RAW TEXT DUMP OF TAGG’S MUSIC & MEDIA REFERENCE DATABASE

Since 1984 I’ve been entering musical source details into a database so as to keep track of references for teaching and research.
It’s been really useful for locating music among my cassettes, LPs, CDs, DVDs, videocassettes, MP3 files, and so on. More recently I’ve also used it discographically so that I can cut and paste details of recordings into articles and teaching materials. I thought all that data might be useful to others so I decided to put it online.

discogs.com is brilliant when it comes to discographical data of audio recordings of English-language pop, rock, R&B, etc. but less so if you need to refer to other stuff, for example to film music you recorded off air or that you have on VHS or DVD, or to classical music, or to other music outside the remit of discogs.com. What I’ve put on line is just a raw text dump of the 5,000 main items (e.g. albums), of the 55,000 subitems (e.g. tracks) and the 17,000 names of artists, composers, etc. that happen to have been in my database. The dump isn’t supposed to be exhaustive or even systematic but it might help you find the discographical reference you needed. Anyhow, 1% of something is better than 100% of nothing.

To use this resource you need to do the following:

[1] click here to download the ZIP file MusDump.zip (4.2 Meg.);

[2] open the ZIP file and read the explanations in the short PDF file <MusDumpXpln.pdf>;

[3] open the file <MUSALL.TXT> using a simple text editor like Windows WordPad or Helios’ TextPad;

[4] use the text editing software’s Find and Find again functions to locate whatever you’re looking for.

I take no responsibility for any errors you may encounter in the material, nor do I guarantee that you’ll find what you’re looking for. This resource is on line just in case you might find what you needed and because it’s been useful to me.

Good luck.

Philip Tagg
(Montréal, 2009-08-17)