The tag editor adds an exiting  new dimension to the music4dance song database by enabling customization.  You can tag songs and the relationships between songs and dance styles based on your own experience and tasteand then use the tag filtering tools to create song lists for anything that you want.  In addition, just the act of tagging a song adds it to your master list of songs.

Note: Music4Dance has been through a major upgrade since this documentation was written.  The general concepts on this page are still generally accurate.  But colors, icons and some specifics will differ from the live site.  Please contact us with specific questions or requests for updates.

The Basics

Once you have registered and logged in to the music4dance website, the song details page has some additional features.

(A) All tags have an extra icon that shows if it is one of your tags (T) or a generic tag (+).  Clicking on the tag will show a menu of options, the first of which will toggle the state of the tag.  If it is marked as one of your tags, the option will be to clear it.  If it isn’t marked as your tag the option will be to mark it.  Other options on this menu are the standard navigation options for tags and will take you away from the editing page.

(B) All tag types have extra blank tags marked with an asterisk (*) that take you to the tag editor dialog box and enables more sophisticated editing including adding new tags.

(C) The ‘shoes’ icon shows if you’ve voted on a song and gives you the ability to vote or change your vote.  The outline of shoes means you haven’t voted, clicking once will fill the shoes and indicate that you like dancing that style to the current song, clicking a ‘full shoes’ icon changes it to a ‘no shoes’ icon that indicates you explicitly do not think the current song works with the dance style.

(D) You can vote on dance styles that aren’t already listed by clicking in the “Add dance style” box and choosing a dance style.  Note that this list is intentionally restricted to dance styles that are programmed into the system.  If there are other dance styles that you would like to see here, please send feedback.

Tag Editor Dialog

The tag editor dialog lets you add and remove tags of a particular type either for the song or for the dance as applied to the song.  Please read the tag definition page for an overview of how these tag types can most effectively be used before adding your own tags.  But also keep in mind that like any general tagging system, the most important thing is that you use tags in a way that makes sense to you since their main use is to let you go back and filter song lists for yourself.

When you click on an “add or change tag” button (these are the buttons on the song details page that look like empty tags with asterisks), a modal dialog box will appear.

The dialog has (A) a title indicating what kind of tag you are editing. (B) A cancel button to leave the dialog without changing anything – the Escape key will also act as cancel.  (C) The Tags control that contains your current selection of tags.

Adding Tags in the Dialog:

You can add tags in several ways.

First, you can just start typing at the end of the tag control (C).  A drop-down control (D) will appear with all of the tags that have already been used that contain the text as well as an (E) Add Option: for a new tag.  When the tag you want appears in the drop-down, select it and hit enter.

Or, you can click on any of the predefined tags in the (F) “Tags that you have used” or (G) “Tags that others have used” sections.  You can re-sort the tags in either of these sections either alphabetically or by popularity by using the sort control (H).

Deleting Tags in the Dialog:

Delete tags by clicking the “x” at the end of the tag in the tag control.

Saving Changes from the Dialog:

Click the Save button to go back to the song details page, which will temporarily save those changes to the page.  NOTE: You must still save the overall changes for the page to make the changes permanent.

Saving all of your changes:

Once you are happy with the changes you’ve made to a song, just click the save button that appeared in the upper right of the page.

Undoing Changes

If you aren’t happy with your changes, you can just navigate away from the page.

If you have already saved changes, the next time you go to that song details page (or click refresh) a button will appear at the bottom of the page that allows you to permanently undo your changes to that song.

Example page:

This is an example of the same song details page as above after some edits have been made but before they have been saved.

1. Save: As soon as you make any edits, the save button appears.
2. Tag: Made an existing tag one of your tags
3. New Tag: Added a new tag to the song via the dialog
4. Tag on Dance Style: Added a new tag to Bolero
5. Voted up: Voted that Castle Foxtrot is a good dance style for this song.
6. Voted down: Voted that Rumba is not a good dance style for this song.

What can I do now that I’ve tagged some song?

First, you can do everything that you’ve already been able to do with tags that others have added – this is documented on the Tag Cloud, Tag Filtering, and Song List pages.  Since tagging also includes adding and voting on dance styles for songs, your additions will show up in the Dance Styles pages and will be reflected when you filter by dance style on the Song List pages.

Even better, you can start with a list of songs that you’ve tagged from the account settings page and use all of the tag and dance style filtering to build your own lists.