Organizing My Music MP3's

September 17, 2006 11:01 AM

"Tagging" My Music.....oh my

I just bought a PMP player(Lyra) that uses Music Match Jukebox. I just installed Music Match on my PC and imported my music into it (what a mess) I can use the "Super Tagging" if i shell out $20 to go pro. Is there an Auto Tagging Shareware program or any MP3 Tagging out their that will make my job a lot easier? I would like to organize By Artist and Album but a lot of the info is missing from a lot of MP3s. Help!

posted by slowtree to Computers & Internet (11 answers total)

There's Musicbrainz Tagger... I installed it and played around with it a while back and it seems ok, though I've never actually properly used it.
posted by ClarissaWAM at 11:05 AM on September 17, 2006

I'll second MusicBrainz. It's good, but not perfect - be sure to look through things with a low % match. Using it sure saved me a hell of a lot of time, though.
posted by chrisamiller at 11:15 AM on September 17, 2006

I'm using Musizbrainz for long time and it's great. It's pretty intelligent compared with others that just query freedb based on # of songs and album/artist names. Give it a try.
posted by Leech at 11:17 AM on September 17, 2006

I use Mp3tag and have been really happy with it. It can query freedb, amazon, and discogs.org.
posted by ktrey at 11:22 AM on September 17, 2006

Musicbrainz is the best tagger out there, by far. It identifies your files by their fingerprint, so it can write the tags automatically in most cases. Occasionally the same fingerprint will be on a track from an album and from a compilation, so you just pick which one yours is.

Oh, and ditch the MusicMatch. It blows llamas. Winamp, however...
posted by Mr. Gunn at 12:03 PM on September 17, 2006

I like Tag&Rename. Downloads tags directly from Amazon along with artwork and is very flexible in allowing you to customize how your tracks and folders are labeled, etc. If I have a folder containing an album, it's usually tagged and labeled just the way I want it in about 3 clicks.
posted by gfrobe at 1:05 PM on September 17, 2006

Second ktrey's comment. I have been a happy user of Mp3tag for a long time. I have tried several others (though not Tag&Rename), but this seems to work best for me. Musicbrainz sounds great, but didn't work at all for my music (mostly Indian Classical, which even freedb does a less than perfect job).

YMMV.
posted by rasputin98 at 5:04 PM on September 17, 2006

I have tried many different MP3 taggers and the 3 mentioned in this thread are by far the best, IMO. Tag&Rename is probably the best but it costs $30 and the interface is ugly. MusicBrainz is OK, but I think its only really useful for tagging music where you don't know the song info at all. MP3Tag is what I currently use and reccomend 100%. It can be a little slow at times but nothing serious. But most importantly, its free and does everything I could want, especially downloading information and album art from Amazon.
posted by coolin86 at 5:42 PM on September 17, 2006

I'll add a recommendation for MP3Tag, and I'll second Mr. Gunn when he says that Musicmatch is AWFUL. It will give you a ton of grief, and even after two years I wasn't able to get it to work right. It's a big part of the reason I went to an iPod. If there is Rockbox or some other management software available for your player, I'd get it. Good luck uninstalling Musicmatch, though...
posted by Rock Steady at 7:11 PM on September 17, 2006

mp3Tag can handle almost any tagging task, but AFAIK, it doesn't do the sort of auto-tagging that Musicbrainz appears to do.
posted by unmake at 7:13 PM on September 17, 2006

If you just want something to help with batch tagging, I'm a huge fan of Mp3 Tag Tools.

Back when I was doing the same thing you are, I tried a bunch of different programs (most crashed when I even tried to import my 1500+ songs), and it was by far the best.
posted by kingjoeshmoe at 12:04 PM on September 18, 2006