Hi all,

A lifetime ago, when the TA forums came to be, there were only 2 main areas: "Music Discussion" (aka forumid=1) and Unknown Tracks (forumid=2). Going through some of my old posts I saw some of these were NEVER ID'd and that is just NOT right.

So, given we have tools today (like Shazam) it makes sense to see how many of the 4500+ outstanding can be identified. It turns out many are still a mystery, and some come back with a false ID (so you still have to manually check). I wrote a script that goes out to the Shazam API with the audio file and I automated much of the process (ID'ing the track, posting in the thread, changing title to the ARTIST-TRACK, and sending out an email to the thread starter (Hoping they still check that email account, lol)). For now, I'm still passing random IDs to the script to see what it spits out, but since there is no way to quantify how reliable the answer it gives is, for now I can't just mass identify everything.

* New Threads / Uploaded MP3 samples can be up to 10MB in size
(but file will be re-encoded @ 96kbps (to be under 1MB) and only the first 90 seconds of audio will be used)

* You can also listen to all the samples from within your browser by just clicking beside the thread
(gone are the days of winamp .m3u/realplayer/swf for browser audio (good riddance!))


Links:

* Identified Tracks Archive - All tracks that have already been ID'd

* Unknown Tracks - ONLY show tracks that still need an ID

* Unknown Tracks

code:

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ThB303 got his ID after 18 years and replied in the thread!

Patience is rewarded!

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2024-12-01:

Shazam API + script have been updated - easier for some tracks to be ID'd now!
(but so far only 10% have been successfully ID'd - 4000+ left to go)

Wow great job! Hopefully people are still around to appreciate the stuff you've ID'd for them. I also ID'd some stuff over 10 years after it was posted.

I would just like to make a small grievance if I may.

Swamper, I assume you are the site admin? Do you really think its a good idea to flood the front page of the ID section with posts from 20 years ago? Doing this slides all the current threads which contain recent ID requests and means people are a lot less likely to see them.

I understand that solving tunes no matter how old the threads are is a good thing, but lets be honest, most of the folks who posted on here 15 or 20 years ago aren't around any more.

I am not trying to start anything or cause trouble, I just think that its unnecessary and hinders the attempts of current users to find songs they are looking for.

Last edited by babz on Jan-29-2025 at 12:09

Fair and valid points. However, I wasn't expecting any replies for participating in this exercise to be honest but you'd be amazed at how many have popped back up and posted in response to their IDs being solved, especially after all this time. It's also great fun as the IDs are picked at random.

A suggestion might be filtering out the unsolved old IDs and putting them in their own section OR vice versa with new/current IDs. If that is possible, there will need to be a cut off point.

My only consideration is that this may be very time-consuming for dear old Swamper who has done so much to keep TA still operational and not just a hazy memory of trance's past.

quote:

Originally posted by babz I would just like to make a small grievance if I may. Swamper, I assume you are the site admin? Do you really think its a good idea to flood the front page of the ID section with posts from 20 years ago? Doing this slides all the current threads which contain recent ID requests and means people are a lot less likely to see them.

Hi Babz,

Your point is 100% valid.

I've been "slacking" on the cleanup in here since last month as I was busy building out the TA Wayback Machine. Admittedly, it is a bit messy in Unknown Tracks right now because we've been getting a lot more IDs than we were before.

Normally, the process is someone ID's the track, when the thread title gets edited with the ID, the thread starter gets an email with it. Most will never ever see that email, but in case they do, I usually left the thread up for 1-2 weeks with the ID'd track. This gives other ID hunters a chance to play back the tune and maybe discover something they didn't hear way back when.

After those 1-2 weeks ID'd threads get moved out to the Identified Tracks Archive - what I need to do now is automate the process where after 7 days it gets moved automatically if it has no replies

Ok fellas, thanks for the replies. If nothing else, I have to admire your dedication to solving ID's. As you say with the improvement of technology and creation of apps like Shazam, the process of identifying songs has been made easier, although I have noticed that these sort of tools are more effective when it comes to finding more recent music, rather than the older stuff.

I personally prefer the late 90's and early 2000's era trance and hard house, which can be a royal pain in the ass to identify! Are there any other music solving apps which are worth downloading aswell as Shazam or is that all you need?

I have heard that Soundhound/Midomi can be quite good for identifying oldskool trance but truthfully I have struggled to get it to work for me properly - it could be my phone. Others seem to get to it to work fine.

Other than that, it's a case of doing your detective work by searching old threads, mastering your way around Discogs and the track ID forums as well as digging around the old internet archives of your favourite DJs to see if they have left some clues in the past....