Automated tagging for foobar

2019-12-20 22:40:42

Hi everyone,
My question is quite simple. I have a very large lossless music library in various formats (flac, ape, wav, wv, aac) for which i would like to completly review the tags (using cue sheets so far) which are inaccurate.

So far i've been doing it by hand comparing the databases of discogs, rateyourmusic.com and wikipedia. The problem is that it would take me months, full time, to complete.

Therefore i am looking for an accurate as possible solution, especially for the genres. I wouldn't mind a pay solution, as long as it's accurate enough for my needs.

Thanks in advance for your suggestions

Re: Automated tagging for foobar

Reply #1 – 2019-12-20 22:46:49

For the genre tagging you can use Wilb's biography component which sources "genre" tags from last.fm and allmusic. I prefer allmusic because there's a lot of trash tags on lastfm. You can choose album genre and/or artist genre. The benefit however with lastfm however is that it will have more hits on obscure artists.

Re: Automated tagging for foobar

Reply #2 – 2019-12-21 00:13:30

If you prioritize the basics and go through tagging your library in phases, you should be able to finish in a fraction of time of whatever you are thinking right now retagging would take.

By that I mean start by simply tagging all your files in broad categories (e.g. rock, classical, electronic etc.). Then, if necessary, increase detail in the areas you care about the most (such as subgenres of rock, etc). This is when you either have a lot of artists in said category, or you really care about the distinctions the music has besides simply being "some kind of rock".

This way you get a much more organic growth of your library on a per-needed-basis, rather than trying to meticulously research every single artist for hours and ultimately failing at the weight of said task.

I personally haven't had much luck with automated solutions, but if you insist on using them, jazzthieve mentioned the ones that would come to my mind first. Other than that, I think MusicBrainz Picard or MusicBee might have had some attempts at automated tagging, perhaps you can check those out.

Re: Automated tagging for foobar

Reply #3 – 2019-12-21 02:16:18

There is a new version of foobar MusicBrainz tagger by marc2k3 - I guess it handles genre though have not tried it myself.(?)

And of course there is Discogs tagger component.

Re: Automated tagging for foobar

Reply #4 – 2019-12-21 20:28:19

also maybe this would help ~ https://www.dbpoweramp.com/perfecttunes.htm