Tidy Up iTunes MP3 Collection - Fix ID3 Tags And More
Update: I have written an updated guide to tagging mp3 files. If you want to tidy up your iTunes collection then carry on reading, but if you only want to add ID3 tags to your files read the new guide.
If like me you have a big music collection gathered from lots of sources, then you are probably having the same problems with the awful metadata that some tracks have. A lot of my tracks had weird or missing track details, errors and for some tracks I have no ID3 tags at all for the artist and album.
I also have a lot of duplicates which have happened from mistakenly importing the same CD twice, or when I’ve added a friends collection to mine and they have the same track but with a slightly different filename, so it slipped through the net.
Given that my collection is continuing to grow, and I am increasingly accessing my library via other PCs, devices and my Xbox via Xbox Media Centre I decided it was time to tidy things up before it became an impossible task.
Below are the steps I went through, which I will now do with all new tracks before they get into my library.
Step 1 Tagging
Even if your tracks have been imported directly from CD the ID3 tags can still contain errors, especially if you are importing old CDs or non-mainstream CDs. The best tool I have found to fix tags is MusicBrainz Tagger. This great tool scans your various music files and writes clean metadata tags (ID3 tags or Vorbis comment fields) to your files.
For files that MusicBrainz doesn’t recognize, MB submits acoustic fingerprints (TRM ids) of the files back to the server and asks the user to manually edit the track information, so that the next time someone uses the tool these tracks will be identified.
MusicBrainz allows you to set the threshold at which it thinks it has a match. For my collection I found that very few mistakes were made with a threshold of 80% and I was able to automatically update the tags on around 50% of my 8,000 track collection this way.
For the other 50%, MetaBrainz Tagger still made a pretty good guess as to what the correct tags were. In some cases I was able to automatically accept MB’s best stab, but in other cases I had to use the tools within MB to find the correct details. This took quite a long time, but was worth the effort as MB helped me identify a lot of previously unknown tracks and artists. Sorting by album proved to be the quickest way to process my tracks as once I’d confirmed what album a particular track came from I could usually process another 10 tracks from the same album immediately.
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Comment by Wii on 25 June 2008:
I share the same problems as you and am a bit obsessive about getting tags right. I’d previously used Tag&Rename and spent ages, will give this a try though.
Comment by cwright on 23 October 2007:
Ah! Thanks Everton!
That WAS easy!
Comment by Everton on 23 October 2007:
@cwright
Create a Smart Playlist rather than a normal playlist
Comment by cwright on 23 October 2007:
thanks for this post, I will try it one of these days. But wondering if anyone knows how I can easily get back my recently accidentally deleted ‘recently added’ list? on itunes?
I really miss it!
thanks
cw
Comment by Ashish on 15 October 2007:
nice tip .. i think it will help me a lot to organize my music collection. thanx a lot ..
Comment by edebiyat on 30 August 2007:
I think it’s a good way of backing stuff up, and even locating it since i hate itunes .
Comment by Anon on 19 August 2007:
If you really want to get all the songs you want without begging for downloads over the web (and its a slow process), go fly to Bangkok, Thailand or Manila, Philippines and buy a stack of Mp3 CDs. They sell em for 30 cents a CD. Each CD has some 300-500 tracks.
If you saw my collection, you’d drop. I have more songs than the average retail outlet
Pingback by Updated Guide: How To Tidy Up MP3 ID3 Tags | Connected Internet on 24 June 2007:
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