How to re-associate games and tags with your songs
quintin3265 · January 08, 2013 at 22:39 UTC
On Friday, January 11, based on community feedback, Game Remixes ended its relationship with the Video Game Music Database. I'd like to thank Gigablah and Secret Squirrel for their hard work in providing us data over the past four years, and for having hosted our forums for most of that time. The concept of VGMdb "influences" will be replaced with "Games," and songs will now be associated with one or more video games, rather than one or more specific soundtrack songs from those games. The change addresses difficulties some artists have had with finding the correct influences for their songs.
Unfortunately, there is no easy solution for transferring the game data other than re-adding it from scratch, since the VGMdb's game data is stored in a different way than GiantBomb's data is. Therefore, artists will need to re-associate games with their songs.
In addition to games, Game Remixes will also introduce the concept of "tags." Tags provide a convenient way to categorize music and search songs based upon their characteristics. Tags are divided into categories, such as "genre," "instruments," and so on. Both games and tags are input from the same screen.
Here are the steps that you will need to take in order to add games and tags to your songs:
1. Log in to Game Remixes using the "Log in" link at the upper right corner of the page.
2. Click on "Control panel" in the upper right corner, next to your picture.
3. In the control panel, highlight a song in the list of songs that you have uploaded.
4. Click the "modify games and tags" button at the top of the grid.
5. For each tag category, type in some tags that describe your song. If you can't think of any tags for a category, enter no tags for that category. Existing tags will be suggested to you as you type. You may also create new tags that are unique to your song.
6. Do the same for games. The GiantBomb database is very complete, but you may also enter games that are not in the database.
7. Scroll down to the bottom of the tag entry page and click "Finished."
8. Repeat this process for all songs.
I realize that a little bit of time will be required for this, but you will hopefully find that the process of tagging is simple and requires less than a minute per song. It is important to tag your songs in order for them to get the most exposure. If your song is a rock song, but you have not tagged it, then users searching for rock music will not be able to find your songs. However, all tags are optional, so you may enter as many or as few as you would like.
Song images for remixes are determined by the games they are remixes of. These images are obtained from GiantBomb and are displayed next to your songs in search results. Remixes that do not have games associated with them will display the ugly default icon, so for visual appeal, please do your best to associate your remixes with games.
Original songs should be tagged, but artists should leave the "Games" section blank.
An E-Mail will be sent to the 150 users subscribed to the Game Remixes mailing list linking to this post on Friday. Thanks for your attention in making the database more accessible than ever before.
Unfortunately, there is no easy solution for transferring the game data other than re-adding it from scratch, since the VGMdb's game data is stored in a different way than GiantBomb's data is. Therefore, artists will need to re-associate games with their songs.
In addition to games, Game Remixes will also introduce the concept of "tags." Tags provide a convenient way to categorize music and search songs based upon their characteristics. Tags are divided into categories, such as "genre," "instruments," and so on. Both games and tags are input from the same screen.
Here are the steps that you will need to take in order to add games and tags to your songs:
1. Log in to Game Remixes using the "Log in" link at the upper right corner of the page.
2. Click on "Control panel" in the upper right corner, next to your picture.
3. In the control panel, highlight a song in the list of songs that you have uploaded.
4. Click the "modify games and tags" button at the top of the grid.
5. For each tag category, type in some tags that describe your song. If you can't think of any tags for a category, enter no tags for that category. Existing tags will be suggested to you as you type. You may also create new tags that are unique to your song.
6. Do the same for games. The GiantBomb database is very complete, but you may also enter games that are not in the database.
7. Scroll down to the bottom of the tag entry page and click "Finished."
8. Repeat this process for all songs.
I realize that a little bit of time will be required for this, but you will hopefully find that the process of tagging is simple and requires less than a minute per song. It is important to tag your songs in order for them to get the most exposure. If your song is a rock song, but you have not tagged it, then users searching for rock music will not be able to find your songs. However, all tags are optional, so you may enter as many or as few as you would like.
Song images for remixes are determined by the games they are remixes of. These images are obtained from GiantBomb and are displayed next to your songs in search results. Remixes that do not have games associated with them will display the ugly default icon, so for visual appeal, please do your best to associate your remixes with games.
Original songs should be tagged, but artists should leave the "Games" section blank.
An E-Mail will be sent to the 150 users subscribed to the Game Remixes mailing list linking to this post on Friday. Thanks for your attention in making the database more accessible than ever before.