[OT] Organizing Digital Music

**shaunopp** · June 24, 2009

I am starting to import and update my music collection for a touch screen jukebox and was wondering if anyone here in the GameEx community has some good suggestions for good software to organize digital music files.

Looking for solutions for tag editing, folder comparison, de-duping and/or selecting the best file from dupes.

For the tag editing I'm looking for the usual. Something that can correct mislabeled music, add the album name if it isn't known, add missing tag info like the genre automatically by looking at freedb or Amazon.

I think I'm going to have to use at least 2 products, one is probably better for tagging and one for the music quality selection but am eager to know what your 'best practice' solution is for organizing your digital music. Will probably need a good comparison tool for comparing 2 folders of music with overlap to find the best file as well.

Thanks in advance for any feedback.

**bkenobi** · June 24, 2009

MediaMonkey is by far the best audio organization program I have used. It has tons of capabilities built into it, plus it has an extensive scripting language and very active forum so you can do pretty much anything even if the program doesn't do it natively. MM can do everything you mentioned above.

**shaunopp** · June 24, 2009

Thanks kenobi!

Below are the others I've run across in my search for the benefit of other. Media Monkey seems to be the top contender. If anyone wants to weigh in on those below if they've used them I'd appreciate it.

Tag&Rename - http://www.softpointer.com/tr.htm

Mp3tag - http://www.mp3tag.de/en/ or similar http://www.mp3-tag.com/

TagScanner - http://www.xdlab.ru/en/index.htm

mp3nity - http://www.littlelan.com/mp3nity/screenshot.php

mp3 Tag Tools - http://sourceforge.net/projects/massid3lib

mp3Tag Pro - http://www.maniactools.com/

-Shaun

**emphatic** · June 24, 2009

Check out MPTagThat:

http://www.team-mediaportal.com/files/Down...ortalTagEditor/

Open source. Free. Etc. You don't need to use MediaPortal to use this. I've used Tag&Rename with great success in the past.

Emph

**JK1974** · June 24, 2009

Thanks kenobi!
Below are the others I've run across in my search for the benefit of other. Media Monkey seems to be the top contender. If anyone wants to weigh in on those below if they've used them I'd appreciate it.
Tag&Rename - http://www.softpointer.com/tr.htm
Mp3tag - http://www.mp3tag.de/en/ or similar http://www.mp3-tag.com/
TagScanner - http://www.xdlab.ru/en/index.htm
mp3nity - http://www.littlelan.com/mp3nity/screenshot.php
mp3 Tag Tools - http://sourceforge.net/projects/massid3lib
mp3Tag Pro - http://www.maniactools.com/
-Shaun

I vote for Mp3tag - it has very very powerful scripting possibilities. If you donÂ´t like scripting, you still will benefit of the tag-2-filename or filename-2-tag feature that enables you reformatting tags or filenames with just a little template line. Of course, you can also order your mp3 filename list by name, bitrate etc. to get a rough overview e.g. on the quality of your files, mark them and move them to a separate folder. Furthermore, the connection to freedb, amazon and discogs helps you with renaming your files.

For best album art quality, go for the Album Art Downloader from http://sourceforge.net/projects/album-art and import it with Mp3tag. You can (of course) also automate the import e.g. of the folder.jpg you just created with MP3tag - or rely on the album art delivered by amazon or discogs.

For autotagging of chaotic files, I think there is no way around Nero or WinOnCD/EasyCDCreator because the Gracenote fingerprinting used there really works great and is IMHO the best out there.

If it is about quality besides of the used bitrate, you might try EncSpot. The Pro version has later on become freeware - try to find an appropriate download link as the original site does not exist anymore. This tool shows you an estimated quality of an MP3 file. However, I donÂ´t know if a detailed analysis is being used of if they just try to find out the used encoder and simply judge on this. A test with an e.g. 5- or 10-times reencoded MP3 file might give us an answer on this...

Hope this helps

With kind regards

JK

**bkenobi** · June 24, 2009

I've been meaning to try out EncSpot on my old mp3's to see if any of them need fixing. I have a few that seem to stop early which is likely due to junk data in them. I've heard that Foobar2000 can fix this kind of problem, but haven't yet done anything about it (not high on the priority list ATM).

**wobbly** · June 25, 2009

Album player http://www.albumplayer.com/ try it you wont be sorry (best music software ever )

and TagScanner for tags

**bkenobi** · June 25, 2009

Album player looks nice especially if you use that as your player/jukebox software. If you are primarily interested in a solid music collection database management tool, I would still opt for MediaMonkey. BUT, I don't use it the same way you are, so... I have my collection on a file server and use MM on my main machine to get everything organized. I primarily listen to it on my Creative ZVM, so I don't concentrate on the playback quite so much.

Oh, one question about AP: can it run scripts of any kind? In MM I can create new functionality (well, I can't because I don't know how, but...) because of this capability. For instance, I have a bunch of titles for some music that is all caps or all lower case. MM has a script called "Magic Nodes" that allows you to build lists of ANYTHING you want (if you know how). I had some help creating a couple lists for each case and manually fixed what needed fixing. If AP can do that, it would be just as good IMO. Just curious.

**shaunopp** · June 25, 2009

Thanks for all of the responses and info everyone, very helpful.

Wobbly, I've registered AlbumPlayer (upon your suggestion, thanks) and agree it is great software, especially for a touchscreen Jukebox. I guess I didn't know it could deal with the tagging as well as other apps. Can it automatically pull info from freedb and Amazon? I'll have to check it out more.

That still leaves me with comparing multiple folders of overlapping music where I would like to merge them into a single folder with the best bitrate and compression scheme, basically have it choose the best file of the ones I have and axe the rest. Any ideas? Some generic diff tool or is there a music specific one floating around somewhere?

**shaunopp** · June 25, 2009

Here's a list of top MP3 Tagging contenders someone on the AlbumPlayer site shared with me:

Six Best MP3 Tagging Tools

http://lifehacker.com/5266613/six-best-mp3-tagging-tools

**bkenobi** · June 26, 2009

One excellent source for info on a wide variety of tools is the Hydrogenaudio forums. Among other things, they are the host for Foobar2000 support forum.

http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/

I've found quite a bit of helpful info there that I used in fixing my media collection.

**Palmore** · June 26, 2009

I'm surpised no one has mentioned TheGodFather, didn't see it in the LifeHacker top tagging post either.

I've used it for 2 or so years and Love it, batch tagging, scriptting etc as many of the others have, and it's free

http://users.otenet.gr/~dtou20/

They have scripts available for it and other nifty tools, but I've been using it to tag and sort my 46,000 MP3 collection for the past couple of years, I then use Album Art Fixer to do Cover Art

**wobbly** · June 29, 2009

Thanks for all of the responses and info everyone, very helpful.
Wobbly, I've registered AlbumPlayer (upon your suggestion, thanks) and agree it is great software, especially for a touchscreen Jukebox. I guess I didn't know it could deal with the tagging as well as other apps. Can it automatically pull info from freedb and Amazon? I'll have to check it out more.
That still leaves me with comparing multiple folders of overlapping music where I would like to merge them into a single folder with the best bitrate and compression scheme, basically have it choose the best file of the ones I have and axe the rest. Any ideas? Some generic diff tool or is there a music specific one floating around somewhere?

yes albumplayer can get album info and covers

from

(none)

Directory and File Names

Cover and Directory

[OT] Organizing Digital Music

Recommended Posts

shaunopp

bkenobi

shaunopp

emphatic

JK1974

bkenobi

wobbly

bkenobi

shaunopp

shaunopp

bkenobi

Palmore

wobbly

wobbly

Stub

bkenobi

Stub

Donate

Browse

Products

Downloads

Activity

More