Cleaning Up Your MP3 Tags (version 2)

Anachostic · 05-26-2008, 11:56 AM

The previous version of this popular tutorial ended up losing some images to time while hosted on ImageShack. The images are now on my own server, so they should be safe. Mods can unsticky the old tutorial, I will lock it.

How to clean up your MP3s to display correctly in Zune.

This article uses Mp3tag,a freeware application. But you can accomplish the same thing in the Zune software using Edit.

This first screen shows more or less the default view for Mp3Tag. The screen shows two compilation albums, where the album name is the same, but the songs are performed by different artists. Prior to cleaning, the Zune software would show these songs scattered around, where I wanted them all under the same album.

To key MP3 tag is Band, or as Microsoft calls it, Album Artist. To add this field to the main view, click the View menu and choose Customize Columns.

The screen shows the columns that are displayed, but Band/Album Artist is not listed.

Click the new field button

and enter the new tag information like in the screenshot.

I found the column order shown to be the easiest to work with, you might have a different preference.

When you click OK, the screen shows the new field.

As the screen shows, the album artist for both albums is Fat Wreck Chords, although each song has a different artist. This means the Zune software thinks: There are two albums by Fat Wreck Chords, instead of: There is an album called Fat Music… by Propaghandi, and an album called Fat Music… by Lagwagon, and an album called Fat Music… by Strung out, etc.

After adding this field you may be saying “That’s where that came from”. I found lots of variations on the artist name in this field, which was confusing because they would show up as two different artists in the Zune software, each with their own album listing. Or the songs would be split into two albums when they should be together. Or you may just see a bunch of blanks. When this field is blank, Zune uses the Artist field. The problem is when some songs have the band field and some don’t.

So how to resolve it? Highlight all the songs by the same artist, and click the View>Extended Tags menu (or right-click>Extended Tags, or Alt-T)

The screen will show the merged values of all the selected songs. If the values are different, like album, the field shows < keep >, otherwise it shows the common value.

Edit the Band field to be a common value. If you do not have a band field, click the New button

and create the band field like in the screen below. I recommend having the artist and band fields the same unless you are dealing with a compilation.

And that cleans up the Zune software, but what about the Zune device? You will want to set Artists display to Song and Album, under Settings>Music>Artists. The Zune device then uses both the Artist and Album Artist field. So if you are browsing artists (in my example), you will see all the values in the Artist list. So I see Propaghandi, Lagwagon, Strung Out, etc. I also have a full album by Lagwagon, so if I choose Lagwagon in the Zune, I see the album listed first, then the straggler songs listed below. But I can also find Fat Wreck Chords in the artists and see all the compilation albums listed under it.

In summary: All your MP3s need to have Album, Band (Album Artist), and Artist fields defined Cleaning up your ID3 tags is very time consuming, but if you don’t do it, you will have a poor mobile music experience. Hopefully this article will put you on the right track (no pun intended).

skubz · 06-27-2008, 04:21 PM

This is a good tutorial.

I've cleaned up my library a few days ago and it was a looong process. Thats what I get for not keeping it tidy in the first place I guess.

Anyway, its well worth it to keep clean tags. Everything is much nicer and easier to find. I'd recommend anyone to do it.

CameleonMK · 06-27-2008, 05:15 PM

Yes, maybe now some people will figure it out. (if they couldn't before)

got zune? · 06-28-2008, 04:58 PM

No need to do it this way anymore if you upgrade to software version 2.5, it's got a built in metatag editor and it's so damn easy to do it's ridiculous. Simply right click the album, select "edit" and then a screen will pop up showing the album art, all the songs and all the tag info which all can be edited right there on the same screen. It's a beautiful thing

BobtheWalrus · 06-28-2008, 05:15 PM

Wonderful

CameleonMK · 06-28-2008, 05:32 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by got zune?

No need to do it this way anymore if you upgrade to software version 2.5, it's got a built in metatag editor and it's so damn easy to do it's ridiculous. Simply right click the album, select "edit" and then a screen will pop up showing the album art, all the songs and all the tag info which all can be edited right there on the same screen. It's a beautiful thing

Well that just edits it for the software. It doesn't edit the song itself.

got zune? · 06-28-2008, 08:42 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by CameleonMK

Well that just edits it for the software. It doesn't edit the song itself.

True story.

I hadn't verified if it actually changed the tags when I first posted but I did that before I went to the store and found that it didn't. I guess I'll be keeping MP3Tag afterall, if for nothing else for the ability to change song titles in bulk. I can edit the other info in Vista.

bluesam · 07-17-2008, 09:01 AM

One thing that I found very useful was to make Mp3Tag save the tag every time you make a change and also not show you the "are you sure" dialog.

Just go under Tools-> Options-> Tags in the menu bar

got zune? · 07-17-2008, 06:37 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by bluesam

One thing that I found very useful was to make Mp3Tag save the tag every time you make a change and also not show you the "are you sure" dialog.

Just go under Tools-> Options-> Tags in the menu bar

Nice find bro

I have a find of my own.........if you're like me you always edit your tags as soon as you rip/download the album/song and before you put the album/song in your music folder. I always save my rips/downloads to my desktop, edit the tags then move them to my music folder, if you do this too then you can set MP3Tag to always start at the same place. Go to Tools/Options/General/Favorite directory.......browse for the directory you want it to start from and then check the box right below it that says "start from this directory".

It's always bugged me that it starts from the program files directory and I have to navigate my way to the desktop, so much for that problem

iisubstanceii · 07-19-2008, 12:54 PM

i hate the fact that i only found out about this program a couple of weeks ago. its great how it changes data on multiple files at the same time and so quickly. i also like the fact that you can embed the album art into the files. everything done by this program carries into whatever media player you use. very helpful.

got zune? · 07-19-2008, 01:08 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by iisubstanceii

i hate the fact that i only found out about this program a couple of weeks ago. its great how it changes data on multiple files at the same time and so quickly. i also like the fact that you can embed the album art into the files. everything done by this program carries into whatever media player you use. very helpful.

Yup, nice program indeed

soapme · 08-05-2008, 03:35 PM

is there a way to assign the common cover to all the songs in a single Album?

for example the way you modified the "Album Artist" value for all songs in a single step using "extended tags" option..

Flash Gordon · 08-11-2008, 01:41 PM

Load every song in that album into the mp3tag list, select them all, then drag the album art file into the box in the bottom left corner and press the save button (remember to press the save button before deselecting anything in mp3tag, or it simply won't save). If you want to have a *album art filename*.jpg in your album folder, you can right click on the image you just added at the bottom left corner, select Extract cover, and save (it'll points to the album's directory by default, so you can just click save).

mjm1189 · 08-17-2008, 02:44 AM

Thanks. I read your first tutorial and that introduced me to the whole tag thing. I'm glad I found this second one though because I had a few artists who had albums as well as contributions on some soundtracks and when displaying artists it wouldn't show the songs on the soundtracks, so the whole settings>music>artists:song and album thing really helped me out.

tenritsu · 08-17-2008, 11:13 AM

Just went through my whole zune collection... that was insane haha.

agentsmith · 09-23-2008, 10:59 PM

I've run into the classic "unknown artist"/"unknown album" problem. I've copied the "artist" over to "album artist" on all my files, and that fixed it for some files, but not for lots of others.

I think the problem may be that these are files where the "album" tag is blank. Obviously I understand why it would categorize these as "unknown album", but here's the irritating part: on the software they show up under the right artist, but on the device they show up under both the artist name AND under "unknown artist". If I switch the display setting to "album only" then they show up under "unknown artist" only.

Am I right in assuming that I basically have to fill in something in the "album" field on every file to avoid this? I suppose an easy workaround is to manually put "Unknown Album" in the album field, but it seems like a cheesy solution to a dumb problem that shouldn't happen in the first place.

05-26-2008, 11:56 AM	#1 (permalink)
Anachostic Jr. Member Join Date: Jun 2007 Posts: 407 Reputation: 77	Cleaning Up Your MP3 Tags (version 2) The previous version of this popular tutorial ended up losing some images to time while hosted on ImageShack. The images are now on my own server, so they should be safe. Mods can unsticky the old tutorial, I will lock it. How to clean up your MP3s to display correctly in Zune. This article uses Mp3tag,a freeware application. But you can accomplish the same thing in the Zune software using Edit. This first screen shows more or less the default view for Mp3Tag. The screen shows two compilation albums, where the album name is the same, but the songs are performed by different artists. Prior to cleaning, the Zune software would show these songs scattered around, where I wanted them all under the same album. To key MP3 tag is Band, or as Microsoft calls it, Album Artist. To add this field to the main view, click the View menu and choose Customize Columns. The screen shows the columns that are displayed, but Band/Album Artist is not listed. Click the new field button and enter the new tag information like in the screenshot. I found the column order shown to be the easiest to work with, you might have a different preference. When you click OK, the screen shows the new field. As the screen shows, the album artist for both albums is Fat Wreck Chords, although each song has a different artist. This means the Zune software thinks: There are two albums by Fat Wreck Chords, instead of: There is an album called Fat Music… by Propaghandi, and an album called Fat Music… by Lagwagon, and an album called Fat Music… by Strung out, etc. After adding this field you may be saying “That’s where that came from”. I found lots of variations on the artist name in this field, which was confusing because they would show up as two different artists in the Zune software, each with their own album listing. Or the songs would be split into two albums when they should be together. Or you may just see a bunch of blanks. When this field is blank, Zune uses the Artist field. The problem is when some songs have the band field and some don’t. So how to resolve it? Highlight all the songs by the same artist, and click the View>Extended Tags menu (or right-click>Extended Tags, or Alt-T) The screen will show the merged values of all the selected songs. If the values are different, like album, the field shows < keep >, otherwise it shows the common value. Edit the Band field to be a common value. If you do not have a band field, click the New button and create the band field like in the screen below. I recommend having the artist and band fields the same unless you are dealing with a compilation. And that cleans up the Zune software, but what about the Zune device? You will want to set Artists display to Song and Album, under Settings>Music>Artists. The Zune device then uses both the Artist and Album Artist field. So if you are browsing artists (in my example), you will see all the values in the Artist list. So I see Propaghandi, Lagwagon, Strung Out, etc. I also have a full album by Lagwagon, so if I choose Lagwagon in the Zune, I see the album listed first, then the straggler songs listed below. But I can also find Fat Wreck Chords in the artists and see all the compilation albums listed under it. In summary: All your MP3s need to have Album, Band (Album Artist), and Artist fields defined Cleaning up your ID3 tags is very time consuming, but if you don’t do it, you will have a poor mobile music experience. Hopefully this article will put you on the right track (no pun intended).

06-28-2008, 04:58 PM	#4 (permalink)
got zune? Zune Guardian Join Date: Jan 2008 Location: 916 Posts: 762 Reputation: 102	No need to do it this way anymore if you upgrade to software version 2.5, it's got a built in metatag editor and it's so damn easy to do it's ridiculous. Simply right click the album, select "edit" and then a screen will pop up showing the album art, all the songs and all the tag info which all can be edited right there on the same screen. It's a beautiful thing __________________ To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 0 or greater. You currently have 0 posts. To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 0 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

06-28-2008, 05:15 PM	#5 (permalink)
BobtheWalrus Member Join Date: Dec 2007 Location: North Idaho Posts: 513 Reputation: 19	Wonderful __________________ My Quotes "Life is like a deck of cards, deal with it" "The hardest books to read, are the ones we want to finish" To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 0 or greater. You currently have 0 posts. - Please leave comments, good or bad To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 0 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

08-17-2008, 11:13 AM	#15 (permalink)
tenritsu Experienced Zuner Join Date: May 2008 Posts: 183 Reputation: 13	Just went through my whole zune collection... that was insane haha. __________________ To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 0 or greater. You currently have 0 posts. To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 0 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

06-27-2008, 04:21 PM	#2 (permalink)
skubz Squirt Join Date: Jun 2008 Posts: 17 Reputation: 10	This is a good tutorial. I've cleaned up my library a few days ago and it was a looong process. Thats what I get for not keeping it tidy in the first place I guess. Anyway, its well worth it to keep clean tags. Everything is much nicer and easier to find. I'd recommend anyone to do it.

07-17-2008, 09:01 AM	#8 (permalink)
bluesam Zewbie Join Date: Jul 2008 Posts: 4 Reputation: 10	One thing that I found very useful was to make Mp3Tag save the tag every time you make a change and also not show you the "are you sure" dialog. Just go under Tools-> Options-> Tags in the menu bar

07-19-2008, 12:54 PM	#10 (permalink)
iisubstanceii Squirt Join Date: Jun 2008 Posts: 27 Reputation: 10	i hate the fact that i only found out about this program a couple of weeks ago. its great how it changes data on multiple files at the same time and so quickly. i also like the fact that you can embed the album art into the files. everything done by this program carries into whatever media player you use. very helpful.

08-05-2008, 03:35 PM	#12 (permalink)
soapme Zewbie Join Date: Aug 2008 Posts: 4 Reputation: 10	is there a way to assign the common cover to all the songs in a single Album? for example the way you modified the "Album Artist" value for all songs in a single step using "extended tags" option..

08-11-2008, 01:41 PM	#13 (permalink)
Flash Gordon Experienced Zuner Join Date: Feb 2007 Location: Phoenix, Arizona Posts: 240 Reputation: 140	Load every song in that album into the mp3tag list, select them all, then drag the album art file into the box in the bottom left corner and press the save button (remember to press the save button before deselecting anything in mp3tag, or it simply won't save). If you want to have a album art filename.jpg in your album folder, you can right click on the image you just added at the bottom left corner, select Extract cover, and save (it'll points to the album's directory by default, so you can just click save).

08-17-2008, 02:44 AM	#14 (permalink)
mjm1189 Jr. Zuner Join Date: Aug 2008 Posts: 37 Reputation: 14	Thanks. I read your first tutorial and that introduced me to the whole tag thing. I'm glad I found this second one though because I had a few artists who had albums as well as contributions on some soundtracks and when displaying artists it wouldn't show the songs on the soundtracks, so the whole settings>music>artists:song and album thing really helped me out.

09-23-2008, 10:59 PM	#16 (permalink)
agentsmith Zewbie Join Date: Sep 2008 Posts: 1 Reputation: 10	I've run into the classic "unknown artist"/"unknown album" problem. I've copied the "artist" over to "album artist" on all my files, and that fixed it for some files, but not for lots of others. I think the problem may be that these are files where the "album" tag is blank. Obviously I understand why it would categorize these as "unknown album", but here's the irritating part: on the software they show up under the right artist, but on the device they show up under both the artist name AND under "unknown artist". If I switch the display setting to "album only" then they show up under "unknown artist" only. Am I right in assuming that I basically have to fill in something in the "album" field on every file to avoid this? I suppose an easy workaround is to manually put "Unknown Album" in the album field, but it seems like a cheesy solution to a dumb problem that shouldn't happen in the first place.

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