Are Your Music Files Labeled As They Should Be?

Music files can become a real problem when you have lots of them, but the worse situation occurs when a large quantity of files has bad names or you want to rename them after a pattern like . These problems can be solved manually wasting a lot of time or using a specialized program, such as MP3 Tag Clinic.

After installing and starting the program I was hit by its splash screen. It looks so old! Since I am not used to judging programs considering this item, I moved on. Huh...but the interface seems well outdated too! ...and they're charging money for this?

When looking closer, things are not that bad...the only thing is that the interface doesn't match all the program features well. For example, take its impressive file support and tagging functions and put them next to those poor icons, but let's forget about the interface and concentrate on the features.

There is a lot to say about things that can be done with MP3 Tag Clinic, but I will try to point out only the most important ones.

The program has a built- in file browser to ease search operations. Once you browse to the desired folder, tags of the supported files to be found there will be displayed in the main program window as a spreadsheet. To edit the file name, title, artist and all other items you don't need to access another form - just click and edit them. Sounds easy, isn't it?

Tags can be printed or saved into one of the six available formats (CSV, DOC, TXT, HTM, XML or XLS). If your files have incomplete tags you can auto fill them based on rules or you can replace or remove desired strings, if needed.

All operations are reversible, and that's a good thing to know. MP3 Tag Clinic can calculate the sizes of the folders that you're browsing, can show detailed file information or embed lyrics into your tags.

Of course that if you want to remove all tag information from your music files (I can't figure out why would you do that, but I am not here to question your reasons...) you don't need to use any other program - MP3 Tag Clinic can do it in a flash.

When I use text editors, file or media managers I don't need a stunning interface, but I want it to be at least decent. MP3 Tag Clinic disappointed me with that but recovered with its large amount of features. If I would really need a program of this sort I guess I could forgive its drawbacks and take advantage of its strong points. After all, a tool is what you can make of it...


The Good

MP3 Tag Clinic has almost all the features that one might need: it supports most important file formats (AAC, APE, FLAC, M4A, MP3, MP4, MPC, OGG, VQF, and WMA digital audio files), can easily edit individual tags, but can also perform batch operations and much, much more!


The Bad

This program has an interface far behind its features, while the only thing that I missed with it is a built- in audio player. Also the Help system could have been much better, considering the complexity of this application.


The Truth

This is a program that should be easy to use, but it has so many functions that it becomes a little adventure learning to master it. Once you solve that problem, everything should be fine. Unfortunately you get to pay only for features and versatility and you won't get a nice interface or an excellent Help system with those. The good part is that you can test all the program's features for 20 runs before buying it. If you think that you need some order inside your music collection, go ahead and try it!


Here are some snapshots of the application in action: