It can outright be stated that music is universally a very significant part of our everyday life. Music can set the ambience of different events as well as bring out different moods and feelings. Whatever emotions and situations we are currently in, music can often help define it for us.
We are now very lucky that our generation’s technology has been paving ways to make music accessible, portable and easier to organize depending on our taste. With our media players such as iTunes, it is easier to play tracks, create playlists and organize our prized music collection.
When we first started using these media players, we only had a couple of songs in it, probably 10s or 20s. As time passes, our collection has continually grown, and if you are not obsessive-compulsive enough, it will grow out of proportion and become disorganized. Instead of relaxing while listening to your music, you become frustrated and haunted by the growing chaos inside your media players.
Here are some tools to save you and help you clean out your music
MusicBrainz Picard
MusicBrainz is an open-source non-profit corporation which basically means it is a freely available database of CD information or metadata. Picard utilized this database and applied fingerprinting technology by sorting the tracks via an acoustic scan instead of just using the file sizes, or names. Picard can automatically download and save album arts as long as they are available on the database. MusicBrainz is available for Windows, Mac, and Linux.
iTunes Store File Validator
This open source tool has a special feature called Reverse Scrobble which functions to clean empty folders automatically, incorporate album art in tracks, and set EQ based on the genre. It scans your music library and determines if your songs are of iTunes Store quality and creates a report using important indicators it has gathered.
TuneUp Companion
TuneUp uses a similar fingerprinting technology as MusicBrainz called “FileID”. It fingerprints the track via accurate metadata even if it does not have a proper filename. Scanning and fixing an album usually consumes a little less than 30 seconds to fix. One of its edges against other music organizing tools is that it utilizes a specific database called Gracenote CDDB which is by far one of the most comprehensive online CD music database internationally.
Additional features include downloading of high-resolution album art and it also connects with YouTube to give you video recommendations related to the songs you have. It also supports music fanatics by providing concert dates so you will “never miss another show”, as what their tab says. TuneUp is available for Mac and Windows.
Mp3Tag
Mp3Tag is a non-open source free tool. It uses FreeDB database which is not at par with MusicBrainz. Nevertheless, it collaborates with Amazon archive containing a huge collection and high quality album art. There is nothing to lose since it is absolutely free. It automatically renames files according to tags which are quite a nifty feature. Mp3Tag is only available for Windows.
Of course, you always have the choice to manually fix your music library if your music catalog is not that huge. If you have gathered all the necessary song information such as the title, artist, album, and track number, then you can manually enter these into the song. Do these by right-clicking on the song then click “Properties”. Select the “Details” tab then enter the information into their corresponding spaces. Finally, click “Apply” to save the changes you have made.
Conclusion
Whether you wish to manually fix your music library or use the tools mentioned above, finally taking the step to organize your music library will save you all the inconvenience and annoyances. These tools will help you be in control of your current music collection as well as those you will get in future. You will never have to worry about misplaced and misidentified songs. Going through your own music archive will now be a breeze.
If you have any experiences regarding music organizing software tools or if you think this article missed some significant information, feel free to write your insights below.
About Aurora Freegard
