Tagging MP3s

I recently got an iPod and realized the importance of having well tagged MP3s. I have gigs of music and I just can’t go and edit all the files separately. Well, I have been looking at quite a few options lately for tagging mp3 songs.

MediaMonkey 2.4.2 is mainly a mp3 management software with integrated mp3 player. It uses Amazon’s various sites to get more information on the songs but I don’t think it works that well.

AudioGrail (formerly K-MP3) is a product of KC Softwares and is another application that can be used to get tag information. I didn’t like the interface as it wasn’t too user friendly. It uses FreeDB to automatically identify mp3 tags and update them. It’s a very slow and cumbersome process and I would recommend it as one of the last choices.

CATRaxx 6.22.02 is another software for MP3 Management. It works for automatic tag updation only is you already have the Audio CDs with you. It accesses the CDDB and gets the file information. It was totally useless to me as I only have mp3s.

You also have Helium Music Manager 2005, which can be used for batch processing of the MP3s. It gives a lot of options to edit the tags using the filename as a source of information. Also, one can download plugins to query CDDB, FreeDB and Amazon databases to get more information on tags. It’s a good application to maintain loads of music.

The best of the lot is MusicMatch Jukebox Plus. The basic version doesn’t have the feature of automatic tagging from internet. Plus version has a feature called Super Tagging. Using this, all one has to do is select a set of songs and set them to be super tagged. The software then prepares a list of songs and their information to query the online database and then retrieves the information. You then get to decide what songs get the updated information and which ones don’t. This tool also has its short-comings. When a lot of songs are selected for super tagging at same time, some of the songs don’t get the updated information. Also, the existing information in the files should be correct otherwise it is not able to match the data and can not retrieve tagging information. Also, if you just want to tag songs using filename and local information, it has an interface that matches that of the Helium Music Manager.

All said and done, to me MusicMatch Jukebox Plus is a clear winner over others when it comes to tagging the MP3 that you have on your disks.