What’s Inside That MP3?

What’s Inside That MP3?
Pop quiz: Have you ever found yourself driving down the road listening to the radio when your favorite song comes on? You panic trying to figure out the band’s name that performs the rockin’ tune. Without any real thought, you ask everyone in the car to quiet down with the Blind Faith that the D.J. might name the artist as the song comes to a close. In its infinite wisdom, the radio station either jumps right over to a commercial or simply pauses for brief station identification. This is the land of confusion!

Those of us lucky enough to partake in the MP3 player experience are spared from this kind of annoyance. Assuming you buy your music “legally” from legitimate download sources, you may have noticed that both your PC-based media player and hardware MP3 player will display the name of the song, along with other important information, thus preventing the frustration that stems from not knowing the name of a great song. And we’ve all been through the desert on a song with no name.

After all, this is merely an audio file and has no ability to retain or display such data, right? Actually, the MP3 audio format does offer this ability, thanks to a little something called the ID3 tag. Here's the part where you are supposed to say, "Ooooooh" and "aaaaaaah." Remember that it's not unusual to be loved by anyone... I mean, to see ID3 tags that lack some of the data that would be helpful in indexing or accessing at a future time. This is the most common problem with music that was "borrowed" (or pirated off a file-sharing network). It is my understanding that people who upload music illegally often don't take time to enter much more than a song name with the band attached. Then again, what do you expect from people that choose to Ballmer their music? Do they have too much *clap, clap* time on their hands?

Generally speaking, the six most common ID3 tags are Title, Artist, Album, Year, Comment, and Genre. For most people this is plenty. All of their wants and desires are covered with the data that ID3v1 provides. ID3v2, on the other hand, is quite a bit different. In addition to being a lot more flexible than its predecessor, ID3v2 allows for an image to be encapsulated into the tag. I've been looking so long at these pictures of you that I almost believe that they're real - and within a tag, they can be!

By now, you're thinking, "Dude, this is sooooo MP3 101." Don't worry, I'm about to satisfy every power user out there. That's the power of love.

Every geek would agree that ID3 tags have really changed the way we enjoy audio. Having album data right there inside the audio file is pretty cool, but what about the music on your hard drive that doesn't contain this type of information? Remember that music in that folder with all of those songs you ripped from the 14,000-count CD collection in your basement? Two years later it's just sitting there gathering virtual dust being totally neglected. Does anybody really know what time it is? It's time to organize, yo.

There are dozens of utilities that take the "byte" out of unknown song tracks. My current favorite is ID3-TagIT. The UI is a little sluggish, but it makes up for that problem in its list of features, including v1 and v2 tag transposition and file-case conversion. The Open Source folks are bound to adore Mp3 Tag Tools, which help you strip annoying underscores and leftover %20s. Then there is Mp3tag, the universal Tag Editor. It handles APE, WMA, OGG, and AAC. Oh, and MP3-Tag Generator. The UI is completely unwieldy, but it rivals ID3-TagIT in muscle. msTagger was developed by a Polish programmer. It mostly reminds me of the simple, classic Windows 98 Find Files dialog box. TagScanner sports a very robust set of export tools. Al Pacino's favorite would probably be The GodFather. Word on the street is that this is the one to beat.

There are various other programs available, but the ones here are completely free. How much do you love me now? 'Cause that's the way (uh-huh, uh-huh) you like it.