"UNKOWN" Artist In Music Media Playlist?

Chip Fossa · From: Monson, MA, USA (deceased)

I have many old mp3 files that I downloaded years back.

I can't explain how the artists aren't listed on the songs now (much moving around of the files), but I have painstakingly gone thru gobs of files and renamed (ie) TRACK1, TRACK2, etc. to the artist's name.

When I enter the file in a media player, it still comes out as "unknown". But for a brief nano second, I can see my new name change in the playlist field, but it quickly turns to "unknown".

Does anyone no how to correct this? Especially, if possible, by the batch method, instead of file by file?

Thanks for any assistance.

Jon Moen · From: Canada

Sounds like you need an MP3 Tag editor. The information is stored inside the file, not in the file name. You can edit the info one at a time in Windows Media Player, but some Tag editors can do batches. Do a search on "MP3 Tag Editor" and you will find some free ones that can do batches.

Jon

Mitch Drumm · From: Frostbite Falls, hard by Veronica Lake

Chip:

I don't know why your files have changed, but it could be a tagging issue.

Do you mean that a file named, for instance, Elvis Presley - His Latest Flame.mp3 is now named Unknown - His Latest Flame.mp3?

Or do you mean that the file is still named properly when you look at it in its directory in Windows Explorer, but that the name won't display properly in your player?

If you mean the latter, it could be a tagging issue because the displayed names in players typically come from the tags, not the file name.

I use mp3tag to change my tags and file names.

You can use mp3tag to force the tags to agree with the file name and vice versa. It can do a batch correction or you can do it file by file. In actual practice, you generally use a combination of manual and batch, depending on how fouled up the tags and file names are.

Get it for free here:

http://www.mp3tag.de/en/

Look at the download link. The newest version is 2.41. I am using 2.32a, which is a couple of years old, but works very well for my purposes with Windows XP. You can download either version.

Post back here if you want to try it and I will try to walk you through using it. You have to do a little configuring, but not much.

How many files are problematic for you?

Chip Fossa · From: Monson, MA, USA (deceased)

Thanks Jon and Mitch,

I have these files on CDs. That's how I put them back on the present PC. Maybe it was the way I uploaded them to the PC, but for instance in the folder A-B (all artists are listed alphabetically by FIRST name, then the song title) you got:
Bonnie Raitt - Love Has No Pride
Byrds - You Ain't Goin' Nowhere
etc.

But when the A-B folder appeared on my HDD, everything was listed as Track1, Track2.

The only time when the artist and song title appears is when the song comes from a commercial paid-for CD.

I'll look into those MP3 tags. I've got Vista, now, so who knows.

Thanks again fellas.

John Cipriano · From: San Francisco

There are two major versions of the tags (called ID3 tags) that appear in MP3 files and store the track info, and minor variations on those as well. It's not uncommon for the tags from one program to not be read into another.

My car stereo deck can read MP3s on a CD, but needs the tags in a certain format or it will say "unknown" or something like that. Usually computer programs are more forgiving, but who knows.

As others have said, the trick is to do them in batch where possible, so that you're not typing Elvis Presley 15 times for 15 songs.

Commercial discs have an ID number stamped in that's read by the computer and checked against a database called Gracenote, which then sends you the track listing.

My personal favorite program for this sort of work is one called foobar2000, but it can be a confusing program if you're not used to it. iTunes can help you here too, but that's another can of worms. For reasons I won't get into, it'd probably take longer to properly set up iTunes than it would to just retag the songs. But it's a very nice music player nonetheless.

MP3Tag looks pretty straightforward. Might wanna give that a whirl.

Chip Fossa · From: Monson, MA, USA (deceased)

Thanks again everyone.

I did install Stamp ID3 Tag and have used it already and so far seems to be working fine.

John, BTW, my real name is John Cipriano Fossa. Cipriano was my grandfather's (father side) first name. Chip is like the nickname for Cipriano, but I understand the Italian pronunciation, is something like Chipri with a rolled "r". I should know this stuff better.

Smile

Chip Fossa · From: Monson, MA, USA (deceased)

Mitch,

I just checked STAMP, and the version I have is 1.00.

I was looking around to see how to do a batch conversion, and couldn't locate it.

Maybe it's found only in the later versions.

I guess I'll go back and see if there are updates.

Do you know where to find the batch link?

Thanks... Chip Confused

Mitch Drumm · From: Frostbite Falls, hard by Veronica Lake

Chip:

I am completely unfamiliar with a "STAMP" program.

I use mp3tag as mentioned in my post higher up in this thread.

Chip Fossa · From: Monson, MA, USA (deceased)

Mitch,

I'm not sure how I wound up with STAMP, but I went back to your site above and now have version 2.41 of MP3tag.

Somehow I must have wound up with Stamp, instead of "tag".

TAG works pretty well, as well. But I came across some folders where the individual files still showed up as TRACK1 etc. ie - the 'tag' process didn't work.

So I started to compare PROPERTIES of files that could change and ones that couldn't.
In 'properties', there's a TITLE heading, and in the ones that don't work, it says TRACK, and the ones that do work has the song title. You can alter TITLES.

So some folders (20 or so songs) - everything comes out OK, and other folders all have TRACK listed. I don't how this happened, but there ya go.

So, to still straighten out this mess, even with BATCH capability, I still have to go in and one by one change PROPERTIES.

But when I change, in properties, from 'track' to the right song title - it shows up OK alright in the media playlist, but now the artist is missing.

So this is what I'm doing this afternoon; trying to get this just right. I know all the tools are there, but I haven't quite figured how to get this going just the right way.

Once again, I'm unclear on some of the terminology, and this is what's really holding me back.

Mitch Drumm · From: Frostbite Falls, hard by Veronica Lake

Chip:

I don't use 2.41 because I still use XP, but here is what I would do:

Find maybe 10 mp3 files that you know play OK. Copy them to a folder and use mp3tag to play with them while you learn the program. If you foul the 10 files up completely, you still have your originals.

Configure the program through the tools/options menu. You can leave most stuff at default. The only thing i recall changing is under the convert/tag and convert/filenames section, where i chose %artist% - %title% in the formatstring box. I chose that string because I am NOT interested in any tags other than artist and title. I don't care about genre, album, etc, but if you do, you would have to choose another formatstring.

The %artist% - %title% is used to force the tags to conform to the filename or to force the filename to conform to the tag, whichever you need.

After configuring, go to file/change directory and navigate to your folder with the 10 files.

The files should pop open in a list. Customize the columns to display, left to right, filename, artist, and title. The artist and title shown are read from the tags. The filename should be whatever is shown in your Explorer directory in which the files reside.

You might see a filename like Jack Scott - Cry, Cry, Cry.mp3 and a bad tag for that file like Jack Spratt - Could Eat No Fat

If you highlight the file, you can go to convert/filename-tag and the prog will replace the bad tags with new tags derived from the correct file name. The tags will then read Jack Scott for artist and Cry, Cry, Cry for title.

If you have a thousand files that have good filenames but bad tags, you can highlight them all and batch convert.

Likewise, if the tags are good, but the filenames are bad, you can choose to convert the tags into the filename. If both the filename and the tag are bad, this program won't help you much until you fix one or the other. It isn't really a renaming program per se.

That's how I use it. It has a bunch of other functions that I don't need. You can manually change tags or filenames with it too.

The program has a good help section and the website has a good forum. Practice with it.

John Cipriano · From: San Francisco

Hey Chip, that's interesting..I know a lot of Ciprianos (obviously Very Happy

) but no one with that as a first name, or middle name.

The batch operations that Mitch is referring to is something where you'd actually generate tags from a filename that had the tags (which is very useful since it sounds like you went through and renamed all those files to have good info in the filename).

But the "batch" operation I was talking about was just to grab an entire set by the same artist, go into properties and edit the TITLE area with that artist's name.

What you described is normal (if I'm reading you right)...the program could very well refer to the portion of the tag with song name as TITLE. Your tracks would have names like Track1, Track2, etc, which would be of no help when trying to figure out ID3 tags from file names.

Anyway, sounds like you're on the right path though. Not sure why the artist would be missing when you edit the track.

One thing that might help if you don't already use them are the Windows keyboard shortcuts for copy, cut & paste: copy is CTRL+C, cut is CTRL+X, paste is CTRL+V. Along with undo (CTRL+Z) you will notice that they are all on the bottom left of the keyboard...left hand chords Very Happy

If you knew about them, then I apologize but where I work even the "power users" forget about these.

Chip Fossa · From: Monson, MA, USA (deceased)

Hello Mitch and John,

Again, thanks for your in-depth responses.

As I was working away this afternoon on this renaming stuff, another curious event occurred.

Basically, the 'TRACKS' were able to be changed to the proper title, but artist would be missing. Then I was able to get both the title and artist, but I would get a "double" track number, like this:

Folder A-B: 1.America - Lonely People
2.Asleep At The Wheel - Miles & Miles Of Texas etc.

...would come out like this: 1. 1.America - Lonely People
2. 2.Asleep At The Wheel
etc.

In other words, the changes were getting close but not exactly right; and yeah, all I care about, too, is just the song title and artist - don't need genre and all that other stuff.

So, to make a long story short, I started looking and comparing PROPERTIES of these files.

I can't explain easily what I did, but my making changes in PROPERTIES with TITLE, ALBUM ARTIST, and ALBUM (A-B, B-C, C-D etc.) I was able to correct this renaming dilemma.
ie. - Mp3Tag actually didn't come into play.

I can't tell you the steps that occurred for me in stumbling on this, but it seems to be working.

And MP3Tag is still a very nice program, and I'm sure I'll find more uses for it; But I just don't know exactly how this PROPERTIES thing came about. It was just some tweaking.

So I have to do all the files again, manually, but at least they are coming out as I hoped they would.

Thanks again, fellas, for your time and expertise.

Cipriano
Laughing

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