I have dealt with the issue when organizing my music library. Some bands are inconsistent. For example, some Tom Petty albums have on the cover:
"Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers" (using the "&" symbol), while some have
"Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers" (using the word "and")
In order to keep things consistent in my music library, I long ago decided to use the "&" symbol for all bands like this and stop trying to figure out if one or the other is truly correct. So for me, it's:
Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers
Elvis Costello & The Attractions
Graham Parker & The Rumour etc. etc.
and not
Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers
Elvis Costello and the Attractions
Graham Parker and the Rumour
I've also noticed there is a trend lately especially for rap and hip-hop to add the guest vocalist name to the song title using "Feat." or "ft." for "featuring." So there are a lot of song titles like this:
Lil' Wayne - She Will (Feat. Drake)
or
Eminem - Won't Back Down ft. Pink
They are inconsistent about whether they uses parenthesis and whether they use "Feat." or "ft."
Then their is just the basic issue of capitalization. For example, for the song by Cream, should it be:
"Tales of Brave Ulysses"
or should it be
"Tales Of Brave Ulysses" (should the "O" in "Of" be capitalized or not?)
Another thing that drives me crazy is the word "The" before band names. For example, "The Clash," "The Who," "The Ramones," etc. In my music library, I always eliminate the word "The" before band names. That way when I view my library by artist in alphabetical order, I don't end up with a million bands beginning with "The." For example, "Clash" shows up under "C," "Who" shows up under "W," and "Ramones" show up under "R," instead of them all showing up under "T" for "The." Also, I don't list them as "Clash, The" or "Who, The." When in doubt, I just eliminate the word "The" completely. For me it's "Psychedelic Furs," not "The Psychedelic Furs" or "Psychedelic Furs, The."
I have over 12,000 tracks on my computer and it's a never-ending battle to be more consistent about how they are tagged. I don't think I'll ever really be finished fixing them!
