Editing MP3 Tags

Date: Fri, 11 Nov 2011 08:08:48 +1100
From: Craig Sanders
To: luv-main (luv-main@luv.asn.au)
Subject: Re: [luv-main] bash script

FYI, there are numerous id3 tag editors that have built-in filename parsing, using either built-in or user-defined filename templates.

A few years, back when I was still using mp3, I used to use one called lltag[1]. It could be run in batch mode to automatically set the tags based on the filename, or interactively to prompt you with its best guess for each file and allow you to approve or edit its suggestion. It's actually a front-end to mp3info[2] (and also supports ogg and flac via vorbiscomment and metaflac).

[1] http://home.gna.org/lltag/
[2] http://www.ibiblio.org/mp3info/

Either of these will almost certainly do a better job than will trying to write your own filename parser in bash.

And, for a GUI tag editor, I always thought that the original amarok 1.x user interface was the best available. Then, amarok 2 was released, and it sucked. Clementine[3] (a clone of the old amarok 1.x) is almost as good as the old amarok. ex-falso / quod-libet[4] also had excellent tag-editing abilities. EasyTAG[5] looked pretty good.

[3] http://www.clementine-player.org/
[4] http://code.google.com/p/quodlibet/
[5] http://easytag.sourceforge.net/

There are many other CLI & GUI tag editors.

All of these are packaged for Debian, and presumably for Debian-derivatives like Ubuntu. Probably for other distros, too.