mp3tag

This excellent little utility (formerly known as File List) can help you rename multiple files at the same time, in just about any way that you can imagine--for example, if you want to name a bunch of photos in a sequence or change some PC files from ugly all caps over to lowercase.

Name Mangler gives you a clean, intuitive interface for numbering sequentially, finding and replacing, changing case, setting extensions, adding prefixes and suffixes, and removing and inserting characters. Name Mangler also offers an Advanced option that lets you define your own renaming rules, combining the standard options and … Read more

According to a recent New York Times article, 80 percent of people who make New Year's resolutions abandon them before Valentine's Day. But we can all beat the odds, right?

This year, I'm hoping to make some sense of my digital music collection. I'm a big fan of the audio-tracking site Last.fm (my username is "field_day" if you want to friend me), but I'll often get an error when trying to "scrobble" a song because my ID3 information is missing or erroneous.

ID3 is a metadata format within MP3 files … Read more

Digital music is all well and good, but who wants to type in album and artist information for each track? With TagScanner, you don't have to. This efficient and powerful tag editor lets you edit metadata automatically as well as by hand, both for individual files and file batches.

The automatic tagging feature is most impressive. Although it can hit up online databases such as FreeDB, Discogs, and Amazon like many other auto-tagging apps, it can also generate tags from file and folder names--that's something many similar apps can't do. It works in the opposite direction, too, … Read more

I was a bit surprised when I stumbled upon this batch MP3 tag editor. People seemed to love it. Not The Dark Knight love it, but perhaps X-Men 2 love it. In the words of a user, it's "simply indispensable." Turns out, you could do much, much worse than Mp3tag if you're looking for a freeware ID3 tag editor.

It comes with an effective single and batch auto-tagging feature, sourced from FreeDB, Amazon, or Discogs. The lightweight application also sports batch and single edits to effect such changes as case changing, auto-numbering, tag and track name … Read more

Mp3tag is a super-sweet and lightweight little app for cleaning up the mess you've made of your ID3 tags. But don't take my word for it: in the words of a user, it's "simply indispensable." Now, I'd disagree with that if I was using a music jukebox like MediaMonkey that supplies its own excellent editor, but for iTunes users--and I used to be one--I'd be hard-pressed to get by without it.

The autotag feature comes from a rarely-wrong pedigree, sourced by FreeDB, Amazon, or discogs. If you don't like the results from … Read more

I get my music from several places. Over time I've ripped most of the CDs in my collection and have also bought songs on iTunes. Though file sharing is tempting--and fairly popular judging by our Most Popular list--I've only used those applications a couple of times over the years for long lost remixes. I guess I try to stay legal out of respect for the musicians, but this article isn't about the legality of file sharing.

The problem is, when you get your music from a lot of different sources, you end up with strangely tagged tracks … Read more

It's the law of entropy: as your digital music collection increases, you're bound to run into mislabeled songs, duplicate tracks in multiple file formats, and other problems. Apple's iTunes does a fine job of displaying song data and letting you edit it--as long as the song's in a format that iTunes supports (if you try to import a WMA file, for instance, iTunes will ask if you want to convert it first). Microsoft's Windows Media Player has an advanced tag editor, but it's buried a few menu options down, and it only lists songs … Read more