Digital Trends

You know when your MP3 files are a mess. You have albums by The Beatles, Beatles, and Betles, four copies of the same song in different bitrates, and your friends are boggled by the files in your collection with names like 593_afeerb.mp3 and grtst_Hits_TRACK1_.mp3. It's time to clean them up, but like the junk drawer in your kitchen, the still-packed moving boxes in your basement, or the decade's worth of old clothes in your closet, you really don't have the time. Fortunately, unlike any of those tasks, technology can lend a hand and practically do your MP3 organization for you. Here's how you can straighten out a folder with gigs worth of messy MP3 files in only an afternoon.

Fix your ID3 Tags

No matter how you plan to eventually organize your MP3 collection, step one to sorting them out is cleaning up your ID3 tags. These are the fields built into every MP3 file that contain information about the artist, song name, album name, track number, and other critical details.

If you're used to navigating your personal MP3 collection from a computer by clicking on filenames, you may not be familiar with the tags, or even think you need them, but they're important for a number of reasons. First, many portable players use them exclusively, meaning the file you're used to playing, Smashing Pumpkins – Zero.mp3, may appear as a bunch of gobbledygook, or not appear at all, on your MP3 player because its ID3 tags are messy or missing. Software programs like Winamp and iTunes also use ID3 data to build manageable libraries, so if you plan to use their full features, you'll need to have neat tags. And finally, uniform filenames can be automatically generated based on a file's tags, so once you've clean up your tags, all other organization falls into place easily. 

Since you don't want to individually click through every MP3 file and fill out every painstaking detail about it, you'll need some software tools to make the going easier. Here are a few of our picks:

• FixTunes (http://www.fixtunes.com/) 
  

  If you're not a control freak and truly want "set it and forget it" control of your MP3 tags, FixTunes offers what might be the closest thing to truly painless, automatic tagging. With a familiar iTunes-like interface and simplistic controls that basically walk you through the process from the start, FixTunes will appeal to both the novice and those who simply don't have the time to learn and execute a more sophisticated tagging process. Its only pitfall: FixTunes uses a relatively small database to lookup files, which only includes about 4 million songs. While that may sound like a lot, and will probably work perfectly for those who listen to primarily mainstream music, indie elitists and collectors of obscurities will be out in the cold if parts of their collection fall outside this rather limited range. It also only works with MP3s, so if you have FLAC, OGG or other weird file types hiding in your collection, you'll need to graduate to something more advanced.

FixTunes Screenshot

• MP3tag (http://www.mp3tag.de/en/)
  

  When Plan A (see above) fails, this German-made utility should help you iron out the crazier parts of your collection. Although it isn't as straightforward or simple as FixTunes, it offers many more options and a much larger database of album and track data to draw upon. MP3tag can retrieve data from both Amazon.com's library and FreeDB, an open-source version of the more well-known CDDB. How much do these options expand your tagging options? Well, while FixTunes offers about 4 million songs in its database, FreeDB houses data on over 2 million albums, putting it leagues ahead in terms of sheer size. As experience will prove, though, this can be both a blessing and a curse as you try to figure out whether you're dealing with Sony BMG's European release of an album or Epic's release of the same album in Japan.

MP3tag Screenshot

• MusicBrainz Picard (www.musicbrainz.org)
  

  While both of the above automatic tag renamers work by picking up bits and pieces of existing tags and using them to figure out the missing ones, Picard actually looks at a profile of the music to figure out what song it's looking at, making it quite unique. MusicBrainz calls these snapshots AudioFingerprints, and by matching the ones that come from your files against an online library of known songs that others have submitted, it can snag all the ID3 data for your song, even if the original tag is completely missing and the filename is meaningless. In execution, the system isn't perfect, but if your library is so out of whack that it's beyond the help of ordinary renaming software, Picard can save you from the soul-crushing job of fixing tracks manually.

• MP3 Tag Studio (www.magnusbrading.com/mp3ts/)
  

  If you're really in a rut with some totally unique or rare files, there's no escaping the fact that you're going to have to label them by hand. That said, it doesn't have to be as brutal as filling out each and every single field individually. MP3 Tag Studio will help you do it more efficiently. For instance, you can fill out an entire folder's Album field with one click, or automatically sweep through files and fix capitalization with rules you set for it. While this game won't be nearly as fun or easy as clicking on a folder and watching every song get the right info automatically, it's all you've got if you're dealing with, for instance, relatively rare bootlegs, or albums from a friend's band.

Rename Your Files 

After you've used one or all four of the above software programs to get your ID3 tags settled, the rest of the work is a snap. Since your filenames won't reflect the changes you've made to the tags, you'll probably want to fix them as well. Using any of the above programs, you'll be able to rename a whole folder of properly tagged MP3s with a single click. Most work by having you enter the format you want, like Artist – Album – Track# –Title.mp3, then simply filling in those fields by referencing the ID3 tags.

Set a Directory Structure

The final step in organizing your MP3 collection will be deciding whether you want to use software programs (like Winamp or iTunes) to browse and search your collection, or access the files directly through a system of folders. Each has its own advantages. Software will save you the trouble of touching the files again at all, and still give you a neatly organized library. All you have to do is point the program to your music folder, let it index the files for easy access, and let it go. However, you'll be locked into browsing by the designated fields (Artist, Album, etc.) of an ID3 tag. If you want to make a more sophisticated system for organizing your music, like separating live songs from studio songs, albums from singles, old music from new music, or any other picky kind designations, you'll need to do it manually with folders. This is mostly self-explanatory, since it just involves creating folders and dropping MP3s into them however they make sense to you. Keep in mind that if you choose to take this route, you can still allow music software to build a library of links to your files without rearranging them, and therefore get the best of both worlds.

That's all there is to it! Hopefully you're MP3 collection now looks a lot more like an audiophile's CD rack than a bargain cassette bin at your local retailers, and navigating it will be much quicker. By making sure new music is adequately tagged as it enters your collection, your digital audio collection should look prim and proper for years to come with very little effort.