ArsGeek

A short while back, I decided I needed to get a handle on my music collection.  I’ve got random MP3s from years back, purchased MP3s, CDs and even an old 8 track or two.  There are many ways to do go about this but after throwing out the 8 tracks, here’s what I did to get organized.

Getting music from ‘out there’ to ‘in here’.  There are several ways to go about doing this.  The first, and easiest is to hang around your favorite DRM-free download store, like Amazon.com or Rhapsody for starters.  See something you like?  Buy it!  You may also have a lot of your music on an ancient format, like a CD or perhaps a clay tablet.  Let’s say you’re looking at a stack of CDs that are sitting outside of your computer and you’d like to get all that music into your computer.

Grab the first CD you want to encode (and remember, this is for your one, archival purposes only copy of your CD.  Don’t sell it, share it or do anything illegal with it - or if you do, remember that I told you not to).

You’ll have to install a program called Sound Juicer to rip those tracks from your CD and deposit them to your computer.  Here’s a previous post on how to install Sound Juicer and enable it to rip to MP3 format if it doesn’t default to that option for you.

When you run Sound Juicer, I’d suggest saving all of your files to your Music folder.  You can find it at /home/your-user-name/Music, or click on Places -> Music.

In my 8.04 Ubuntu install, Sound Juicer wasn’t put into the Applications menu for me.  You can always hit the terminal and type sound-juicer but I like a menu entry as much as the next guy.  Right click on your Applications menu and choose Edit Menus.  From there, click on the Sound & Video menu on the left, and then click the New Item button on the right.  Call it Sound Juicer, use the command sound-juicer and the icon should find itself.  Click Okay and exit out of everything until you’re back on your desktop.  Open it up and rip some CDs!

Now, you’ve got a few CD’s ripped, you’ve downloaded all of Barry White’s music from Amazon and you also have a gig or two (or twenty) of music you’ve been carting around with you since your brother’s friend used to DJ, you’ve got to decide what to do with all this stuff.

My first suggestion would be to take the whole cart load of music, in it’s many folders and various locations and put it all in one place.  Ubuntu 8.04 has a nice place all set up for you called “Music” which we talked about earlier.  Not terribly original, but eminently workable.  The folder is located in your home director, under Music, or Places -> Music.

Once you’ve got everything in one place, what should you do?  I’ve been working hard at getting all of my MP3’s tagged correctly.  Tags are bits of the file that tell you and your computer what the song is, where it came from, who the artist is, what album it’s from and lots of other information. Improperly tagged music can cause a lot of problems for those who like order and organization.  It’s also the leading cause of MP3s showing up in players as “03.mp3” rather than “Sweet Barry White.mp3”.  (I made that title up, by the way).

So you’ve got your music in one place, what now?  Let’s make sure it’s all properly tagged!  If you’ve downloaded the music from a reputable site, it’s most likely tagged correctly, although it could have some extra information there you don’t want.

What about all the other stuff?  If you’ve ripped it and made sure your info was correct in Sound Juicer (default settings usually work) then you should be okay as well.  All the other files you’ve got laying around though, they could use some work most likely.

In comes MusicBrainz.  It’s a community run and updated music metadata site!  Wha?  Essentially they’ve compiled a list of music, musicians and albums and have made a way for you to use that information to correctly tag your stuff.

You’ll need to get get a nifty piece of software called Picard to utilize their services.  Go to System -> Administration -> Synaptic File Manager.  Once synaptic is open, search for Picard.  Find it, right click on it, mark it for install and say okay.  Synaptic does it’s thing and you’ve got Picard!

Again, you’ll have to add it to your Applications menu manually.  Right click on your Applications menu and choose Edit Menus.  From there, click on the Sound & Video menu on the left, and then click the New Item button on the right.  Call it Picard, use the command picard and the icon should find itself.  Click Okay and exit out of everything until you’re back on your desktop.

Now, start up Picard from your new menu entry.  You can do a single MP3 or load up a whole folder’s worth by clicking the Add Files or Add Folder buttons.  For this example, I’ll use a single file.

Click the Add Files button, browse to where your dubiously tagged MP3 file is and open it.  I’ll show you how this works, by illustrating tags with one song.

Once your file is opened, double click on it to see what kind of tags you have.  I’ve used a Bobby McFerrin song because he’s cool and I like to seem worldly.  As you can see, there’s only one tag, and that’s the file name.

Click Okay.  Now, back at the main Picard screen, with your MP3 highlighted still, click the Lookup button.

BAM!  There’s your MP3 info!  It’s like magic!  Or not.  Anyway, highlight the song on the right side panel and click the Save button.

Now you’ve got all the info you need for this MP3.  You can use the Add Files or Add Folder buttons to put up as many MP3’s as your mind can handle, and then highlight them all and click the Lookup button.  You’ll have to go through and save what you want but it sure beats manually looking up all this information.  This means opening each album, and saving the selected MP3s.

Picard can do a lot more but those are the basic tools you’ll need to get started.  Here’s the documentation for those who want to dig deeper.

There may be songs that Picard and MusicBrainz just won’t have info on.  At this point, you can manually tag your songs using a program called Ex Falso.  Ex Falso can be gotten by going to System -> Administration -> Synaptic File Manager.  Once synaptic is open, search for ex falso.  Find it, right click on it, mark it for install and say okay.

Strangely, this was added to my Applications -> Sound & Video menu automatically.  Open the program up, select an MP3 to modify, click on it and you can see all of the tag information.  By clicking on a tag, you can edit it.

Okay, you’ve got your MP3’s all lined up, they’re tagged and just ready to go!  What now?  Now you need a good player and playlist organizer.  On to my new favorite program for this – Amarok!

A note to Ubuntunistas.  Yes, I know Amarok is a KDE program.  I don’t care that I’m running it in Gnome.  I love this program.  Love it in a near-biblical sense.

Back to Synaptic, search for Amarok and install it!

Once you’ve gotten it installed, fire it up and walk through the Wizard which will tell Amarok where all of your MP3s are.  Applications -> Sound & Video -> Amarok.

This is an easy to use yet fully feature piece of software which you can use to do everything from create and play simple play lists, to sync your MP3 players.  This would take an entirely new post to describe how to use this. Or bettery yet, head on over to the Amarok site and check it out yourself.

There are lots of other music players for Linux and Ubuntu out there that you can use as well. They’ll be a lot more fun now that you’ve got your music organized and tagged correctly.  Banshee is a great Gnome native player which just hit release 1.0.  I’ve also used XMMS with a good deal of success.  All of these are available through Synaptic on your Ubuntu computer.

You’re organized, you’re tagged and you’re ready to go!

Technorati Tags: mp3, music, rip, tags, mp3 tag, amarok, musicbrainz, geek, picard, how to, ex falso