Organize Music Library

Organize playlist, iPod playlist, iTunes Playlist, ID3 Tags, Music File Information, Organize music library with ID3 Tags

Ever wondered looking at your iPod or WMP /iTunes / Winamp playlist why the hell it doesn't display the correct information about Artist / Album / Song name/ Track Number etc ??Go on, read further and find out more about what's the problem and how to solve it. Organize your music with a little help of official free download software.

So, Here are few of the reasons why it doesn't show correct information especially for Bollywood / Hindi songs and South Asian pop / music albums.

- Pirated Music Tracks (the biggest issue)
- Downloaded from websites, who modify the tags and put their web address as info for their publicity
- Incorrectly ripped songs
- Inappropriate format conversion
- Copied from Torrents

These are some of the common reasons behind the incorrect tags. Let me try and bust the jargon first

Q: What are ID3 Tags? or What is Tag in music files
A: Tags are the information about the song. Artist, Album, Composer, Year, Track number, etc. So in simple words its personal information for the song you listen to. More information on Wiki

Q: What is rip / ripping (songs)?
A: Rip is converting / burning music from CD format to mp3 or WMA or other supported format as per the software you use. More information on Wiki

Q: What is Software?
A: Buy yourself some life if you ask this question.

Q: What is iTunes / Winamp / WMP?
A: iTunes is Apple Computer's Music software that plays, arrange, update your music file. Its free for download here.
Winamp is a freeware does the same job as iTunes but in a different way. Again its available for free download here.
WMP is Windows Media Player built in to Microsoft Windows. Its bundled software and upgrades are available for download here.

So here is what you need to do in order to update the tags. Earlier I used to use iTunes to manually modify the tags on each song which took ages for me to do it but though I could not do it for all of them for all the information. Still, I was determined to organize my music in order to get the maximum ease of use for my new iPod.

To manually modify the ID3 tags using iTunes, follow this process.

1. Open iTunes
2. Go to Library
3. Right Click on the song and select "Get Information"

4. You can modify the song information here from the 2nd Tab.

Its much easier to do it when you are updating your library with couple of albums as you can sort out the song list by :

1. Adding only one album at a time
2. Sort it by "Date Added"
3. Right click on first file follow the manual process and modify info
4. Click on next instead of closing it and it will select the next song on the list.

So you are already in a trauma that it will take ages to get this done ?? don't worry about it, that's where the next process comes to help us.

1: Download Winamp here

2: Follow the instructions for installation of Winamp
3: Once winamp is installed, start it and play few songs for test

After these steps you are ready to begin the real work. Now this is not going to be as simple as clicking and follow, its a bit difficult then that. But don't let the put you off, I have simplified the process for beginners.

1. Open Winamp
2. Add songs from one album or as many as 20 songs in the playlist
3. Select all the songs, right click and choose option Send to > Auto Tag

4. This will add all the songs to Auto Tag plug-in of Winamp which is built in, it will start to analyze and query them to the server and find out the tag information.

5. After all of them are queried and has results, it will display the results in "pan" below the list of the songs. Carefully select the songs to apply changes as its 95% accurate not 100%.

In order to optimize the results, modify the tags manually with at least one information in the tags. This is essential for those songs which has only numbers and no album or artist information at all. Those songs downloaded from webs mostly has some info followed by the url which is auto corrected by winamp quite easily.

After this is done, and you apply changes. You can skip the next step or follow it for making your music extremely organised.

You need to download ID3 TagIT and install it. Please follow instructions mentioned on the web for the software.

Once you have the software downloaded and installed. Here is what you need to do.

1. Start ID3 TagIT
2. Select songs from one album or as many as 20 songs
3. Select how you want to rename the songs, E.g.: Artist - Album - title, title - Album, title - album - artist.
4. Apply changes, this will rename all your songs as per your preference. I personally do it with title - Album. Which makes it extremely easy to find them using Windows search, Linux find, iPod and other music files.

After all these efforts, you will have the most organized music library and you will thank yourself for this.

If you have suggestions, comments, critics, please post them as comments. I will be glad to hear from you.

PS: I will update the post with Snapshots for process as soon as I get some time.

Regards,

Mihir Sangani

Download Links:

1: Apple iTunes
2: Winamp
3: ID3 TagIT
4: Microsoft Windows Media Player