Tag MP3's - Add Metadata and Artwork To Mp3 and Wav Files
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We've all had that experience where you open up your song file, and it just doesn't look right. It'll have generic information about it. The artists will literally say artist or the song title, we'll just say title and that's because the metadata is not filled out correctly. In short, metadata is just information that the file uses to communicate with your computer. There are a couple of different ways to get around this, but some are better than others. Let's go through a couple. So you exported your file in your DAW you open it up and it really just has a file name. And maybe the time there's no artwork or artist or title or album, no other information. I should add that this pertains to Mac users. There are ways to do this on Windows and just simply Google ID three Tag Editor for Windows. Now back to the problem we have here. One way you can try to combat some of this not very effectively is in your DAW. There'll be a my info section or some information you can alter with the composer and the writer. Like in logic inside preferences. There'll be a my info section and you can change some of this. This will help a little bit with the metadata but it's not really what we're looking for. Some people will try to combat this metadata problem inside Apple Music or iTunes by going to the file that they want to change, right clicking it.
Going to get info and you can change all the metadata in here. The problem doing it inside Apple music is that it really only pertains to Apple Music or Apple products, iTunes, etc. As soon as I take that file and play it somewhere else on another device. It might get screwy Apple likes to put a lot of their own metadata in there. So in the comments section, you might have some gobbly gook like just babbling and letters. Or if you use any kind of special characters like exclamation points or ampersands or anything, it'll get messed up. The best way to cover all your bases is just to use some type of ID three Tag Editor. There's a free one right inside the Mac App Store. If you go to the Mac App Store, and just search Tag Editor, you'll see there's a Tag Editor free and a Tag Editor paper. I really only use the free version because I don't do necessarily huge bulks of tagging, which is what the Tag Editor paid version will do for you. It also prevents a lot of pop-ups or a lot of pop-ups but you know I'm not doing it all day so I deal with it. Once you have Tag Editor free open, you can simply just drag and drop whatever file whether it's a WAV or mp3, click out of all this mumbo jumbo and it'll have your file here and there's some metadata already attached to this file. It doesn't look too bad, but it's not all correct. Like I would have sent this out to someone in the album display information what it said desktop loop you can't have that. So say the title of my song and you only want the title of the song in the title section, the artist and the artist, the album. It's not part of an album. Inside your comments. I definitely recommend putting in maybe your website or tag to some social media. You can even add your genre. I wouldn't change the file name. You don't really need to do that. And even a track number. The best thing about this to really keep your tracks polished is that you can add artwork to this so when people open the file, there'll be artwork displayed. Let's just use something generic here. So I'm going to take this and attach it to that file. You simply just take the file, drag it, and put it in there. Now if you're satisfied with how the metadata is set up, you can just simply save it. Now when I open this file and just pull this out real quick now everything looks a little bit more polished. So you can see the name of the record is poster boy. You can see my name is the artist the time is correct. And there's artwork associated with that file. So everything just looks a little bit more pro when you send this out. One thing you want to double check when dealing with this metadata is that if you go and do this to a WAV file and convert it to an mp3, make sure the mp3 information is transferred over. Just open up the Tag Editor again, drag the file in and make sure everything looks copacetic. Now, this metadata is actually attached to that file no matter who plays it. You send it out and your email blast, use it as a promotional tool. play on your phone, wherever this information is going to be correct. Now, keep in mind this information doesn't have to be as tight when you're sending it to your distributor. They have their own metadata system to make sure that your music shows up properly on Apple Music and Spotify. This is really for your own system using your songs. For promo and send out an email blast.