As portable players become more popular, I believe that the way an MP3 is tagged will become more and more important. Purely as a recommendation, I would suggest:
<Artist Name> - <Album Title> - <Song Title>.mp3
If possible, include near your download the date of release, as this can often be displayed on a details page of an MP3 player. I'd also suggest a broader genre to assign to your track, or it will get pigeonholed into a category with no other listening selections. Some tags allow album art. Currently I would not suggest this feature, as some players cannot handle this information and just reject the file. Be sure to pop your information off to a CD database or Music Information Provider like:
http://www.gracenote.com/
http://www.freedb.org/
http://musicbrainz.org/
http://www.allmediaguide.com/lasso/
...May sound simple, but it'll help ensureing your playing position success in a portable device from 64 MB to 60 GB. Thought I'd pass them along.
Anyone else have any suggestions?
MP3 Tagging Suggestions
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- KVRian
- Topic Starter
- 809 posts since 25 Apr, 2004 from Windsor, Ontario
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- KVRian
- 1443 posts since 27 Dec, 2003
I've had a portable 15GB player for about 2-3 years. I started originally doing as you say, Artist - Album - Title. But I abandoned that for a few reasons.
Most of the stuff I found downloadable (such as live shows via etree or what have you) do not follow that standard and it became a burden constantly renaming things, even with a very good batch renaming utility.
Also, that really defeats the purpose of tagging. If you're going to accurately tag, you do not need that information in the file name. It's redundant, wastes space, and just adds managament burden. Almost everything capable of using an MP3 supports interpreting and displaying the tags, so it's just not needed. Win XP even shows you the tags in Explorer, and you can get an extension (recommended) called MP3ext that makes it even more native. The only caveat to this (for me) is that I store things in folders \Artist\Album\.. and a lot of tagging utilities will reorganize your MP3's into this heirarchy for you once you have tagged them correctly.
The other reason I quit is I found it easier to navigate through lists on a portable without such long file names. The portable I bought a few years ago did not generate lists based on tags, you scrolled based on directory structure down to the MP3's just as you do on an computer. So ultimately when there I just want to see the songs, and some players may just show file name , not the song title tag, so it would be alorge or long scrolling name. Again, these are just quirks of my particular player since it was old, but I finally have settled on:
\Artist\Album\nn-Title.mp3 such as:
\Ashlee Simpson\I Am Vapid\01-Autotunage.mp3
\Ashlee Simpson\I Am Vapid\02-Lip Syncing for Fun and Profit.mp3
an so on.
I think it just boils down to what makes it easiest for your player. You've got some good suggestions and they must work for you. The good thing is any robust tagging utilty will let you rename the files at will based on accurate tags so once you've tagged things correctly, you can adapt to any naming standard you like fairly easily.
Also, the tagger I settled on after a lot of searching and buying is MP3 Tag Studio. There's a free version, but it was so good I bought it. Runner up was Dr. Tag.
That's just what works for me, YMMV.
Most of the stuff I found downloadable (such as live shows via etree or what have you) do not follow that standard and it became a burden constantly renaming things, even with a very good batch renaming utility.
Also, that really defeats the purpose of tagging. If you're going to accurately tag, you do not need that information in the file name. It's redundant, wastes space, and just adds managament burden. Almost everything capable of using an MP3 supports interpreting and displaying the tags, so it's just not needed. Win XP even shows you the tags in Explorer, and you can get an extension (recommended) called MP3ext that makes it even more native. The only caveat to this (for me) is that I store things in folders \Artist\Album\.. and a lot of tagging utilities will reorganize your MP3's into this heirarchy for you once you have tagged them correctly.
The other reason I quit is I found it easier to navigate through lists on a portable without such long file names. The portable I bought a few years ago did not generate lists based on tags, you scrolled based on directory structure down to the MP3's just as you do on an computer. So ultimately when there I just want to see the songs, and some players may just show file name , not the song title tag, so it would be alorge or long scrolling name. Again, these are just quirks of my particular player since it was old, but I finally have settled on:
\Artist\Album\nn-Title.mp3 such as:
\Ashlee Simpson\I Am Vapid\01-Autotunage.mp3
\Ashlee Simpson\I Am Vapid\02-Lip Syncing for Fun and Profit.mp3
an so on.
I think it just boils down to what makes it easiest for your player. You've got some good suggestions and they must work for you. The good thing is any robust tagging utilty will let you rename the files at will based on accurate tags so once you've tagged things correctly, you can adapt to any naming standard you like fairly easily.
Also, the tagger I settled on after a lot of searching and buying is MP3 Tag Studio. There's a free version, but it was so good I bought it. Runner up was Dr. Tag.
That's just what works for me, YMMV.
Regards, Mike
