Like many bloggers, TBogg does a weekly random Top 10. A lot of people (regulars, mostly) post their own random ten in response. We all get to feel good about ourselves, because everybody else has lousy taste in music - or something.
Anyway, it looks like the majority of people who post their random 10 list them in "Song - Artist" order, instead of "Artist - Song" order. This annoys me (no big deal, I'm easily annoyed).
It simply feels wrong to put the more-specific (and presumably less well-known) part of the song information before the less-specific (and presumably more well-known). You can assume everyone has heard of The Beatles. And you can assume not everyone has heard of their song "Long Long Long".
Why does it matter? Well, for one thing, when I see a list of songs, I skim, looking for bands I like, dislike or merely recognize. If it's a band I dislike, I won't bother looking at the song title. Putting the band (the part of the info that people have a better chance of recognizing) first means people can evaluate the list, at least at one level, faster.
Secondly, in all the programming languages I can think of, when you're looking at an object, or a structure, or any heirarchical data, you start with the most-general part, then work down to specifics, in a left to right order: MyObject.SomethingInsideMyObject.SomethingInsideThatThing.TheGoodies. Or, even more familiar, filenames:
- C:temppicturesbooty.jpg
.
You'd never write:
- booty.jpg/pictures/temp/C:
Even if the syntax of that form was better, the idea of working from the inside out feels counter-intuitive.
And putting the song first feels counter-intuitive, too.
Yeah, this is stupid. I'm waiting for 5:00.
It isn’t stupid, it’s darned important. I especially get annoyed with CD ripping software that wants to name the files in some bizarre fashion. At the least artist before song name and preferably include the track number and the album up front.
BTW how do you select your weekly iPod list? I don’t mean how do you select the songs you do but what does it represent, the first ten songs in your iPod’s playlist? just curious as I just got an iPod nano and want to flatter you (and everyone else) by doing a similar blog post.
i use EZCD extractor, that lets you choose the format for names – much nicer than the ones that pick the format for you.
At the least artist before song name and preferably include the track number and the album up front
right. anything else is an abomination. :)
BTW how do you select your weekly iPod list?
put it on Shuffle and then pick the first 10 that show up. some people do it within a playlist, or within a genre – but i think proper form demands that you say it’s from a playlist.
We speak an SVO language (Subject Verb Object), and obviously we would prefer to have the most important noun in the sentence up front. Then, we can listen to how its modified. I feel a band is the same way. We read the band’s name, and if we’d like to continue reading, we look for how the band’s sound is modified by a particular song written at a particular time.
Song first is just, well, so VOS. If we spoke Gaelic that would be perfectly fine.
I would even argue Song-Artist-Album is more OVS. And I guess you have to be a Klingon to appreciate that.