Get your music collection tagged

Knowing exactly what a file contains is essential for easy PC use. This is especially true of digital audio tracks. Many people now maintain huge collections of music on their PCs and all these files need labelling and sorting correctly, otherwise finding things can be a nightmare. This is where tags come in.

In simple terms, a tag – sometimes called an ID3 tag or metadata – is a very small part of a music file that’s reserved for storing information besides the audio itself, such as the artist’s name, recording year, genre and so on.

It’s this hidden information that music-playing applications and digital audio devices, such as Windows Media Player (WMP) and iPods, rely on for the organisation and management of tracks.

Unfortunately, tags sometimes contain errors or can be missing entirely, making it more difficult to keep a music collection in order. Thankfully, editing tags is straightforward if you know how and we’ll explain everything you need to know in this article.

A matter of metadata
For many people, ‘digital audio’ means music that’s stored in the MP3 file format. Indeed, the term MP3 is synonymous with digital music.

However, with iTunes’ dominance of the modern commercial music scene, many downloads are now made in that program’s M4A format. But it doesn’t really matter these days, as most music-playing programs and gadgets can play most digital audio formats without the user having to worry about it.

Similarly, and for related reasons, many people refer to the metadata attached to digital audio files as ‘ID3 tags’, because that’s the tag format used by MP3 files.

In fact, there are different types of tag in existence, but again, it makes no odds because most applications and devices can read most tag formats – and few users need be concerned by the technical differences (although if you are interested, see the heading ‘Why ID3?’ towards the end of this article). For ease, in this article we’ll refer to music metadata simply as ID3 tags.

The purpose of tags
In media players such as iTunes and WMP, the data contained within ID3 tags is very useful. The programs read the ID3 tags automatically, presenting the information in a way that allows the user to organise music by genre, artist, composer or even the year in which it was recorded.

Evidently, having accurate tags on music files makes it easier to find what you are looking for.

When downloading a music album from a service such as iTunes, or ripping a CD that was bought in a shop, the metadata should appear immediately (assuming the computer is connected to the internet). However, sometimes the information can be incomplete, inconsistent, wrong or even missing.

The main reason for this is human error. Somewhere along the line, the ID3 tag data is compiled by people – typically employees of the record companies. In the past, the metadata stored on CDs could be very shoddy.

With no professionally run databases dedicated to providing accurate and properly formatted tags for music files, ripping a CD could result in unpredictable results when it came to the tags.

The situation is better now – market shrinkage and consolidation means the CD industry is less anarchic – but that’s little consolation if your digital music collection is already littered with errors.

Digital music files from disparate sources can also be full of annoyances – from poor spelling to inconsistent nomenclature; is it Blondie or Blondy, Beatles or The Beatles? This type of sloppy preparation can play havoc with a digital music library’s organisation.

Fortunately, editing tags is straightforward. As we will see, though, the right tool to use depends on the severity of the problem. Incidentally, if you are adding digital music to your PC for the first time, you will find out more about it under the heading 'Turn CDs into MP3 files' further on in the article.