I need a utility to tag mp3 from file path / filename.

September 22, 2008 8:08 PM

What's a good (preferably freeware) application for tagging my mp3 files based on filename and file path?

I have thousands of mp3 files perfectly sorted into folders, and consistently named. I would now like to clean up the tags to match.

I need a program that can take a folder full of files and tag the mp3s based on the folder and filename.

I need it to work with the following formats.

\genre\album artist\album\track# - track artists(s) - title.mp3

or

\genre\album artist\track artist - title.mp3

(this is for songs not part of an album)

or optionally (and this is where the programs I've found fail)

\genre\album artist\year - album\track# - track artist - title.mp3
(I've done this for some albums if I have multiple albums for an artist and want them sorted by year)

I need the program to be smart enough to have multiple 'masks' to try and match my path and filenames to. If I have the year, use it, if not, skip it. The programs I've seen can't handle this, and bomb. They start putting the album names into the year field etc...

Has anyone ever used a program that was competent at this?

posted by gummo to Computers & Internet (10 answers total)

I'm fairly sure that this could be possible with mp3tag, but then I've only just begun to dig into the guts of the scripting aspects.

I know for a fact that combining it with patience and repetition will accomplish what you seek.
posted by ktrey at 8:30 PM on September 22, 2008

Don't know if there's a windows version. With Linux I use "EasyTag" and it's always done everything I wanted it to do. You might have to do a few directories different, but it does the "%g/%a/%y - %m/%n - %t" stuff awesomely well.
posted by zengargoyle at 8:34 PM on September 22, 2008

Mp3Tag can handle any of those masks just fine. However, it isn't going to be able to intelligently determine what mask you want to use. My advice is to either import each section and tag them in 3 steps, or to tag everything with one mask, sort the list by untagged title (or whatever part failed), rerun the second mask to those untagged files, then resort and apply the final mask to the remaining untagged files. You cannot maintain an inconsistent naming scheme and expect a program to figure it out for you. If all else fails, you could try musicbrainz.
posted by sophist at 8:49 PM on September 22, 2008

Seconding zengargoyle on easytag - and there are Windows/Mac/*nix versions, though I've only used it on a BSD myself. Download from here:

http://easytag.sourceforge.net/
posted by micturator at 8:52 PM on September 22, 2008

Have you tried MediaMonkey? I would think that would work. It won't pull information from your file structure, but will attempt to find the album that the song is on.
posted by theichibun at 9:00 PM on September 22, 2008

I was going to suggest the (non-freeware) Tag&Rename, but mp3tag looks pretty good. I agree with sophist, your best option would porbably be tagging in passes.
posted by bjrn at 12:10 AM on September 23, 2008

If you are on a Mac, check out Doug's Scripts.

(On preview, you using \ to describe the file path probably indicates you are on Windows.)
posted by omnidrew at 7:07 AM on September 23, 2008

I really like MP3 Tag Studio. It is (clean) freeware, and it works great. I have been using it for years now. You can create and save "masks" to whatever you need. You can also mass tag a group of files, e.g. adding album name tag to files that do not have that info in the filename.
posted by glycolized at 1:10 PM on September 23, 2008

I use MediaMonkey for tagging. It also allows you to do the opposite - organize your mp3s into folders based on mp3 tags. And the main reason I started using it was because of it's ability to retrieve album art from Amazon (assuming it's mainstream enough, of course). It is a full player/converter/tagger/ripper, so whether or not it is overkill for your purpose is up to you.
posted by mysterpigg at 3:24 PM on September 23, 2008

Oops! Just noticed theichibun already mentioned MediaMonkey. However, it can actually pull information from the file-structure ("Auto-tag from filename" in the right-click menu), so it should do what you want.
posted by mysterpigg at 3:36 PM on September 23, 2008