Users can select albums with the built-in directory tree browser or by dragging folders from a desktop file manager into the main window.Ĭowbell does not support plugins but does utilize built-in searches using Amazon’s Web services API for album and track searches, though there is no way in the UI to configure this, and nothing shows that the search is occurring with Amazon’s help. Editing multiple albums from a single artist at one time is not supported. It focuses on editing a single album at a time, a single track at a time. Linux users are likely to keep their music in either MP3 or Ogg formats, so if they hope to get the most from their audio file collections they will look for tag editors that support ID3v2 v2.3 and Vorbis comments at a minimum, with support for other tag and audio file formats as a bonus.Ĭowbell is a tag editor with limited editing features though with some promise.

There are also other types of audio tags in use, such as Vorbis Comments (found in Ogg and FLAC audio files) and APE tags (found in various other audio file formats). There are multiple versions of ID3v2, with v2.3 the most commonly used today. ID3v2 includes frame formats for reverb, mood, popularity, and play counts, among many others. Each frame holds different types of data, such as a title frame or a frame for an artist’s Web site. ID3v2 tags (which carry a similar name and purpose but are otherwise not related to ID3v1 tags) are attached at the front of audio files to aid in streaming the files. These ID3v1 tags are not particularly useful with modern audio players, so a few years later Martin Nilsson and others created the ID3v2 tag format. In 1996, developer Eric Kemp created the first ID3 tags in the form of 128 bytes of data attached to the end of a file.

The most common form of audio tag is known as ID3 and there are two types of ID3 tags. The format of the metadata is defined by various types of tags. Cowbellĭigital audio files can include metadata information about the file, such as title, genre, cover art, and lyrics. The music library I used in my tests comprised untagged MP3 files of multiple genres ripped with filenames matching track names with underscores, under album directories stored under artist directories. Integration with external services such as Discogs, MusicBrainz, and Amazon.For each of the applications I tested, I focused on ease of use and key features such as: Programs designed specifically for editing tags generally provide a wider range of editing options. While many audio players support editing tags, tag editing often isn’t the most important feature in those tools. I found that going from no tags to great tags requires keeping more than one of these editors on hand. I checked out half a dozen of the more popular and stable graphical ID3 tag editors available for Linux. Yet all digital media players are only as good as the files they have to work with, and preparing those files requires the best tag editor you can find. The Linux desktop comes with a variety of multimedia players, such as Xine, MPlayer, and Amarok.

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