Update the information tags in music files with Picard Tagger

The tags on music files are the only way to keep large collections manageable. With information about the artist, album and the style of music they help to create playlists.

Picard can edit tags saved in the following file formats: MP3, Ogg Vorbis, FLAC, MP4, Musepack, Wavpack, Speex, The True Audio and Windows Media Audio. WAVs cannot be tagged due to the lack of a standard for doing so, but they can be fingerprinted and renamed.

Installation is easy but we recommend taking just a couple of minutes to read the instructions on the MusicBrainz website to get started.

The first step is to add files to Picard using the Add Files or Add Folder buttons in the toolbar. Click on the Cluster button cnce they have been imported and Picard will do it's best to group the similar tracks together. It did a good job of this with our collection of test files that had incomplete ID3 information.

There are options for adding tags automatically using online services with audio fingerprints of the track.

It is possible to add or edit the information by hand. This is quite simple for individual tracks. Click on the track and then enter the new information in the New Metadata fields.

Unfortunately updating multiple files is not quite so simple as this part of the Picard window deactivates when more than one file is selected. It is possible though. With the files selected, click on the Details button. This window can then be used to edit existing tags or to create new ones.

It is even possible to use Picard to include Album art and include last.fm tags using plugins. A full list can be found on the Picard Plugins page.

This download is for the Windows version. Picard is an open source project so there is also a version available for Mac. Linux users can download the source code to make a version for their systems. There are plug-ins available for Picard as well.