An Accurate ID3 Tag Database?

Andy Le Couteur Bisson asks: "Can anyone suggest an ID3 tag database that doesn't label everything from Gabber to Ambient as Electronica & Dance, or worse? I am currently ripping more of my CD collection and it is annoying to have to review and edit almost all of the tags after every session. The odd error or difference of opinion is understandable, but I struggle to comprehend the logic that categorizes The Liberators and Luke Slater as R&B (for the uninitiated they are Techno). I guess I'm looking for a more UK centric database but Googling hasn't helped much, thus far."

Tag & Rename

[panic911]

Unfortunately Tag & Rename is shareware, but it's a GREAT application. You can select a whole list of mp3s and have it search for the albums on Amazon.com and automatically generate ID3 tags. I've done my entire collection of 150 albums in a couple of hours (I believe you have to do one album at a time). The link is http://www.softpointer.com/tr.htm [softpointer.com]

By the way, there is another program that IS freeware that does the same thing with amazon.com, but I can't remember the name :/

Limited Suggestion

[Saige]

For tagging music files with properly spelled artist names and song names and the like, I find the MusicBrainz [musicbrainz.org] tagger to be quite useful. It's also got the advantage of being editable by the users, and easier to clean up than other places.

However, you'll get no genre info there. That's something that's just really, really hard to do well. Especially because of the overlap that some artists have between genres, and how specific someone wants to be. Is VNV Nation EBM? Futurepop? Or just Electronica? How about Dead Can Dance? I think they've hit a dozen different genres over the years, how do you pick one?

For the most part, I've tried to just give up on genre entirely. It rarely says anything of value anyway.

MusicBrainz

[deezilmsu]

http://www.musicbrainz.org [musicbrainz.org] Haven't used the new picard looker-upper, but I know the original works wonders. Check that out.

CDDB Not ID3

[Mendy]

What (I think) you're asking for is an alternative CDDB source for track information when ripping your CDs? If this is the case then, to my knowledge there are only two CDDB (now Gracenote and commercial) and FreeDB. Both of these accept submissions from the general public so you can't guarantee that what they choose to clasify the artists as will be in line with your own opinion.

You can always edit the tracks afterwards, I use the already recommended Tag&Rename myself however there are a number of open source utilities which are just as good especially if you're not using Windows.

Another alternative might be to try Musicbrainz [musicbrainz.org] which identifies individual tracks using some kind of hash of the song itself and might have "better" genres assigned to artists.

Re:Tag & Rename

[Rytis]

By the way, there is another program that IS freeware that does the same thing with amazon.com, but I can't remember the name :/

Mp3tag? http://www.mp3tag.de/en/index.html [mp3tag.de]
That's a diamond, IMHO.

http://musicbrainz.org/

[Anonymous Coward]

the algorithm used to derive the cddb id is crap, so it leads to loads of collisions - just download the db and find all the files which have the same name (named after the id). the algorithm used to derive the musicbrainz style id (cdindex id in cdda2wav, i think) is much better and vastly less likely to collide.

also, musicbrainz has a community moderated thing going on, so mistakes get corrected :)

AllMusic

[Atario]

I don't know if you're familiar with it, but a good source of music data is AllMusic.com [allmusic.com]. They have fairly good genre/style info. You'll probably have to roll your own screen-scaper around it, though, if you intend to automate at all. This guy [krkeegan.com] seems to have taken a stab at it. (Of course, I understand Tag&Rename can pull from there as well...)

Re:uhm this already exists in freeform

[arb]

Too bad Mr AC - you fail it! Musicbrainz does not do genres.

Re:Tag & Rename

[Klaruz]

The GodFather [otenet.gr] is one of the best windows taggers, and it's free.

Shell scripts.

[Anonymous Coward]

This is what I used to do back when I cared about ID3 tags:

1. Find a command line ID3 tag editor. There are several out there.
2. Put each album in its own directory. Name the files appropriately (put track titles, track numbers, etc) so that a shell script can extract the relevant fields and set the appropriate ID3 fields.
3. for i in /path/to/album/*.mp3; do id3_tag_edtior [args]; done

Re:Limited Suggestion

[snarlydwarf]

id3v2 supports lyrics (even synced) [the USLT tag for unsynced lyrics], cover art [APIC], performer names [TIPL, TMCL, TPE1-4], composers [TCOM for composer, TEXT for lyricsist]...

The problem is that very little software supports most of that other than cover art.

Perhaps you should look at id3.org: see the id3v2.4 specs.

The problem isn't the tagging methods, it's the lack of software support.

(That said: obligatory plug -- slimserver supports lyrics, cover art, performer names and composers.... perhaps you need a Squeezebox.)

Re:AllMusic

[jb.hl.com]

IIRC Windows Media Player uses AllMusic to look up album information. Works quite nicely (along with WMP being one of the least worst CD rippers available).

media monkey

[Anonymous Coward]

www.mediamonkey.com it does ripping and tagging to your specs, you can then do a lookup on amazon for the album (amazon uk as well) and add the album art etc.

i've been using it for a while. it's also the only thing that can handle my mp3 collection. everything else crashes.

mp3dings

[pffffffff]

The best ID3-Tag-Editor: - Can edit ID3 v1, v2 and Filenames - Table Layout: You see all your files at the same time - Open Source and written in Java, works on every operatin system http://mp3dings.sourceforge.net/ [sourceforge.net]