Mp3tag 3.21

Overview

Mp3 has become the most popular format of music files over the years, and most people have entire album's worth of music stored on their hard drives and other devices. When these files are played, information is often displayed which is drawn from the 'tags' that are attached to them and contain information such as the track name, number, artist name, album art, and so on.

As its name strongly implies, Mp3tag is designed to help edit the information contained within these tags - and much more.

Installation

Installing Mp3tag should be a breeze and will be done in a minute or less. It supports Windows XP, 2003, Vista, 2008, 7, and 8.

Interface

At first, the Mp3tag interface may appear a little bit cluttered. A lot of small icons occupy a row at the top while the left section contains various fields for tags and the right section contains a file explorer with mp3 files.

Although it may take time to get used to the icons, you'll soon find that using the software is easy enough. The first icon that you should come to grips with is the handy 'Undo' icon (located 3rd from the left) that will help you reverse any accidental changes you may perform along the way.

Pros

While there are many types of software (including several media players) that allow users to edit mp3 tags, none is as detailed as Mp3tag.

Among the numerous options that it delivers into the hands of its users, the ones that stand out most are its ability to:

• Edit tags for batches of multiple files simultaneously
• Convert tags to file names, file names to tags, and so much more
• Source tag details from freedb, discogz, MusicBrainz and Amazon  (as well as cover art too)
• Replace strings within tags and file names
• Generate playlists automatically

Also worth mentioning is the fact that although Mp3tag is named thus, it actually supports a wide range of other audio file formats too, such as .ogg, .aac, .asf, .mp1, .mp2, .mp4, .flac, .wma, and many others.

Frankly it would be tough to find an audio file format that Mp3tag does not support.

Cons

Apart from the slight clutter of the interface, Mp3tag is pretty much flawless. An inbuilt media player may be nice, but double clicking any of the files will open it in your default media player anyway, so that isn't much of a concern.

Alternatives

Despite there being other software that are capable of editing tags in audio files, none is able to supply users with the sheer range of options that Mp3tag does. Still, some worth mentioning are MusicBrainz Picard, TagScanner and EasyTAG.

Conclusion

Assuming you're looking to sort out your music database and are tired of the wrong information showing up in your media player because of incorrect tags - Mp3tag is the single best software out there to do so.

It will give you an unparalleled amount of control over your tags, and the fact that it is free should only enhance its appeal.