Updated Guide: How To Tidy Up MP3 ID3 Tags
My post ‘Tidy Up iTunes MP3 Collection’ is now nearly two years old, yet it is still one of the most popular posts each month. Given the mess that iTunes made of my iTunes library when I installed Vista I’ve had a lot of time to update my tagging methods.
My method below may seem a bit long-winded, but it is foolproof and creates nice and tidy mp3 tracks that will work perfectly with all mp3 applications, including iTunes.
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. In the past I used to use MusicBrainz Tagger to identify albums, but now I use MusicBrainz’s new tool, Picard. The updated Picard tool uses the same mechanism as the old Tagger app to identify albums, but it is much faster and easier to use.
What Musicbrainz Picard does is scan your music files and uses any existing tags to identify tracks. For files that Picard doesn’t recognize, it submits ‘acoustic fingerprints’ (TRM ids) of the files back to the server and asks the user to manually edit the track information or to add that particular album manually to the database, so that the next time someone uses the tool these tracks will be identified.Before using Picard I’d recommend changing the following settings in the Options:
- go to ‘Audio Fingerprinting’ and check ‘Automatically analyze all new files’
- go to ‘Tags’ and uncheck ‘Write ID3v1 tags to MP3 files (ID3v2 tags will always be written)’, and Check ‘clear existing tags before writing new tags’ and ‘Write ID3v2 version 2.3 tags’. This is important as I’ve found it’s not good to have multiple tags included within files e.g. APE, ID3v1 etc and also because I’ve found iTunes has problems sometimes with ID3 v2.4 tags
- If you are tagging files you haven’t added to your music library yet then it can be helpful in ‘directories’ to check ‘move tagged files to this directory’ and create a create a directory called ‘Tagged Music’ so you know which files you’ve tagged and are now ready for importing
Now that Picard is setup, drag your files of complete folders onto the ‘New files’ folder. Once Picard has finished anlaysing files click on the ‘Cluster’ icon in the toolbar to group mp3 files into albums, and Picard will then walk you through tagging files based on the matches it finds. To learn more about using Picard click here.
Once I’ve finished identifying and tagging my files in Picard, I tend to have a quick check to see that all is well using mp3tag. With mp3tag I can check that musicBrainz has only written ID3v2.3 tags which offer the maximum compatibility, and removed all other tags. I can also quickly browse all the various tag info that has been written and correct any typos, capitalisation problems and other errors.
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Comment by Tsais on 8 November 2007:
your article was certainly most useful. I did miss any mention of how to keep the ratings during the re-import… my ratings are by far the most precious thing to me about my music library. I could live much more easily with incorrect names and missing artwork, as that is really unrelated to how much I like one song or another.
When I load music on my different sized iPods, I do it purely by my star rating.
And I find iTunes’ way of not storing the rating in the ID3 tag atrocious, and 5 stars not quite enough. why? cause if I give 5 stars to my very favorite music up to where that still fits on a shuffle, 4 stars up to where it fits on my nano, and 3 stars up to where it fits on my regular iPod, I only have 2 stars left to rate the rest. (no stars means for me I haven’t rated them yet)
Comment by Everton on 26 September 2007:
iTunes doesn’t unfortunately delete the other tags you don’t need like APE, only tends to read the tags that are already there and doesn’t add artwork to the actual tag automatically - only to the iTunes database
Comment by Kline on 26 September 2007:
iTunes does a pretty good job of setting up id3 tags on its own, but I do love me some musicbrainz.
Comment by Everton on 28 June 2007:
mp3tag is good for tidying up tags if they are already there, but it doesn’t find missing tag information
Comment by Rob O. on 28 June 2007:
I swear by Florian Heidenreich’s Mp3tag as an absolutely essential part of my MP3 arsenal.
Pingback by Best Way to tag your mp3 music collection - Computer Forums on 26 June 2007:
[...] Everton from Connected Internet posted a nice article where he is detailing his steps to add tags and cover artwork to his mp3 collection using a few selected freeware programs and iTunes. He [...]
Pingback by Best Way to tag your mp3 music collection on 26 June 2007:
[...] from Connected Internet posted a nice article where he is detailing his steps to add tags and cover artwork to his mp3 collection using a few selected freeware programs and iTunes. He [...]
Comment by green on 26 June 2007:
Thanks for the article.
Pingback by How To Tidy Up MP3 Tags | One Tip A Day on 26 June 2007:
[...] collection then check out Connected Internet who have just published an updated version of their MP3 tagging guide. The method that is walked through is very easy to follow, but be prepared to spend a lot of time [...]
Pingback by Tidy Up iTunes MP3 Collection - Fix ID3 Tags And More | Connected Internet on 24 June 2007:
[...] up your iTunes collection then carry on reading, but if you just want to tag your files read the new guide. Even if your tracks have been imported directly from CD the ID3 tags can still contain errors, [...]