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I'm sure you have noticed when playing an MP3 on your MP3 player or computer that it knows the name of the song, band, and album and so on and displays that on the screen. Or you may have noticed that it doesn't display the information at all or it's displayed incorrectly. If so, don't worry because this information can be changed so your songs will show you what you want to see while playing them. And this is done by editing the MP3 tags for the file itself. MP3 tags are explicitly used to deeply store information about MP3 songs such as artist, song, and album name. They also hold other highly customizable information like the song release year and the exact bit rate it was created at. This precise tag information is then displayed directly on your media player when you are playing the song. The tag information is permanently embedded right into each MP3 file. It stays securely there even if you move the files to a completely different computer. When you convert music rom a legacy CD to MP3 files on your computer, the software usually gets the song information straight off the internet. This only works if the ripping software actively supports that feature and the database information is available online. Popular CD ripping software such as Exact Audio Copy and Windows Media Player will try to find as much metadata as it possibly can about the songs you are ripping. It will then automatically add this information to the file itself so you can see rich details about the song while listening to it. Editing Your MP3 File Tags Manually 1. Open the MP3 File Properties Your ripping software might completely fail to grab this metadata from the web. You might also have older MP3 songs already sitting on your computer that you desperately want to manually fix. It is entirely possible to edit the embedded tag information for these specific songs right in Windows. Browse directly to the MP3 file you want to edit using File Explorer. Right click the audio file and choose Properties from the context menu to open the configuration window. 2. Navigate to the Details Tab The properties menu will immediately pop up on your desktop screen. Go directly to the Details tab located right at the top of the interface. You will quickly notice that there are many blank text fields that you can manually click and change. These specific editable categories include crucial things such as song title, contributing artist, genre, year, and track length. 3. Understand Audio Bit Rates The details pane will also clearly show you the exact bit rate that the song was originally converted at. This specific quality metric absolutely cannot be changed without fully re-ripping the song from the original physical CD. A higher number dictates much better audio quality for the track. It also guarantees the final file size will be significantly larger on your hard drive. A bit rate of 320kbps is the absolute highest quality setting available for the standard MP3 format. MP3 Details tab 4. Review the Read-Only Data Scroll straight down while staying on the Details tab. You will clearly see other highly useful background information such as the exact physical location of the file on your hard drive. It also displays the original date it was created and the raw file size. You will notice again that much of this system information absolutely cannot be edited. There would be absolutely no point in changing the static data in the Size section. You simply cannot change the physical size of the file from a text properties menu. Details tab 5. Apply the Tag Changes To change any of the editable information, just click your mouse directly inside that specific text field. Make the exact text changes you want to apply to the track. Click the OK button right at the bottom when you are completely finished typing. Your MP3 file will be permanently updated with the brand new tag information. 6. Strip Personal Properties Look closely at the very bottom of the Details tab window. You will see a blue link that explicitly says Remove Properties and Personal Information. Clicking this text link will immediately prompt you as to what specific hidden information you would like to permanently remove from the MP3 tag data. You also have the handy option to automatically create a clean copy of the audio file with all the possible properties completely stripped out of that new file. For additional training resources, check out our online IT training courses. Check out our extensive IT book series.

Edit Your MP3 File Tag Information

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