I have pretty clean tags on my music, but I made the decision (questionable one) a long time ago, to leave the "year" field empty, since I would always run into discrepancies in different websites as to when a lot of albums where released and I thought Id just spare myself the trouble.

This was fine for me until a while ago, when I grew tired of doing a google search for the discography of each artist I wanted to play, in order to know what album was released first, so Id play them in order. (Specially for new artists that I wasnt too familiar with yet).

Needles to say, I want to fill in the "Year" field in all my tags now, but I have several "Rare" and "B-Sides" albums, that are hard to tag when it comes to Year. Bootleg albums also run into this problem.

So, heres the question: What do you all do when you dont know the year a song was released?

Do you just leave it empty? do you just type "Unknown"?

Just curious.
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I use http://www.allmusic.com pretty much all day round.
If I don't find an album there, i give up :)
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That was the sound of all us "anal taggers" cringing at the thought of leaving the year blank!

I never leave it blank or put unknown. Like Essin, if I don't know/not on the CD itself, I use allmusic.com - very extensive site. For bootlegs, I usually use year of recording vs. release. If I can find no resources (including the dozen music reference books at the house), I make a guess based on what I know about the recording and/or the artist.
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OTOH bootlegs (at least live bootlegs) usually come with a VERY detailed timestamp, down to year, month, day, venue, weather conditions, recording type, number of attendants, setlist and comments on where exactly in ""Ramble On" Garcia fell off the stage.
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So guessing (or guesstimating) is what some of you do then? I dont think I could ever guess. Specially for the B-side and Rare albums. I can see guessing with some live Bootlegs, but not with everthing I cant find the Year for.

I use allmusic.com a lot too, but theres some artists that are not even listed or dont have their information updated on that site. Specially when they are foreign or small, almost unknown bands.

I think I would prefer to go with an "Unknown" tag instead of guesstimating. But thats just me. It wouldnt be too many albums that end up tagged this way anyway.
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I really hate guessing. But for most artists, I can narrow it down to a couple year window using my head + various other resources. It always bugs me, but I think an "unknown" would bug me more.

But...the unknown would allow one to collect these tracks in a playlist & keep working...so maybe that's a good approach.
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OTOH bootlegs (at least live bootlegs) usually come with a VERY detailed timestamp, down to year, month, day, venue, weather conditions, recording type, number of attendants, setlist and comments on where exactly in ""Ramble On" Garcia fell off the stage.
Yes!!! :D
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What if its a B-Sides album, that contains songs released in different years. It would be hard to add a Year tag in one of those cases. Since most of the B-side compilations, are almost always non-official releases, so you cant even use the year of the release.
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The original release date is usually listed in the liner notes. If it's not, I look it up on AllMusic.com. Leave the "year" field blank? That's crazy talk!
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The original release date is usually listed in the liner notes.

Un-official B-side albums/bootlegs, have no liner notes, and they are not listed in allmusic.com either.

EDIT: I just ran into a problem. The "Year" tag in iTunes ONLY accepts numbers, so I cant even use "Unknown" as I had planned to. What do you all think would be the numerical equivalent of "unknown"?
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EDIT: I just ran into a problem. The "Year" tag in iTunes ONLY accepts numbers, so I cant even use "Unknown" as I had planned to. What do you all think would be the numerical equivalent of "unknown"?

I'd use either 0000 or 9999 if that was my approach, but it's not.

The way I keep track of my yearless songs is to create an SP with one criteria: "Year" "is" "0" and keep Live Updating checked.

When I'm so inclined I'll go to this list and start doing research and update the songs. One day the list will be empty.
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