If you play music on your smartphone or computer, it’s great if you can see exactly what you’re listening to. Think of information about the artist, the title of the song and the name of the album. Are these metadata missing from some songs in your music collection? Then we will add that with Mp3tag.
We have been streaming music for years now, but that does not alter the fact that many people still like to store their music locally and keep it under their own management. In that case it is important that you provide this music with the right characteristics where necessary. That way you can always see what music is playing and favorite music tracks can be easily found. That is perfectly doable, because in music files, just like with photo files, metadata can be stored that describes the content. With music you can think of the artist name, the title of the song, the album name, the track number and the year of release.
Mp3tag
Just because this information can be added to music doesn’t mean it’s always there. In addition, the metadata is not always correct. The information is incomplete or a nice picture of the album cover is missing. It is therefore also useful if you can also tinker with the file name, so that you can see at a glance what it is all about. So you don’t have to dig into the metadata or play music for that.
You can do all these things and much more with the program Mp3tag. It has been around for over twenty years and is meticulously maintained to this day. New features are even added regularly. The program is completely free. If you like it and benefit from it, the maker will appreciate it if you make a donation. Let’s get started quickly. By the way, it’s an idea to work on a copy of your music at least the first few times, so that you can always go back to the original.
Loading metadata
Once the program has started, point to a folder with music files. This can be done via Change folder in the toolbar (icon of a folder with a green check mark on it) or via File, Change folder. If there are other folders with music in this folder, these will also be included as long as the Subfolders option is turned on in the dialog with which you point to the music folder. After one click on the button Select folder the metadata from all found music files is loaded and displayed in an overview.
As soon as you select a number from the list with the mouse or the arrow keys, the most important information fields from the metadata are shown on the left. The cover image can also be seen, if it is present of course. If information is missing or something is not correct, you can still add it here. Once all the changes for this song have been made, click Save in the toolbar and you can repeat this with a next number if you want. You can also adjust fields in the overview itself. Those changes are automatically saved to the music file, so there’s no need to click to save.
Auto save
Do you want changes to the information fields on the left to be automatically saved to the music file? Or would you rather do it yourself with a click on Save in the toolbar? You set the behavior by pressing Options dialog box clicking in the toolbar (spanner icon) or choosing Additional, Options.
Then click on the left in the list tags and use the option Save tags when using arrow keys / single mouse click to indicate your choice. Only if you enable this option, changes will be saved automatically as soon as you move to another song with the mouse or the arrow keys.
Bulk Processing
You can also edit metadata of multiple files at once. For example, if the songs to be changed are all on the same album or the music belongs to the same genre. As soon as you select these music tracks, you only need to click the field to the left of the overview Album or Genre change, rather than having to do it one at a time. This time, since you’re modifying multiple files at once, this only makes sense if there are one or more shared properties.
In bulk adjustments, fields such as Title and track differ per piece of music, which is why there
Revert changes
Have you made a change that is not intended? Then click in the toolbar on Undo or choose edit, Undo to quickly reverse it. Did you change anything else after that? No problem, repeat this step until these erroneous changes have also disappeared. What is also possible is on the arrow behind Undo click and immediately jump to the desired point in time.
Exchange metadata
What often happens is that music tracks have meaningless file names, so that you can’t see what exactly is what from the outside. Conversely, it can also happen that the file names are correct, but that the metadata within the files are incorrect. Either way, you’re in luck, as you can seamlessly exchange information between the two to quickly correct it.
Suppose the file name is neatly composed of artist name and track title with hyphens in between (Artist – Title.mp3). Only this information is (partly) missing in the metadata. In that case, select these files and choose from the menu To convert, File name – tag (or click the icon in the toolbar).
A window will then open in which you enter the field names from which the file name is composed. So in our example it’s %artist% – %title%. So you also specify the underscores (or another separator). Below it you will immediately see an example of how the file name is split into separate fields, so that you can be sure that everything goes well. In that case, click OK and now the relevant information fields still contain the correction information. Otherwise you use To convert, Tag – File name if the information in the metadata is correct and you would like to see this reflected in the file name.
Curious which fields you can use? Then click on the play button behind Formatting and you can simply choose them from a menu. Field names are always enclosed in percent signs. Do you want to use a piece of solid text or a separator in file names, such as a hyphen? Then you just place this in front, behind or in between. Is there a bit of variable text in file names that you want to ignore when filling information fields? Then use %dummy% to skip this part.
consult the internet
Perhaps you have music files of which the artist and album or track title are already neatly stored in the metadata, but of which other information is unfortunately still missing. For example, there is no cover image or the album name, music genre, release date and track number are unknown. You could look this up on the internet yourself and add it manually. But Mp3tag can also arrange this for you. Depending on what you already know, you can search by artist and title, or by artist and album name.
Select the song or several songs if they are from the same album and choose for example menu option Tag Resources, Discogs Artist + Album. An alternative if you know the artist and title, but not the album name, is Tag Resources, Discogs Artist + Title. Check in the window Search for whether the information fields shown are correct, adjust this where necessary and click on OK. You will often find several options as a search result. For example, one is a CD, the other an LP, cassette, video clip, compilation album, remix or remaster of a more recent date. In that case, select the copy that seems to fit the best and click Next one. Note that there are many more fields than are initially visible. So scroll to the side or make the result window a lot wider.
In the subsequent window you will see an overview of the information found and you can adjust a few things manually if necessary. With a bit of luck, a suitable cover image is immediately found. click on OK if you are satisfied and want to include this data in the selected music file. Or click Back to poke around at another copy from the search results.
cover image
If you only have a missing cover image, go to Tag Resources, cover art and select one of the many search options. Again, you can expect a window with multiple search results. In the unlikely event that a search does not yield anything, play around with the fields in the window Search that appears after you select a search method in the menu. Usually it works well if there is only the name of the performer and the title or an album name, so without extra additions and infixes.
Have you scanned or traced images yourself via the internet? Then you can always add them to music files. In that case, first select a music track in the overview again. Right-click where the cover should be (bottom left). Choose Add cover and point to the image file. Have you added a nice cover image, but are you surprised to see a completely different image during playback on, for example, your smartphone? Then look up this music track again in Mp3tag.
Once there are two small arrows below the cover image, there are multiple images in this music file. Use the arrows to find the image you want to get rid of, right click on it and choose Remove cover. Repeat if multiple redundant images are present. If you’d rather not lose the extra pictures, set the photo you want to see as cover as Front Cover and choose a different type with the other pictures such as Back Cover or Other. You do this by right-clicking and the option Set cover type.
