MP3 MediaMonkey Music Organizer

MediaMonkey - Lining up MP3's for easy reference

Image by tangerinie, stock.xchng - Mackinac Bridge - Mackinaw City/St Ignace, Michigan, USA

If you are looking for a comprehensive, but reasonably easy to navigate and use music organizer, then perhaps MediaMonkey free version, might suit your mp3 (which yo might convert from CD or DVD extraction software) music file organizational and management requirements. This is a versatile program, that I have used a few years back when it was named Songs-DB; However it's use as a music management system has certainly improved. It can quickly scan thousands of music media on your hard drive, ready to sort them in folders, associate itself with a file type as the default player, and input information (ratings) about other players on your computer.

Scanned music media can be arranged logically in folders created, by sorting by artist name, genre, year, album, etc. You can also tag your files, and the program also auto tags if connected to the internet, where you can also download album information from the freedb service. In addition to playing and burning, and changing formats, the program can also synchronize with portable music players, and import play lists. Perhaps you may want to extract audio from DVD VOB files to create music CD’s as mp3's. If you convert to a lot of mp3's, then MediaMonkey would be useful for managing them all.

To summarize, MediaMonkey free operates as a reasonably efficient stream lined music manager, scanner, player, encoder, decoder, converter, auto file tagger and renamer, play list generator, and portable music synchronizer, and more. Though the Gold edition offers a bit more with unlimited encoding, advanced search options and synchronization. So MediaMonkey free is relatively comprehensive, but yet reasonably light weight and functional to suit most music collector's media organizational requirements...

Relevant Links:
Behind the Mask - Interesting theory to how Mp3 works and some tips to optimize your mp3's...
Forum reviews on MediaMonkey - Mixed reviews, but generally favoring the use of MediaMonkey...
MediaMonkey - Visit to read reviews, specifications, and to download...
Other Music Managers (Freeware at Snapfiles)

pcsourcepoint - Freeware, Internet News and NZ links

Download Freeware Software Links (Word - 39 kb)

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MP3 MediaMonkey Music Organizer

CD Ripping - Grab Them With Audio Grabber

Backing up or "ripping" your CD's music tracks to your computer can be easily performed with the excellent freeware program Audio Grabber. If connected to the internet you can then connect to the online freedb database to automatically insert track and name titles. This saves a lot of time by not typing them in. It can also add id3 tag names to the resulting mp3 and/or wav files.

You need to add encoders, but many are freely available on the internet. Audio Grabber also has a built in player, a "checksum" verifier, normalization, external support for encoders, and a range of other settings. It can output to mp3, wav, or both formats.
I found you need to remember to create or select a folder to extract your files and choose which titles (e.g. artist name, track title, etc), under general settings. Also under mp3 settings, select what specific output - mp3 only, wav only, etc. If you only want to extract selected tracks, then select the little box right at the bottom left hand side to unselect all track names, and then tick the names that you do want to extract.

There is a range of settings (silence, offset, normalize speeds, etc), but I don't think you need worry about these in general. The program is fast and reliable to transfer your musical tracks as a form of back up - to save you constantly reusing (or worse, ruining or losing) your CD. If you want, you can progress further to extract audio from DVD VOB files to create music CD’s, by implementing similar software programs...

CD Ripping - Grab Them With Audio Grabber

MP3 Catalogue Program - Disclib

MP3 Index - Saves Time; From pcsourcepoint

If you have a collection of cd's , particularly mp3's then using a catalogue program such as disclib will allow you to search any file pretty quick. I have about 35 numbered discs for backup, and to find any file I do a search within disclib with the file's name. Disclib finds the disc number instantly - so it saves a lot of time to search each disc manually by inserting the discs in a cd player. You need to insert each disc in the program so it can get indexed, and then assign a tile name that should ideally match that of your disc.

The program creates a directory tree for each disc, and you can also add folders from your pc. It has a few other features such as favorites, Categories, advanced search, export of the file names (for reports), and tags. It also supports wav, wma, and ogg format. It's also free, and you get the program from snapfiles freeware: disclib

Visit my MP3 Free Software Downloads Blog (e.g. MP3 Tools, Utilities, and MP3 Organizers and Catalog Software). Also my review of MP3 Duplicate Finder and remover and Media Monkey Organizer...

MP3 Catalogue Program - Disclib

MP3 Tags to Track Name Time Saver...

If you have a sizable collection of Mp3's without their formal track titles (i.e. artist - song name or similar) then Mp3 tag, a powerful tag (tagger) to rename mp3 files may help if the embedded tags are present. It certainly did for me, when renaming several ipod tracks after they were converted to mp3 format (I think with i tunes or another conversion program). The "track" resulting names were a series of unsuitable "codes" like adcs123. To rename them manually would have taken too long. Mp3 tag took about a minute! Very fast and accurate with additional options.
Having the proper or suitable track titles allows ease of cataloging and searching on the PC, recognition in certain stereo players, to name a few benefits...

MP3 Track Namer with the Free MP3 Tag Utility

MP3 Tag has some useful features such as batch mode conversion, individual editing, auto numbering, custom or user defined settings, track to file name switching (i.e. easily "flip" between the two). Also includes freedb support, a free CD and music data base service to query and provide information for music based on meta data or tags. Cover art (primarily to Amazon Com), and tag source album information retrieval (from Disogs and Music Brainz).

You can also create a favorite directory for later reference, export playlists (e.g. in html, csv and other formats), and perhaps optimize settings with the many options, including a range of language preferences. Hence MP3 tag is a great MP3 track namer to rapidly and efficiently rename your mp3 files, and once that is done you may want to organize your music files with another freeware utility such as Media Monkey (my review) or search duplicate MP3's with MP3 duplicate Finder.




For other Tag editors and MP3 editors visit my blog MP3 Free Software Downloads

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MP3 Tags to Track Name Time Saver...

Tagging mp3's for Track Names

Unwanted track name to proper track name >>

If you have a collection of mp3's without their formal track title names which may be unsuitably titled as track number, genre, code numbers, or other "no name" format then mp3 tag may help. It can quickly rename the files by swapping their tags (if they exist) for the unsuitable track names. I found this program helpful and quick when renaming ipod tracks after they were converted to mp3. After converting to mp3's with another program (itunes or another conversion program) the titles ended up with " code numbers" - something like AACC12HH, etc.

By loading the converted ipod tracks in mp3 tag, and then converting the embedded tags (i.e. track title - artist and music title tags) to the unwanted actual track titles took about a minute - for over several tracks. Super fast! Having the correct track titles is beneficial for displaying them in stereos, creating catalog's on the PC to name a few. Worth a try if you have multiple tracks to rename properly....


Related Posts - Visit my MP3 Free Software Downloads Blog (e.g. MP3 Tools, Utilities, and MP3 Organizers and Catalog Software). Also my review of MP3 Duplicate Finder and remover and Media Monkey Organizer...

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Tagging mp3's for Track Names