Best Free MP3 Tag Editor

Mon, 11/03/2008 - 16:15 — Jojoyee

In a Hurry?

Go straight to the Quick Selection Guide

Introduction

MP3 has become the most common audio format for playback, storage and transfer of music. If we need to playback MP3 files with their tag information shown correctly, or to organize a large collection of MP3 files based on their tag information, a good MP3 tag editor will be helpful.

In this category, both standalone and built-in MP3 tag editors are reviewed based on three basic needs which include:

Support basic tags, embedded cover arts and lyrics.
Rename files using tag information, and edit tags using file names.
Lookup online databases and save tags into MP3 files.

Standalone Tag Editors

TagScanner is my favorite. It supports basic tags such as artist, album, title, track, year and genre, and extended tags including composer, grouping, BPM (beats per minute), etc. Lyrics are shown below the album cover.

Files can be renamed with Music Renamer and tags can be generated from file names.

TagScanner with its Tag Processor allows you to preview tags and cover arts from online databases before saving them into MP3 files.

However, it does not come with a normal windows menu. You may need to spend some time to get yourself familiarized with its user interface.

Mp3tag will be a good choice if you prefer user interface with a normal windows menu. Mp3tag has an advantage for its simple and clean design with a powerful and yet easy-to-use tool to edit tags of MP3 files.

Basic tags are shown in a customizable front panel. Extended tags are shown in a separate window for all existing tags stored in your MP3 files. If a tag for lyrics or other info does not exist, it can be added, or if a tag is repeated, it can be removed easily.

Mp3tag allows you to rename files based on the tag information, import or export tag information and create playlists. It supports online Amazon, freedb or other database lookups, allowing you to auto tag and embed multiple images for album covers.

It also has a powerful Web Sources Framework, allowing you to get album info from additional online databases including MusicBrainz.com. The latest web sources are available from Mp3tag Forums at Web Sources Archive. Download the ones you need, extract them to your Mp3tag data folder in order to gain access to more online databases for auto tagging.

MusicBrainz Picard adopts a different way of updating tags via its online database.

Unlike other tag editors, it identifies track information by comparing a unique digital thumbprint to the information in the MusicBrainz database. Once the tracks are best matched, you can save their respective tag information into selected MP3 files.

Similar to Mp3tag, details' checking of a selected file allows listing of all existing tags including lyrics for editing. For a tag which does not exist, you can add it.

But for the version under review, cover arts are not allowed to edit except for updating from online databases.

Unlike the above, The GodFather is a tag editor with a built-in library to organise MP3 files based on tag info. The program will scan your MP3 folders and automatically suggest the files to rename.

Under its library tab, it allows you to edit and show up to 4 pictures per album stored in MP3 files. Moreover, the "Search lyrics using Google" function gets you the results in a Google search page or the web page showing lyrics of the selected file. This expedites the search for lyrics but you need to copy and save them to the tag manually, not so efficient as Teen Spirit.

In additon to manual editing of tags, it provides auto tagging via online databases such as freedb, Allmusic and Amazon. However, All Music Guide is disabled due to possible terms of service violation, and the built-in Amazon search seems to retrieve tag info less successfully than other selected tag editors. Another drawback is that this program has no Unicode support.

Built-in Tag Editors

MediaMonkey is a music player with a built-in tag editor, which is surprisingly as good as a standalone tag editor meeting the basic needs. It allows editing basic and detailed tag information, auto tags from filenames, move or rename files based on track tags.

It also supports editing lyrics and multiple images with types and descriptions for album art, and allows fixing of tags in your selected MP3 files with automatic lookup and tagging of album art and other track information from Amazon online database.

AudioShell is not a standard alone application but a Windows Explorer shell extension. Unlike all the above applications, it allows you to view and edit tag information directly in Windows Explorer.

After installing AudioShell, you do not need to run it again. It adds 27 optional additional columns to show tags in Explorer "Details" view.

Editing basic tags and the cover art of an MP3 file is allowed at Editor tab of Properties windows, and editing lyrics is allowed at Summary tab in Advanced mode. Group editing is possible by selecting multiple files.

AudioShell does not offer connection to online databases, but it is a good program to accompany any one of the above applications.

Other Tag Editors

These are a number of other MP3 tag editors which were brought up in comments here or noted from other sources. As they are not rated in this review, I am listing them here with brief descriptions and links to their sites for ease of reference.

MP3 Book Helper allows file renaming and tags editing by variables or regular expressions. Pictures and lyrics are to be viewed on separate windows with a search linked to Allmusic or Google on a browser. A lyrics search directs you to a Google search page related to the selected file, but a search on freedb database for tag info gets fewer matches than other short listed tag editors.

ID3-TagIT supports quite a number of tag info, including lyrics and multiple pictures for album arts. It also supports freedb database but experiences a low rate of getting a successful match and occasionally subjects to 'unhandled exception' errors. Lyrics are shown without line breaks for some MP3 files.

Mp3 Tag Tools is a small program allowing you to edit basic tags and lyrics, embed multiple images of album arts into MP3 files, but with regret, it does not support fixing of tags from online databases, one of the basic needs in this review.

Teen Spirit is a music player and organizer with a built-in tagger. Its Google Lyrics is powerful in automatically searching the lyrics, but writing them to the file is still buggy as it will white-out the album art in the file as checked from other tag editors. Besides, other tag editing features are not better than MediaMonkey.

Zortam Mp3 Media Studio is a multi-purpose MP3 organizer with a built-in tag editor. It allows editing tags including lyrics and multiple pictures, and provides online updating of tags via Amazon. However, unlimited online access to Zortam Music Database for lyrics and cover arts, together with some other basic editing features, are only available to the commercial Pro version.

Related Products and Links

Quick Selection Guide

TagScanner
		Support basic and extended tags, complete with Music Renamer and Tag Processor. Preview tags and cover arts from online database before saving.
		Without normal windows menu.
		http://www.xdlab.ru/en/index.htm
		http://www.xdlab.ru/en/download.htm
		1.62 MB 5.0.525 Unrestricted freeware Win 2000-Vista Portable version available

Mp3tag
		Simple and clean design, show up existing tags with add and delete functions, customizable front panel, import and export tags, create playlists, online database lookups.
		Lyrics column can be added in front panel but is too small.
		http://www.mp3tag.de/en/
		http://www.mp3tag.de/en/download.html
		1.65 MB 2.42 Unrestricted freeware Win XP-Vista

MusicBrainz Picard
		Identify track info by matching digital thumbprint with MusicBrainz database, show up existing tags with add and delete functions.
		Cover arts not allowed to edit except updating from database.
		http://musicbrainz.org/doc/PicardTagger
		http://musicbrainz.org/doc/PicardDownload
		6.66 MB 0.10 Unrestricted freeware Win 98-Vista

The GodFather
		Edit and show up to 4 pictures per album, search lyrics using Google, auto tag via online database.
		Less successful search of tag info from Amazon. No unicode support.
		http://users.otenet.gr/~dtou20/
		http://users.otenet.gr/~dtou20/download.html
		3.28 MB 0.70 Unrestricted freeware Win 98-XP

MediaMonkey
		A player with a powerful built-in tag editor, user friendly, support basic and detailed tag info, auto tags from online database.
		Auto tags from database is less powerful when compared to TagScanner.
		http://www.mediamonkey.com/information/free/
		http://www.mediamonkey.com/download/
		6.55 MB 3.0.5 Unrestricted freeware Win 98-Vista

AudioShell
		A Windows Explorer shell extension, adds may columns to show tags in Explorer, editing basic tags, lyrics and album arts are allowed.
		No auto tag from online database.
		http://www.softpointer.com/AudioShell.htm
		http://www.softpointer.com/downloads/AudioShell135.exe
		1.13 MB 1.3.5 Unrestricted freeware Win 2000-Vista

This software category is maintained by volunteer Jojoyee. Registered site visitors can contact him by clicking here.

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#1Submitted by Anonymous on Tue, 12/30/2008 - 02:05.

I recommend you an another beautiful sound free software, MP3Gain. MP3Gain analyzes mp3 files to determine how loud they sound to the human ear. It can then adjust the mp3 files so that they all have the same loudness without any quality loss.

#2Submitted by Jojoyee on Tue, 12/30/2008 - 03:30.

This is probably a good candidate for Best Free Audio Editing Software.

#3Submitted by Anonymous on Fri, 11/14/2008 - 11:15.

TagScanner is certainly powerful, but its non-standard interface is incredibly frustrating. Far-be-it from me to suggest Windows is itself the best model for a UI, but at least it provides a standard and there's nothing in the way that TagScanner works that needs/justifies such a complete departure from the basic Windows standard, and the TagScanner UI is very far from intuitive to me (based on almost 30 years of using a wide variety of UIs).

#4Submitted by afortes on Wed, 11/12/2008 - 11:17.

What about The GodFather. I have been using it for a long time and found that its very powerful tag editor.
:)

#5Submitted by Jojoyee on Thu, 11/13/2008 - 10:53.

Good suggestion. It has been updated in the review. Thanks.

#6Submitted by Anonymous on Sun, 11/02/2008 - 18:23.

If you're not intimidated by its interface, I haven't yet found anything more powerful than MP3BookHelper. It appears that it's no longer in development and lacks synchronization with online databases, but for mass tagging using regular expressions and the like, it works marvelously.

http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=57079

#7Submitted by Jojoyee on Thu, 11/13/2008 - 16:06.

Thanks for the helpful info. It has been included for review.

#8Submitted by Anonymous on Wed, 10/22/2008 - 00:02.

Jojoyee....you should check out File Renamer Basic.

#9Submitted by Anonymous on Wed, 10/22/2008 - 00:05.

http://www.sherrodcomputers.com/products_FileRenamer.cfm

#10Submitted by Jojoyee on Wed, 10/22/2008 - 11:06.

Yes, it is quite a good software designed more towards file renaming. I notice that it is being reviewed under the category of "Best Free File Rename Utility".

It has a built-in ID3 Tag editor, but its functions are quite limited as compared to other software designed more solely for editing tags.

#11Submitted by Anonymous on Mon, 10/20/2008 - 22:24.

Tag & Rename is a great one as well!

#12Submitted by Jojoyee on Tue, 10/21/2008 - 08:39.

This has been excluded as it is not a freeware.

#13Submitted by Anonymous on Mon, 10/20/2008 - 12:44.

Another good one which I use is Audioshell, which lets you edit the ID3 tags from the properties pages of the files - no need to start up another program! You can add cover art, plus all the usual ones and you can do multiple ones by choosing multiple ones and doing the group properties. Well worth it.
Usman

#14Submitted by Jojoyee on Tue, 10/21/2008 - 09:38.

Yes, I tried this software sometime ago. As it has added more features supporting cover arts and lyrics, it will be included for next review soon. Many thanks for the update.

#15Submitted by Anonymous on Mon, 10/20/2008 - 04:43.

Just recently switched from MP3 Tag Tools to TagScanner - All I can say is WOW!

#16Submitted by Anonymous on Sun, 10/19/2008 - 21:29.

I really like MP3Tag but have had trouble with tagging ogg vorbis files (does not do album art). TagScanner handles them very well and runs clean as a portable app, but is taking a while to get used to.

#17Submitted by Anonymous on Sun, 10/19/2008 - 13:02.

You should take a look at ID3-TagIT as well http://www.id3-tagit.de/

Very good.

Pat

#18Submitted by Jojoyee on Mon, 10/20/2008 - 06:11.

I did use this tag editor sometime ago. It will be included in the next review. Thanks a lot.

#19Submitted by Anonymous on Sun, 10/19/2008 - 02:05.

Thanks for the list! But don't forget EasyTAG:

http://easytag.sourceforge.net/

It's free and OpenSource.

#20Submitted by Jojoyee on Mon, 10/20/2008 - 06:52.

Good info. It will be evaluated in the next review.

#21Submitted by Anonymous on Sun, 10/19/2008 - 01:44.

What about Picard or media monkey? I use these as well as MP3 tag tools

#22Submitted by Anonymous on Sun, 10/19/2008 - 13:13.

Yes, Picard is one of the best tools if you have a large amount of MP3s to tag. It can fetch the info bases on a song's "fingerprint", so if you haven't got a clue what the MP3's info is all about it's one of the best!

#23Submitted by Jojoyee on Mon, 10/20/2008 - 06:13.

Thanks for the good suggestion. It will be included in the next review soon.

#24Submitted by Anonymous on Sun, 10/19/2008 - 01:19.

MP3Tag is my choice
A long time, now
:-)

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Best Free MP3 Tag Editor

TagScanner

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The GodFather

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