Easy File Tagging Guide

cormie

Click here for a great tagging program, "TagScanner". With the "music renamer" tab, you can create folders from the id2/3 tags on an mp3, so just say your ID3 tag reads Artist: Mark O'Connor, Album: Heroes, Track: 01 - New Country, you can make tag scanner organise that so it will arrange them in folders so just say you make it do it on the desktop, it will be:

C:\Documents and Settings\USERNAME\Desktop\Tagging\Mark O'Connor\Heroes\01 - New Country.mp3

so on your mp3 player it will be, whatever way you have it organised and whatever drive letter it may be:
H:\Albums\Mark O'Connor\Heroes\01 - New Country.mp3

This will also keep the ID3 tag.

To get these results, enter this code into the format field:

%1\%3\%7 - %2

If you have your music organised in a certain way, you can easily give your music ID3 tags depending on the file path and file name.

For example, if you have your albums organised like so:

C:\Documents and Settings\USERNAME\Desktop\Tagging\Mark O'Connor\Heroes\01 - New Country.mp3

you can tag the mp3 so that the file name will be the track name, the folder that this is in (Heroes) will become the album name and the folder that Heroes is in will become the artists name (Mark O'Connor).

Artist: Mark O'Connor
Album: Heroes
Track: 01 - New Country

To use this, go to the "Tag Processor" tab and put the following codes in the following fields:

Title: %f
Artist: %U
Album: %D
Genre: %E (this will leave the genre tag blank, e for empty)
Year: (I leave this blank) Track: (I leave this blank too)
Comment: (I leave this blank also)

If you want to add in the Genre, Year etc, it's up to you, just use the appropriate formatting, personally I don't see any point in using Genre and a lot of the music I listen to can't be classed into a Genre so I just don't bother. I don't bother with Year or anything else either:)

I would advise making a copy of about 10 or so different mp3 files and putting them in tester locations and paths, run a test batch, check the file names, folder locations, ID3 tags etc, and when you're happy with it, you can do your whole collection:)

TempestSabre

Personally having a few thousand artists isn't that easy to browse. Its why I use Genre. I might even use my own custom Genre. "Dodgy pop", "Really Nasty Speed Metal", "Driving Music", etc. The big problem with tags is that not all players and managers use the same fields. Artist/Album etc.