Become a Metadata Master with Mp3tag

MUSIC FILES NEED TO BE TAGGED— without the correct metadata in place, how do you know the track you’ve selected is the right one? If you use Windows Media Player to rip your CDs, you’ll find its relatively small database often produces incorrect matches (and beyond that, no matches at all). You could spend hours manually entering this information in Windows Media Player’s arcane interface, or you could employ the services of a tool that makes managing music (and music video) files much simpler.

The tool in question is Mp3tag, which can be installed as a regular application or run as a portable tool. Point it toward a directory of media files, and you can review existing tags, update tags for individual tracks or entire albums, and—crucially—tap into various online databases to find the correct tags (and artwork) to apply to your tracks.

Mp3tag supports a wide range of formats and tag standards, spanning everything from MP3, WMA, AAC, and MP4 to FLAC, APE, OGG, and WAV. It’s easy to use, so we’ll rush through the basics, then focus on its more advanced features. One thing’s for certain: If you’ve been struggling to keep

your music collection properly tagged, you’re about to experience nirvana. –NICK PEERS 1 THE BASICS Open Mp3tag, and select “File > Change Directory” to choose a directory containing a single album of tracks. Once located, click “Select Folder.” A list of files appears, complete with any current tags. Select one item and you can manually edit its tags, plus add or change artwork by dragging an image file from a File Explorer window into the artwork box. You can also edit multiple files at the same time by Ctrl-clicking them [ Image A]. Be sure to click the “Save” button when you’re done to update the tags. 2 QUICK-FIRE TIPS Made a mistake? Use the buttons or “Edit” menu to undo recently saved changes or remove tags entirely. When editing multiple items, you’ll see options such as “<keep>” which instructs Mp3tag to leave that tag alone (it’s set by default for certain tags, such as Title).

Need to rename your original files to match the new tags? Open the “Convert” menu [ Image B], where you can quickly apply your choice of tags to the file name (or vice versa). Tweak the “Format string:” box to include the information you wish—click “>” to quickly insert other elements, such as album or artist. 3 MAKE USE OF FILTERS If you select an artist folder, then all files within that folder—including those inside album subfolders— are displayed. Press F3 to reveal the “Filter:” window. Use this to filter by keyword or make use of filter expressions (see “Help > Contents > Filters”) to create sophisticated matches using fields (including file format, artist, and files without tags), and various matches, from IS and NOT to GREATER (than) and MISSING. 4 USE ONLINE DATABASES Filling in tags by hand is, frankly, excruciating, which is where the “Tag Sources” menu comes into play. Select your tracks, then open “Tag Sources.” You’ll see several popular online databases, including Freedb, MusicBrainz, Amazon, and—our personal favorite— Discogs. The first time you use one you may have to log into your online account to authorize Mp3tag—just follow the prompts. Once done, you’re prompted to search by album title (which may already be pre-filled, if the album tag exists). Amend this if necessary, then click “Next.”

5 FOLLOW THE WIZARD If you get an authorization error for Discogs, remove any punctuation from the album title, and click “Next” to try again. A list of matching results appears. Select the correct one and click “Next.” You’ll see a screen providing you with album information and a list of tracks. You need to drag and drop your tracks in the right-hand pane to match them up correctly (or use the “Move up” and “Move down” buttons). If you’re only matching a few tracks, place the “<no association>” entries next to tracks you don’t want to match. Click “OK” when you’re done. The tags are applied to your tracks. 6 ADD MORE DATABASE OPTIONS You can download user-written scripts to add more options to the “Tag Sources” menu. For example, the Discogs search tool only works with album titles, which doesn’t always produce the correct result with generic matches (such as “Greatest Hits”). The box, below-right, reveals an example using Discogs, but if you’re a MusicBrainz fan, locate the MusicBrainz XML Webservice post. Save either zip file to your hard drive, then extract the .src files inside to the %appdata%\Mp3tag\data\sources folder. The new options can be found under “Tag Sources > MusicBrainz v2.” 7 MAKE USE OF ACTIONS Actions enable you to quickly perform corrections and edits across a range of tracks. For example, if you accidentally leave Caps Lock on while entering tag information, simply select your tracks and choose “Actions > Case Conversion” to apply capitalization to the first letter of each word [ Image C]. Select “Actions > Actions” to set up your own or edit an existing action. Actions are organized into groups—this enables you to process multiple actions with a single click. You can append new actions on to existing actions by selecting the group name, then clicking the “Edit” button followed by “New.” 8 ADD A NEW ACTION Alternatively, create a new action group from scratch: choose “Actions > Actions (quick)” to create a new action and apply it to a new group. This is a wizard-based approach [ Image D]. First select the action type—there are 15 templates to choose from—and then select requirements (such as matching text or a regular expression), and the action to perform. To find out how each one works, select “Help > Contents,” and click “Actions” in the navigation pane for a comprehensive guide to each template. 9 BACK UP YOUR CHANGES After a while, you’ll build a handy library of thirdparty or custom-built scripts and actions, as well as tweaking Mp3tag to your personal needs. Protect this by periodically backing up your user configuration—select “File > Save Configuration,” and save the zip file to a safe location. When you want to restore it, simply unzip the file’s contents to %appdata%\Mp3tag (or the location of your Mp3tag folder, if you’re running it as a portable app).