by a06lp on Fri Apr 21, 2006 4:25 pm Now that Steven has graciously added the option for database filling using ONLY ID3 tags (see here for more info), I figured I'd share a small guide of how to easily and properly tag all those mp3 files.
Firstly, I should mention that the first time you go through all your songs it is hard. However, once it's done you have more power over your music than you could have ever imagined. Want to only play country songs? No problem. Want to only play songs released after 2005? No problem. Want to only play songs off the Charlie's Angels soundtrack (you know who you are..) ? No problem. You get full control, and it's easy to maintain.
Here's what I do:
Step 1: Get Your Songs/mp3's Onto Your Computer
How? There are a number of ways:
a) Rip your CD collection (I suggest Exact Audio Copy (EAC) for that)
b) Buy from iTunes
c) Other illegal methods (I won't discuss here, but a google search for P2P Clients may help...)
Step 2: Tagging
Ok, so now you have your songs on your computer. The next part is the hard part - tagging them properly. If you ripped your CD's using EAC, some of the ID3 tags will already be filled for you, automatically.
I highly recommend MediaMonkey for your tagging needs. It's real easy to use, and also has some cool features, like sorting your music based on missing tags (so helpful when you can't remember if you've correctly tagged all your thousands of mp3s). There are lots of tagger programs out there, so you can also give TagRename, MusicBrainz, The Godfather, Album Cover Art Downloader, and many others a try.
I should note here that MediaMonkey is one of the few programs that give you the option (and are actually telling the truth) to save album art into the actual mp3's ID3 tag. This is a GREAT feature, and it cannot be overstated how important this is. What it means is that if you save the album art to the tag of the audio file, if/when you move your file to another computer, all the tag info (including the album art) stays with it. (Ever see someone with an iPod Nano showing cover art? That's because of this feature.)
Since I am a tag-a-holic, I continue past #2, and do a few more things to all my audio files:
Step 3: BPM
The next thing I do is run MixMeister's BPM Analyzer, a free tool that automatically calculates the BPM (beats per minute) of your music, and saves it to the ID3 BPM Tag. This is obviously an optional step, but if you like to mess around with mash-ups and remixes, this tool is invaluable.
Step 4: Normalize
The final step I run on all my music is a volume normalizer.
There is nothing more annoying that listening to a great song on your headphones, only to have the next song come on, and it's so loud you nearly pop your eardrums. These programs automatically adjust the volume of your songs, so they are all at the same level.
Now, here I must warn you: Many programs have 'volume normalizers', but they don't do it properly. (For more info on why, see here.)
MP3 Gain is a great tool. It does not just do peak normalization, as many normalizers do. Instead, it does some statistical analysis to determine how loud the file actually sounds to the human ear.
Also, the changes MP3Gain makes are completely lossless. There is no quality lost in the change because the program adjusts the mp3 file directly, without decoding and re-encoding.
So, just use MP3 Gain. Hey, it's free, and you can't beat that.
Now you've properly tagged your files. From now on, each time you get anew song, run through steps 1-4, and your new song will be ready (& properly tagged) to add to your collection.
So, you've reached the end of this tutorial. If you've come all the way through, I congratulate you. Properly tagging your files is hard work, but it's really worth it in the end. Enjoy your properly tagged music!
