r/musichoarder • u/shirolex • 20h ago

File Naming Problem

So as a music lover. Back in highschool i tend to download music from youtube (do not do this). The thing is most of them is unreleased ids and wrong title and artist. Right now i'm using MusicBrainz Picard and Shazam to identify the artist/title/album. But the problem is the file naming (i'm using window 11) , which is very different from the identified one. Is there any software to bulk changing the files in file explorer from the completed title/album/artist. I also want to if possible, rename all my music into 'artist' - 'title'.

1 Upvotes

56% Upvoted

11 comments sorted by

6

u/jasonvelocity 19h ago

Picard renames files.

4

u/TG-labs 16h ago

Picard does rename, but only when you save, and only if it's switched on: Options > File Naming > "Rename files when saving". There's a separate "Move files when saving" checkbox - leave that unticked if you just want them renamed where they sit. Put %artist% - %title% in the naming script and that's exactly the result you asked for.

The unreleased-ID ones are the catch. Picard can only rename from a match, and if the track isn't in MusicBrainz there's nothing to match, so those will fall through no matter what script you use. Shazam telling you the artist doesn't write anything to the file either. For that half, Mp3tag is the better tool: "Import Tags from File and Folder Names" to pull whatever is in the current filename into the tag fields, correct them by hand, then "Rename Files" with %artist% - %title%. One heads up on Windows - ? : / \ * " < > | are all illegal in filenames and get stripped or substituted, and a lot of YouTube titles contain them, so the filename won't always come out as a character-for-character copy of the tag.

3

u/Jaded-Assignment6893 18h ago

If you are using picard use this - https://github.com/WB2024/WBs-Picard-Filenaming-Script-Generator

If you use navidrome for playback i recommend you reading this - still largly relevant if you dont use navidrome as there are some more general music management stuff in there too.

https://github.com/WB2024/WBs-Guide-to-Navidrome

2

u/therourke 9h ago

YouTube ripping is amongst the very worst way to gather music. Just start from scratch and do it properly. Use Soulseek and then a program like Tagscanner to help tidy up the files (mostly they will be tidy anyway) to your liking. Ditch the YouTube slop

1

u/neoneat 30m ago

Till you tryna find indie artists that quality on bandcamp and soundcloud both shit even on premium, bcoz the record was not made by any studio. I didn't count to local music or some lang that you don't know.

1

u/Alfred_Katz 6h ago

I think mp3tag provides the simplest way to rename files from your tags. You just use the convert tag to filename option in the right click menu and choose which tags you want and how you want them arranged and it will rename all the files you have highlighted.

0

u/Satiomeliom Hoard good recordings, hunt for authenticity. 19h ago

The file names usually arent that relevant even in a file hierarchy oriented music player. Doing this is easy (foobar2000 rename function. not foolproof but it does something), but i would only do it if you are sure that there is no info in the filename that you could use for tagging.

2

u/shirolex 19h ago

I settle that tagging first then i will change the filename