Adding metadata to mp3 files

General Discussions
1

I have converted vinyl albums to mp3 but now want to add composer, Work, movement, etc. Plus scanned portrait.

2

Take a look at MP3Tag for Windows or Mac, or Puddletag for linux.

3

Thanks for the pointer. If I have entered some metadata in iTunes (Song Info), is there a way to pass that back to a form that Plex can pick up? As a first time user I have pointed Plex to the iTunes Media folder, where it found most of my material from CDs. Now I have music from the “Great Men of Music” series from the 70s, which don’t seem to show up in the database Plex uses by default. I would like to re-use the effort I have put into iTunes if feasable.

Thanks
Jack

4

I believe iTunes writes standard tags to mp3 files, so Plex should be able to read them. One thing that a lot of people have encountered, which might be causing a problem, is if all your music files are in a single flat folder, rather than organized into an /artist/album folder structure. Plex doesn’t do well with that.

If that’s the case, you might want to look at this guide to organize your music files.

5

Another vote for MP3Tag here.

6

There are a lot of options for tagging - you have specific applications for tagging like Picard, beets, Yate (Mac-only), kid3, mp3tag. More generalist music library managers/players like MusicBee, iTunes/Apple Music, Media Monkey, Swinsian, foobar2000 etc also write tags.

Indeed as @beckfield writes, having correct tags isn’t enough for Plex, it also needs a specific folder structure. Plex also does not support fields like Composer, Conductor, Work or Movement, nor things like multiple artists per song or per album. Within Plex, an album also cannot contain songs from different years.

7

I left my original question somewhat hanging on the topic of whether or not iTunes Info edits were preserved in the mp3 tags of the Media files. The answer is yes, if you edit an Info entry, the mp3 tags of the source Media file is updated, so that PLEX can “see” the new information.

Thanks to all who answered below.

Jack

8

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