Do you regularly download music? You are probably familiar with the following phenomenon. Songs by the same artist are crisscrossed within your playback program or on your MP3 player. In addition, album covers are missing or wrong pictures are visible. Such problems arise because the tags have been entered incorrectly. It is a time consuming task to adjust everything, but in the end you only benefit from an organized music collection. We explain how to approach this efficiently and as automatically as possible.
Tags are more or less digital CD booklets, but then stuck to MP3 files. You can find all kinds of information in it, such as title, album and artist information. An album cover is also included. Players and portable media players organize your music collection based on this metadata. The display of, for example, album covers usually also depends on the tag provided.
It is therefore important for an orderly collection that all data is correct. Of course you don't want to find music by the same artist under different band names in Spotify, iTunes, Windows Media Player or on your MP3 player, tablet or smartphone. However, there is a good chance that you will have to deal with this. As soon as you pick music from download networks such as usenet and bittorrent, the tags are usually already filled in for you. It just depends on how the original owner of the files interprets an artist name. For example, is it Beatles or The Beatles? It sounds crazy, but you can even lose music due to incorrect tags. Suppose a wrong artist is linked to a song, then it will be very difficult to surface this song in extensive music collections. In some cases, there are no tags at all. In that case, you will find the songs within a library under a meaningless name, for example Unknown artist or Various. You have to listen to the song first, before you know who it is. Before importing music into a media library or transferring it to an MP3 player, it is a good idea to check all metadata and adjust it if necessary.
Mp3 files carry a lot of information with them, such as title, artist and album art.
1. Tag Scanner
It is best to use a separate program to change tags. It is true that you can also adjust the data of songs manually (see the box 'Adjusting tags with Windows'), but you will lose a lot of time with large music collections. TagScanner is a handy program to neatly store MP3s. You can find this Russian program on XDLab.ru. In the installation wizard, do not forget to English to select. First, you indicate where your MP3 files are stored. Click the button at the bottom To leaf through and select the correct folder. All numbers appear in the overview. In the columns you can see which tags the songs contain. If no tags are present, you will only see the file name.
2. Change tags
Click on the tab at the top tag editor. Note that the right pane changes. Select a random song from the overview. You can now see exactly which tags the MP3 file contains. You can change all fields manually at your own discretion. You can add or remove data. Click at the bottom after an edit Saveso that the changes are saved. Most tags refer to all songs of a music album, such as the fields Artist, Album, Genre and Image. It is therefore more efficient to add these tags at the same time. You can arrange this by selecting all songs of an album in the overview. Then make the desired adjustments, after which you confirm with Save.
You can easily make minor adjustments manually via the Tag editor tab.
3. Online Databases
When there are few or no tags of a music album, it is wise to retrieve the correct data from the internet. This saves you a lot of typing. Click on the tab at the top Tag processor. Select all songs from a music album. It is important that the songs are in the correct order. If necessary, use the blue arrows at the top to change the order. You decide on the right rear Service in which database you want to search. Try first FreeDB and TrackType out, these two try to recognize which album it is. Then click Search. When a match is found, the numbers will appear in the right pane. Does the program find no results? Then you can try to search with keywords yourself. Then select at Service the database of Amazon, Discogs or MusicBrainz. Type the name of an artist or music album and click Search. Once the correct album shows up in the results, double click on it. Check if the number of songs matches. Through Example you can see from the purple color which data TagScanner adjusts. click on Keep to save new tags permanently. Times with tab Institutions back to the main window.
For example, use Amazon's database to change tags automatically.
4. Single numbers
You can also automatically adjust tags of individual songs via the search function. This is useful, for example, if you do not download complete albums. Find out from which music album the hit comes from and search for it in the databases of Amazon, Discogs or MusicBrainz. Double click on the correct album, so that the corresponding songs appear. Only check the number whose tags you want to change. Finally confirm with Keep.
Additional genres
More than a hundred genres are available in TagScanner's Tag editor, which you can easily assign to MP3 files. However, it is always possible that something is missing. In addition, the program uses English names. Of course you can enter a genre yourself every time, but it is more practical if everything is present in the drop-down menu by default. Next to the tabs at the top, click the gear icon Program options. Alternatively, use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+P. Go to Genres and Templates. At the part Custom Genres click the green plus sign. You can now add your own names to the Tag editor to your heart's content.
Use custom genres in TagScanner.
