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Why is the GENRE tag not synced by the Tag Synchronisation Utility?

Started by Misophoniq, March 29, 2025, 12:10:55 PM

Misophoniq

I have a particularly specific setup where I use the track's GENRE tag to put it in a specific playtime group. That way I have groups of 3:30+ tracks, 3:40+ tracks, etc. all the way from 2:00+ to 7:00+. I use this method because the genre is absolutely unimportant for my station and putting the playtime in the GENRE tag enables me to make the Top of the Hour always starts with a max drift from only 5 seconds early or 5 seconds late on the exact time. I simply start inserting a random 7:00 minute tracks 7 minutes and 15 second before TotH, a 6:90 10 seconds after that and so on.

Anyhow, I was hoping that the Tag Synchronization Utility would then write all these edits back to the files, but I found that the GENRE tag is NOT part of this synchronization! This means that any Folder Sync will F* up all my edits and overwrite them with the actual genre tags from the MP3 file. Editing the GENRE tag to my liking with an external editor is not an option, because I need the actual playtime calculated by RadioDJ for my setup to work, not the time from the entire track start to end including silence.

So, is there any specific reason why RadioDJ does sync almost all tags but the GENRE tag when using the Tag Synchronization Utility? Or does anybody know of another way to make this happen? Or is there a better way to make sure RadioDJ uses tracks by random selection that will make the Top of the Hour actually end up almost exactly at that without cutting off playing tracks? Is there a way to make an event that inserts a track based on playtime?

I used to have a system where tracks I like on YouTube Music or Spotify are automatically downloaded to my RadioDJ computer and then added to the playlist by folder sync, but I can't use that anymore because Folder Sync makes me lose all my GENRE edits again.