Music Management Program

[Doom4life]

Alright everyone, what program do you use to manage your song library? My girlfriend has an iPod Touch, iPod Nano and a Blackberry while I have a Blackberry (which may be switching to Android soon).

Anyways, since I wanted all of our songs in one central location so it's easer to sync, I chose her laptop and stuck with iTunes (for iPod's) as Blackberry Desktop Manager syncs with iTunes. However, I'm finding errors in iTunes tag information. For example, "Manchester Orchestra" is the artist for their newer album, and "The Manchester Orchestra" is the artist for ther older album. Which is an annoyance when trying to find it in our iPod's/phones. Theres more examples, but I'll stop there.

So I'm thinking rather then wasting the time going through all of the songs (10GB+), I'll just rerip the songs. I'm used to Windows Media Player as its pretty accurate in obtaining correct tag information, but I'm curious what others are using.

Also, I'd be moving from AAC back to mp3. Is 256k a good quality rip? Thanks!

 

[Gnasher]

Instead of re-ripping them why not use Winamp to scan them and correct the tags? It comes up with some odd names for genres though and might get a few wrong but that is easy to fix with the mass tagger built into Winamp. The option to can tags in Winamp is right click your audio library and select send to>Autotag.

 

[nobody_here]

i was just wondering, along the same lines, is there a feature to have it take a single folder that has thousands of songs and sort them and create folders by artist? automated of course?

 

[voodoochildbc]

I think in vista / 7, you can just edit the tags in windows explorer via right-clicking... no extra software needed.

And actually, for both posters who asked questions, you guys might want to check out MP3Tag... works beautifully for batch tagging, and I believe there is an option to create folders based on tags.

In my opinion, the only way to get tags exactly the way you want them is to do it yourself. I've seen iTunes/WMP/Mediamonkey/whatever screw up plenty of times.

 

[nobody_here]

MP3Tag is awesome for fixing IDTags and inserting artwork, also see Foobar2000

but i havent found one that will scan an entire folder full of mp3's and sort them by artist and create subfolders as necessary......i might have a long night ahead one evening soon

 

[voodoochildbc]

MP3Tag is awesome for fixing IDTags and inserting artwork, also see Foobar2000

but i havent found one that will scan an entire folder full of mp3's and sort them by artist and create subfolders as necessary......i might have a long night ahead one evening soon

Hmm... maybe I was mistaken. If the tags were all using the same syntax/delimiters (like artist - album - title), I can think of a few ways to program that. Plus there are probably more involved ways to extract tag info. I'm surprised nobody has done it yet

 

[voodoochildbc]

Without derailing this thread too much, here's a non-code way of doing it (in principle) if you have some time to kill:
http://mintywhite.com/windows-7/7maintenance/mass-convert-file-names-windows-batch-file/

If you get all of your file names formatted the same way with MP3Tag or whatever, you could use excel formulas and functions to extract the artist's name, then run a filter that removes all duplicates, then make another cell whips up a batch command that creates folders based on that filter.

Not sure what your experience with excel is and / or your programming experience. You could make this as simple or as complicated as you want, there's plenty of ways to do this in VB as well. I've got to pass out, but PM me if you want a hand with this...

 

[nate77]

MP3Tag is awesome for fixing IDTags and inserting artwork, also see Foobar2000

but i havent found one that will scan an entire folder full of mp3's and sort them by artist and create subfolders as necessary......i might have a long night ahead one evening soon

MediaMonkey can on the free version

Do Not Use Spaces In Path
Right click on your music folder select auto organize a box will pop up.Don't use defult destination.In the destination box type in drive letter where you want your files

mine comes out to G . \ Music \ < Album Artist > \ < Album > \ < Track # : 2 > - < Title >No spaces

G . \ Music \ < Album Artist > \ < Album > is folders can add more or type in however you like No spaces

- < Track # : 2 > - < Title > is how your files will be named No spaces

the Track# :2 will result in in 2 digits for track number if you want 1 change to 1 or if you want 3 change it to three. you can switch track and title so its title track,you can also add album or artist or both to file name by adding -<Album> or -<Artist>

when i was first playing around with that i made a back up folder for my music till i got it the way i wanted it.Then just deleted the copy i made

How ever for this to work the way you want it your tags have to be correct,added to library

 

[Gnasher]

In my opinion, the only way to get tags exactly the way you want them is to do it yourself. I've seen iTunes/WMP/Mediamonkey/whatever screw up plenty of times.

Yes, it can do that and most likely will to some of your MP3s but with over 200GB of MP3s and many of them with messed up tags it was still quicker for me to let Winamp Autotag fix them and then correct the ones it messed up.

 

[Gnasher]

MP3Tag is awesome for fixing IDTags and inserting artwork, also see Foobar2000

but i havent found one that will scan an entire folder full of mp3's and sort them by artist and create subfolders as necessary......i might have a long night ahead one evening soon

There is software that will do that because a friend of mine has such an app and it pissed me off that it was doing it when I tired it out because I prefer to create a manual folder index using A - Z instead of each artist and album having their own folder. Sync software for MP3 players will auto create folders too but it does it on the MP3 player instead of your HDD.

 

[voodoochildbc]

Yes, it can do that and most likely will to some of your MP3s but with over 200GB of MP3s and many of them with messed up tags it was still quicker for me to let Winamp Autotag fix them and then correct the ones it messed up.

Oh yeah, I agree that it's a total pain in the butt to do it manually. Every automatic tagging programs source has a different opinion on what something should be called; names can vary from album to album and whatnot. They get the job done, albeit poorly in some cases.

 

[Gnasher]

The service I used with Winamp gives stupid genre names sometimes, like, 'General Punk'. Back in the day of punk there was no such thing as "general" punk. It is either punk or it ain't.