wrong or out of place makes it a new song.
It has taken hours to go through a hundred songs using the internet to do 2-3 cross references because there is even wrong spellings on the different sites. I have used the actual artists sites and checked the way the songs and names are spelled on the albums.
Spelling is the last thing I expect to be right. Some words in song titles end in (ing) some and some use (in') dropping the g. That would list as a different song. Leaving out an (') can make it come up different. The Beatles Help! ends with (!) leave it out and you have a different song. Punctuation marks and contractions like (can't / can not) other spelling things like (leaving/ leavin') all make it a new song.
Manualing checking each song by artist and title is the only way I know to do it. Yes it takes a lot of time. I have used KJ Pro for at least 10 years. There are thousands of mispelling in it.
Buying the same program 7 years later, they haven't fixed one of the mispellings in their data base in ten years.
P.S., which Loony Bin should I send the flowers to, when you go off your rocker?wiseguy wrote: A song like "Big Girls Don't Cry" by Frankie Valli And The Four Seasons can and will be listed in any of these ways.
Big Girls Don't Cry - Valli, Frankie And The Four Seasons
Big Girls Don't Cry - Frankie Valli And The Four Seasons
Big Girls Don't Cry - Valli, Frankie And Four Seasons, The
Big Girls Don't Cry - Frankie Valli And Four Seasons, The
Big Girls Don't Cry - Four Seasons
Big Girls Don't Cry - Four Seasons, The
Big Girls Don't Cry - The Four Seasons
Big Girls Don't Cry - Valli, Frankie
Big Girls Don't Cry - Frankie Valli
Big Girls Don't Cry - Valli, Frankie And The 4 Seasons
Big Girls Don't Cry - Frankie Valli And The 4 Seasons
Big Girls Don't Cry - 4 Seasons, The
Big Girls Don't Cry - The 4 Seasons
and so on...
Absolutely correct and ONE of the first things I do is to remove comma's and as many other extraneous punctuation marks that I can. This relies on the Human (not drunk, hopefully) brain's ability to gloss over writing and still understand it.
I'm not making this stuff up. Now I'm going through the KJ Pro master database song by song leaving only one instance of any unique song title. When finished I will be able to project a very close estimate of the total number of unique karaoke song titles in circulation today. Stay tuned.
Rather you than me, Wiseguy and the best of luck to you.
Your efforts will gain you much repute.
Sandy
I leave all punctuation marks. I just make sure to look at the way it is on the album. Then I make all the title versions exactly the same.
Once they look all the same then the editing out to keep the best version is easier. I do my editing in KJ Pro.
There is no easy way to delete song dupes with different numbers.
Once they look all the same then the editing out to keep the best version is easier. I do my editing in KJ Pro.
There is no easy way to delete song dupes with different numbers.
Yes, it is absolutely ridiculous and totally unnecessary. And I blame KJ Pro as much as those who submit the listings. If you're going to sell a song database every entry should be human edited. If they're not accurate, what good are they?Bigdog wrote:I'm also suprised at how many manufacturers put out all the typos they do.
It's better than not having any. But I am really suprised that KJ Pro made no attempt to correct the literally hundreds or thousands of mistakes even 7 years later. Disappointing is a better word.
I have been in email contact with them. They are redoing the the format and changing other features. I offered about 10 suggestions they are going to incorporate. Maybe I should have suggested fixing the typos.
I have been using them as my song book program and I find myself doing many song and artist searches in their data base.
Hey for some money I could be persuaded to do some spelling editing for them.
I have been in email contact with them. They are redoing the the format and changing other features. I offered about 10 suggestions they are going to incorporate. Maybe I should have suggested fixing the typos.
I have been using them as my song book program and I find myself doing many song and artist searches in their data base.
Hey for some money I could be persuaded to do some spelling editing for them.
