Comments on: How do I rename folders based on ID3 tags?

Question: How do I rename folders based on ID3 tags?

themadjuggler — Sat, 20 Aug 2005 12:38:29 -0800

How can I rename my music folders on my Mac based on ID3 tags?

Doug's Applescripts and iTunes have done wonders in helping me organize my music, but I'm looking for even more nit-pitcky precision. I already use Plaid Cow Solutions' Rename Files to get my filenames to reflect my ID3 tags, but I wanted to know if there were a way to do something similar with the folders.

For example, I would like the contents of my Built to Spill folder to look like this:

[1994] There's Nothing Wrong With Love
[1997] Perfect From Now On
[1999] Keep it Like a Secret
[2000] Live
[2001] Ancient Melodies of the Future

... and so on. Is there any solution short of renaming every single folder by hand?

By: NewGear

NewGear — Sat, 20 Aug 2005 13:35:00 -0800

I use Chaotic Software's MP3Rage to do this, and love it. It helps with a lot of other mp3 file management tasks as well. Well worth checking out.

By: bcwinters

bcwinters — Sat, 20 Aug 2005 14:01:54 -0800

I second MP3 Rage. It isn't free, but it's very powerful. If you have any significant amount of mp3 file moving/renaming/organizing to do it will save you loads of time and effort.

By: wackybrit

wackybrit — Sat, 20 Aug 2005 15:37:19 -0800

Why are you dealing with folders directly? If you're using iTunes, after all, that's your organized music collection there, you almost never need to dig into the actual filesystem.

By: themadjuggler

themadjuggler — Sat, 20 Aug 2005 15:41:36 -0800

wackybrit
Good question, and I'm usually a big proponent of iTunes' organization, but I am often in the file structure over a network in order to pick songs for my radio show, my organization for compilations and soundtracks is slightly different, and I'm just a total neat freak.

Thanks for the MP3 Rage suggestion, I'll check it out!

By: patgas

patgas — Sat, 20 Aug 2005 15:42:16 -0800

You could bang out a pretty quick Perl script to do it. I can provide more specific advice if you decide to go this route.

By: nightengine

nightengine — Sat, 20 Aug 2005 17:51:05 -0800

I realize this is a Mac-centric thread, but can anyone make the same suggestion for Windows?

By: patgas

patgas — Sat, 20 Aug 2005 18:52:39 -0800

For Windows:

You could bang out a pretty quick Perl script to do it. I can provide more specific advice if you decide to go this route.

hee.

By: rfordh

rfordh — Sat, 20 Aug 2005 22:52:12 -0800

ID3 and mp3 management has been my nagging motivation to learn Perl and/or Applescript, patgas. Can you recommend something to check out as a starting point?

I, too, am unhappy with the iTunes file structuring.

By: samstarling

samstarling — Sun, 21 Aug 2005 03:00:38 -0800

I use ID3X from 321apps, the program has a feature where you can batch rename MP3's according to their tags, and set folder structure. I personally use first level "Artist", second level "Album" in my albums folder. Seems to work a treat, its quick and problem free.

By: Merdryn

Merdryn — Mon, 22 Aug 2005 11:00:58 -0800

Tag&Rename (Windows)

By: scruss

scruss — Wed, 31 Aug 2005 11:24:08 -0800

There are a couple of command-line id3 tools in the Fink repository that you could use. As I've just bought an iBook, I'm doing this very thing. I should be able to get a small Bash script here before this article closes ...

By: scruss

scruss — Sun, 04 Sep 2005 20:12:08 -0800

#!/bin/bash

# itunes_sanity.sh - fix dir names created by iTunes

# only works for mp3s, and not actually tested on a Mac

# created by scruss on Sun Sep 4 22:05:00 EDT 2005



find "$@" -type d -mindepth 1 | while read directory

do

  artistdir=$(dirname "$directory")

  firstfile=$( find "$directory" -type f -iname '*.mp3' | head -n1 )

  year=$( id3info "$firstfile" | egrep ' TYE ' | sed 's/=== TYE (Year): //; s/[^0-9]*//;' )

  album=$( id3info "$firstfile" | egrep ' TAL ' | sed 's,=== TAL (Album/Movie/Show title): ,,;' )

  echo mv \'$directory\' \'$artistdir/\[$year\] $album\'

done

So if you were in the terminal, in your music library (one up from the individual artist directories), and you did:

itunes_sanity.sh Dan\ Jones Tripping\ Daisy

you'd get:

mv 'Dan Jones/Get Sounds Now' 'Dan Jones/[2005] Get Sounds Now'

mv 'Dan Jones/One Man Submarine' 'Dan Jones/[2003] One Man Submarine'

mv 'Tripping Daisy/Jesus Hits Like the Atom Bomb' 'Tripping Daisy/[1998] Jesus Hits Like the Atom Bomb'

If that looks okay, run the output through the shell:

itunes_sanity.sh Dan\ Jones Tripping\ Daisy | sh

and all should be well.

You'll need id3lib, which is probably most easily installed from Fink. Also, this only works for mp3 files; I can't grok the tag info for AAC files. And finally, this might go seriously screwy on weird characters in filenames.