Time for a strange one. Time for a little reflection on Yate.
A few users have brought to my attention a tagger feature table that was published by JThink, the makers of Jaikoz and SongKong.
Honestly, I have no major issues with it. I’m not saying I agree with all of it but it really does not bother me. It’s a marketing tool and presents a list of their features and weighs other tagger’s support of those features. Yate has a long list of features that SongKong does not have. I’m sure all of the other listed taggers have features outside of the list as well.
Yate has database files; a regular expression tester; video file support; JSON and plist file support; ReplayGain calculation; Beatport integration; tMDb integration; the ability to see all tags in the ID3 specification; m3u support; iTunes/Music playlist creation; and on and on.
Most importantly Yate has actions which lets it interface to almost everything else out there. If you haven’t done so, check out the web resources page. It’s the capability of these actions which let me churn out all those one off support requests. Yate is all about automation, not metadata matching. Metadata matching and acoustic fingerprinting are valid endeavours. Yate supports these abilities but perhaps does provide a less comprehensive means of using them. I appreciate the metadata provided by MusicBrainz and Discogs and appreciate being allowed to access it. However there are other sources of metadata out there that are quite extensive. Apple for one. The action mechanism allows us to access this metadata. Yate has been called “the Swiss Army knife of taggers”. I’m proud of that.
Hey, there are a lot of taggers out there and you should use the one (or more than one) that you’re most comfortable with. They all have their pluses and minuses … even Yate.
A lot of people put considerable time and effort into these products and live off of their hard work. Some products such as Picard are maintained and enhanced by people donating their time and work. I respect them all.
Yate is $20 for life. There has never been an additional charge and there has been hundreds of updates since 2012. Almost every feature that has been requested, and there have been some strange ones, has been implemented. All Yate revenue is donated at the end of every year to a variety of charities.
I wrote Yate because I wanted something different. I’m happy with the outcome as I’ve helped and continue to help a large number of users. As important as tagging may be to you, take the time to listen to your music.