How to extract MP3 tags from filenames?

Introduction.

MP3 tags (also known as ID3 tags) contain important information about music files, which allows easily recognizing songs, music pieces, audio books on various sorts of MP3 players. The information typically consists of: title, artist, release year, album, genre, etc. Many players offer interesting features, if MP3 tags are available: for example, you can easily select all songs from a certain genre, or by a certain artist, and so on.

Alas, these nice features will not be available if tag fields of your MP3 files are empty, even if filenames of the songs already contain necessary information. Fortunately, there is an easy solution. You can extract MP3 tags from filenames for thousands of files in just a few seconds using mp3Tag Pro.

Step 1: Download and install the program.

Download mp3Tag Pro and start installation. Follow instructions of the setup wizard to install the ID3 tag editor to your computer.

Step 2: Start the program. Select MP3 files.

Launch the MP3 tag editor. Its main window will be shown:

Navigate to the folder where your MP3 files are stored. You can use the left upper area to pick out a folder directly, in the Windows Explorer style.

The MP3 files in our example do not have any tags at all. mp3Tag Pro highlights such files with red.

Now we can click on the checkmark icon on the right (1) to select all files (alternatively, press Ctrl + A on your keyboard) and then click on the "Generate tags" button (2).

If your files are stored in different folders, you can use the "Scan subfolders" button to show all files from the subfolders.

Step 3: Generate MP3 tags from filenames.

After we click on the "Generate tags" button, a new window will be shown:

Let's make sure that everything is ready for extracting tags. Just under the "Format" field in the left upper corner, make sure that "From filenames" is selected. This means that we will be extracting information from filenames.

Set the "Fields from tags" field to "Overwrite". This means that any information already available in our tags will be replaced with the new information. Alternatively, you can choose to overwrite only empty fields.

Below, you can choose individual fields that are to be overwritten. We have selected Track#, Title, Artist, Genre, Album, and Year. All this information we have in our filenames and folder names.

Now let's enter the correct format for extracting necessary information to our MP3 tags.

As you can see on our first screenshot, our files and folders follow this naming convention: Genre\Artist\Year - Album\Track# - Artist - Title (track track#).mp3

After we have recognized the convention, it is easy to translate it into the program's variables listed next to the format field: %G\%X\%Y - %L\%# - %A - %T (

Just a couple of comments. We have the Artist information in two places: as a folder name and in the filenames. So, in our format we skip the folder name by entering %X, this variable has no meaning, and so the program just skips it.

At the end of each filename, there is information about track numbers in brackets. We do not need it at all, so we simply add "(" to our format, telling the program to import only information before the opening bracket.

Check if everything is correct (the preview area shows all tags that will be created) and click "Generate tags" at the bottom to save information to the files.

Now all our files are properly tagged. We can improve this further by downloading album art and lyrics for the files (using the corresponding buttons on the toolbar).

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