What is the best utility for tagging media files?

Is there a better ID3 tagging utility than Tag&Rename?

[Hubs]

Is there a program that uses gracenote or some other data base. If I have songs that are unrecognizable in Replay-music is there some program that I can use by playing song and can identify it from internet using some data base like gracenote? That Replay-Music misses.

I don't think that other client software using Gracenote will be any better than Replay Music.

It would really be interesting to know whether there are any alternatives to Gracenote database and client software supporting them.

Many programs support CDDB databases. And CDDB is seems to be owned by Gracenote now. However software like Tag and Rename can tag full album
only (using CDDB disc identification), while Replay Music can tag individual songs.

gracenote.com has a list of partner software but it is next to impossible to understand from their lists what software can tag individual songs.

Gracenote (CDDB2) alternatives:
1. FreeDB (CDDB or CDDB1 compatible; not compatible with Gracenote CDDB2). FreeDB is a free database with almost 2 mln. CDs.
You can get the artist, CD-title, tracklist and some additional info for the
whole CD only (No homemade CDs supported unless they are the copies of the original CDs. Although sometimes vinyl LPs converted to CDs can be recognized.)

2. AMG LASSO media recognition service from All Media Guide (AMG).
LASSO is a commercial service that recognizes CDs, DVDs, and digital audio files in formats such as MP3, WMA, and others. The service uses CD TOC, DVD TOC, and acoustic fingerprint based recognition technologies to recognize media.

3. MusicBrainz is a project that aims to create an open content music encyclopedia. Unlike FreeDB MusicBrainz has expanded its goals to reach beyond a compact disc metadata storehouse.
MusicBrainz has client software for Windows, Mac OS X and other platforms.

MusicBrainz rulez!!!

I've received a confirmation from a Replay Music developer, that he had tested MusicBrainz. He claims that Gracenote DB is much better.

Bottom line:

1. Use software supporting FreeDB or Musicbrainz for you CDs like Tag and Rename, MusicBrainz Tagger.
2. Use Replay Music to record music from online radio stations or online music subscription services (automatical tagging of individual songs is supported)
3. Use free Musicbrainz software to tag other individual songs. Although PicardTagger is CD oriented now, so I have no software suggestions so far.

[Hubs]

So, if I understand correctly musicbrainz is the only software that will give me a second chance at tagging a song that Replay Music missed using gracenote.

Sometimes Replay Music misses a song , So I end up with a track that is unrecognizable . It sure would be great if I could play it again and somehow give gracenote another shot at id ing that song again. Even if it was weeks later after database may have been updated.

[Hubs]

Hi all, just thought I would update , Downloaded musicbrainz.org .
Pretty nifty little program if you can get on to the server. I tryed using it to identify about 30 tracks . I kept getting error messages tell me server is full come back later. This morning at about 4:30 am I finally got on . It did not directly ( automatic ) identify any of the 30 songs immediatly but it has that ability, also ability to look up through a internal browser contained within musicbrainz software, to let you try to match the song yourself given about 4 or 5 choices that it thinks maybe relevant to your song file. Then it lets you tag manually. Not bad , another tool to try to help tagging missing id tags. HOOYAH !

Replay Media Catcher uses MusicIP to identify songs. It works great for me. Hopefully Applian will create a song idenfifying and tagging software for media files on the hard drive.

[scoobysnax]

I'm a pretty big fan of Media Monkey. It's free, and it works great for me.

Media Monkey supports OGG, MP3, FLAC and WMA files. And it is much more than just tagging and renaming software, it can rip CDs, convert audio files, synchronize with portable devices, burn CD/DVD, catalog your physical CDs and use the Virtual CD feature to keep track of what CDs you own.

I have several albums and files named incorrectly like "Track01.mp3" that don't have any ID3 any tags either. Tagging software like Tag&Rename can find ID3 tags for full albums only.

Is there any way to tag single files? Yes, you can correct missing tags with freeware Picard Tagger and shareware Magic MP3 tagger. Both use Musicbrainz database and both were not very good in my tests. Not only I couldn't tag some of my files with the above mentioned programs, I didn't really like the interface of Picard Tagger and Magic MP3 tagger.

As for Replay Media Catcher, it can tag MP3 files while recording streaming media, it doesn't work with local files.

The only solution I have now is to tag such files with Replay Music. Oops! You can say that Replay Music re-records the song, so besides wasting your time, you lose quality with it. Although I can't do anything with the time factor, you can import ID3 tags from the newly recorded files (for example Tag&Rename can import ID3 tags). Voila!