MP3 Tag Editing in Linux

Posted by gmendoza on July 12, 2008 under Tech Tips | 5 Comments to Read

Working with MP3 tags can be quite frustrating when dealing with large music collections and trying to read them on any number of media players.  People find that their may display as expected on one player but not in another.  Others may have problems with album art not being associated correctly. These problems are typically attributed to tag versions, character sets, and tag “standards” compliance.

Now, everyone has an opinion on which tag editor is best, but the truth is, you may have to use a couple to get the job done.  I’ll preface my own recommendation with the fact that it is strictly confined to the Linux application pool.  I’m sure there are plenty of Windows tag editors out there, but who uses Windows these days, anyway?  ;-)  Some will use wine to run their favorite Windows tag editor in Linux, but why do that when there’s a fantastic application written in GTK+?

In my experience, EasyTag is the most versatile tag editor available.  Note, I said versatile, not necessarily the easiest.  Although, as it’s name suggests, it is in fact very easy to use once you know how to use it. Some often wonder why on first launch that all of their tracks are highlighted in red and why it keeps prompting them to save changes that they didn’t make.  This is because by default it writes v1.1 and v2.4 tags, and will attempt to automatically upgrade all v2.3 tags it has scanned.  This behavior can be adjusted from “Settings… Preferences… ID3 Tag Settings”.  If you have a player that is not compatible with 2.4 tags, then this is the place to change it back to v2.3.  Uncheck the “Automatically convert old ID3v2 tag versions” option if you would like to stop that behavior.

It’s easy to get a bit overwhelmed with all the options EasyTag has to offer, but the defaults are typically safe to use.  Here’s a couple screenshots of the main user interface.

Other useful features include the ability to perform bulk file and directory renaming based on the tag data, or even set the tags based on the directory and file naming convention.  You can clear all tags (be careful), and automatically populate tags from CDDB sources such as freedb.org, musicbrainz.org, and gnudb.org.

Another graphical tag editor that is worth checking out Audio Tag Tool, which has the cleanest and most simple to understand user interface.  Unfortunately, it does not support v2.4 tags, and provides no graphical view of attached album art.  If it weren’t for these flaws, it would be my preferred application.

There are also a slew of command line tag editors each with their own strengths and weaknesses.  Again, the lack of 2.4 support plagues most of them, with the exception of eyeD3.  This application is wicked cool.  Not only does it support v2.4 tags but it also provides a very clean display of current tags using color and bold text.  You can attach album art, add new or modify existing tags, and of course is easily scriptable.

Related posts:

1. Rhythmbox ID3 Tag Issues
2. Amazon MP3 Downloader for Linux!
3. Batch MP3 Encoding with Linux and LAME