While mp3 files are generally audio, there is some useful meta-data usually associated with them. This stored meta-data is an ID3 tag. When you play the file, you usually see some general information about what’s playing. In Windows Media Player, this information toggles between Album, Album Artist, Title and other fields of information. Audacity, my free audio editor of choice, does off some ID3 tag configuration but not in depth and not all the fields I want.
When you look at these files through Windows Explorer’s properties pane, you can view all of this useful information and you actually can set most of it. Any fields that are blank are actually settable, while un-included fields are absent from the pane. None of this prevents you from using Windows and editing your ID3 tags that way, but I wanted my podcasts to feature as diverse range of ID3 tags as possible. So that lead me to look for other solutions.
And with that, I did a little searching for id3 tag editors. I found two prospects, ID3 Tag Editor and Mp3tag. Such creative names. I tried the simpler looking ID3 Tag Editor first.
It looks very clean and it works. Sadly, I couldn’t drag and drop files to it and it was missing a couple fields I knew I wanted to edit. At the very least, it would allow me to edit the album and song art, and even allow me to include multiple files. If you’re editing more than just a single file occasionally, you might want to continue looking, otherwise this will be more enhanced than Windows and should suffice. I tried Mp3tags next.
It looks really busy. Could there be more buttons on that action bar? No, I didn’t think so. This application allowed me to easily view existing fields and add fields I wanted to editor with a customization setting through its options panel. It would monitor a folder and just load in all the audio files within that allowing for mass editing. That’s a really handy feature.
So, if you just have a single file, you can get away with it by using Windows. But if you want album and song art, you’ll need something fancier. Both of the programs I found were free, though would welcome donations. And remember, ID3 tags on your podcast files will really make your listeners’ lives easier.