I would like to introduce you to a tool that you have probably needed or will need some time. It’s called fix_tags and is written by my friend Mr. Dave Morriss, lead developer at Hacker Public Radio. While the tool claims to only change the tags in MP3 and OGG, it also modifies WAV and FLAC without problems as well.
It’s hosted over on the HPR Gitorious site, but if you just want the tool itself just copy the file from here: fix_tags. I saved it in /usr/local/bin/fix_tags, which makes it available to everyone on the system and then changed permissions so that it could execute.
chmod +x /usr/local/bin/fix_tags
It’s written in perl, and has some dependencies on some perl modules which can be installed easily from cpan. Most distributions install cpan by default but for some reason I needed to install it on Fedora. You will also need to install development tools and Perl Documentation if you haven’t already done so.
Debian:
apt-get install build-essential perl-doc
Fedora:
yum groupinstall "Development Tools" && yum install perl-CPAN perl-Pod-Perldoc
Now that cpan is installed, we need to update it, reload it and then install the perl dependencies. You do this by running the command cpan as root
install CPAN reload cpan install Modern::Perl Getopt::Long Pod::Usage Data::Dumper File::stat Date::Manip::Delta Date::Manip::TZ Audio::TagLib quit
While there is complete help available by typing perldoc fix_tags you can get a good idea of what awaits by typing fix_tags –help
Version 1.2
Usage:
fix_tags [ -help ] [-album=ALBUMSTRING] [-artist=ARTISTSTRING]
[-comment=COMMENTSTRING] [-genre=GENRESTRING] [-title=TITLESTRING]
[-track=TRACKNUMBER] [-year=YEAR] [-[no]fix_comment] audio_file ...
Options:
-help Prints a brief help message describing the usage of the program,
and then exits.
-album=ALBUMSTRING
Sets the album tag to the string defined by the option.
-artist=ARTISTSTRING
Sets the artist tag to the string defined by the option.
-comment=COMMENTSTRING
Sets the comment tag to the string defined by the option.
-genre=GENRESTRING
Sets the genre tag to the string defined by the option.
-title=TITLESTRING
Sets the title tag to the string defined by the option.
-track=TRACKNUMBER
Sets the track tag to the number defined by the option.
-year=YEAR
Sets the year tag to the number defined by the option.
-[no]fix_comment
If selected, causes the comment tag to be edited to remove
non-graphic characters, newlines and multiple space sequences.
To use the tool just point it at a file and it will show you all the common fields that are of interest.
$ fix_tags 955-The_Loss-Return_to_Litany.mp3 955-The_Loss-Return_to_Litany.mp3 album : MIND OUT artist : Return to Litany comment : http://www.jamendo.com Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 genre : length : 00:04:09 title : The Loss track : 0 year : 2012
As an example you could change the genre by using fix_tags -genre=”cchits.net” 955-The_Loss-Return_to_Litany.mp3. Resulting in:
$ fix_tags 955-The_Loss-Return_to_Litany.mp3 955-The_Loss-Return_to_Litany.mp3 album : MIND OUT artist : Return to Litany comment : http://www.jamendo.com Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 genre : cchits.net length : 00:04:09 title : The Loss track : 0 year : 2012
An excellent tool from a most Excellent Gentleman.