Hack40.Tag Your MP3 Files


Hack 40. Tag Your MP3 Files

Make sure your filename and ID3 tags are formatted properly for your listeners.

MP3 files have internal tags that store information about the title of the song, the artist, the name of the band, the genre, and more. These are called ID3 tags. Programs such as iTunes rely on these ID3 tags to navigate and categorize your music library. Ensuring that your ID3 tags are formatted properly makes life easier for your listeners, and it is simple to do.

Here are the fields that are relevant to podcasters and what those fields should contain:


Title

This should contain the name of the show, and its date in short form (mm/dd/yy) or its episode number.


Album

Put the name of your podcast here.


Artist

Put your name here.


Year

This is the year the podcast was first released.


Track

This is the episode number of the podcast, if you release by episodes.


Genre

Set this to be "Podcast." Or if you can't, just choose "Other."


Comments

This item is free-form. I recommend the URL of the blog entry for this podcast, or the home page for the podcast. You should also include information about how the listener can comment on the showeither an email address or a phone number [Hack #62].

Now that you know what the ID3 tags should contain, how do you go about setting the values? The following applications [Hack #18] allow you to set the ID3 tags of MP3 files:


iTunes

iTunes has an excellent built-in ID3 tag editor. If you store your pod-casts in iTunes before uploading, you can use the Get Info dialog and the Info tab to set the ID3 tags of your podcast.


Audio Hijack Pro

The Tags section of the Recording tab is where you can set the ID3 tags for the output file, if you are recording to MP3.


Audacity

When exporting to an MP3 file, Audacity will prompt you for the ID3 tags. Unfortunately, the genre is set from a pick list, which currently doesn't include "Podcast," so you can use "Speech" or "Other." The ID3 Tags dialog is also available from the Edit ID3 Tags command on the Project menu.


MP3 Tag Tools (http://massid3lib.sf.net/)

This is an open source Windows application that edits the ID3 tags on MP3 files.

On Windows, you can install a free shell extension that adds ID3 editing to the Properties window in the File Explorer. To install the extension, download it from http://softpointer.com/AudioShell.htm and follow the simple installation instructions. Then just right-click any .mp3 file and select Properties. You will see the AudioShell Tag Editor tabs that you can use to edit the ID3 tags on the file, as shown in Figure 6-1.

Figure 6-1. The AudioShell Tag Editor


Hack 6.5.1.

Hack 6.5.1.1 Naming the podcast file.

The name of the podcast file is also important. Some podcatchers put all the downloaded files into one directory. So, if your filename isn't unique, these podcatchers might have collision problems between your file and another.

The best bet is to come up with a combination of two parts for the filename. The first part should be a three-or four-letter prefix, most likely some abbreviation of the name of your show. Adam Curry of the Daily Source Code uses "dsc."

The second can be the date, the show or episode number, or some other number that will be unique over the lifetime of your show. For an episode number, use leading zeros. For example, episode number 33 of This Strange Life would be tsl00033. This leaves room for an additional 99,967 shows, which would be a good run in anyone's book. If you were to go by date, and you assume that you won't do more than two shows in one day, the filename for February 20, 2004 would look like this: tsl20040220 with a long year, or tsl040220 with a short year. You should always use year (2004), month (02), and day (20), in that order, to make it easier for people to sort the audio files by date of release, since you can't count on the file-creation date being preserved across various file transfers.

There is no set standard for filenames or ID3 tags yet. But these simple conventions should keep your files safe from collision and your podcasts visible in listeners' MP3 players.

Hack 6.5.2. See Also

  • "Construct Your MP3s" [Hack #18]



    Podcasting Hacks
    Podcasting Hacks: Tips and Tools for Blogging Out Loud
    ISBN: 0596100663
    EAN: 2147483647
    Year: 2003
    Pages: 144

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