So, I have approx. 16,000 songs in my itunes....All of which are also uploaded to iTunes Match. It is about 113 gigs worth of music. I'd like to clear out the physical MP3 files off my hard drive, after moving them to an external drive. A good portion of these albums are either purchased legally or ripped from a CD, but a good portion are also downloaded from various 'spots' on the intra-web.

Therefore, I'd say there are at least 5-6000 of these songs, that upon importing them to iTunes, I had to alter or add the Artist Name, Album and/Or Song title....Or I would have to fix spellings, capitalizations (OCD much?), etc.....

If I ever have to re-import the physical mp3's back onto my computer, I am going to be in for a major disaster of untitled and unorganized music, which I'd never be able to fix....

So, I have done a bit of google'ing and found some programs that will fix meta-tags (not live stuff).....I don't mind paying for it either....Can anyone recommend the best program to fix all the tags?

Should I copy the 113 gigs of music somewhere else, and then fix the tags, in case i screw something up? What's the best way to go about doing all this?

In the grand scheme of things, I think I'm gonna stick with itunes match (unless they don't up their 25,000 song max) in the next year or so...Amazon Cloud Player allows you up to 250,000 songs for the same $24.99 per year, but their player and layout sucks bad....

Whatcha got for me? Thx

Backup your whole library before you do anything. When you're done, make a second backup, and keep both until you're 99.9% confident none of your files are corrupted, and don't feel bad if that means holding onto it for 6+ months. Once you're happy, get rid of the first and add to your fixed backup as needed.

For each filetype you have, test your process with one album, and make sure everything still plays afterward. It may be a good idea to find/run a file tester over everything to ensure any files aren't corrupt. I know FLAC has a tester with its core download, but I can't suggest anything for other types.

MusicBrainz' Picard does everything I need for identifying/fixing tags in a consistent format, and it's free. I also use mp3tag for album art and one-off changes.

so when you imported them to itunes did you let itunes manage them? if you did then it organized them and the tags in the files should be as they are in itunes. my favorite is mediarage (available through the app store or as a download on the net) but im sure there are others. beatunes is pretty good too in that it scans your library and lets you know common misspellings, albums with no title or weird titles, no artist, etc. its probably the best for automated issues, and i think they have a free trial.

i am okay with the itunes setup, so i just import everything and change the tags when the album is imported (spelling issues, etc.), and i delete things i use differently like genre, comments, etc.

Hey Pat

That is what I did....Whenever I imported an album directly, I (if I needed to), manually edited the itunes listing to have the correct spelling of the band, added album titles and or song titles, if need be.......This obviously only occured when I imported stuff I downloaded or torrented, and not direct CD rips or itunes purchases...

Are you saying that, when I fix everything in Itunes, the behind the scenes MP3 file residing in the Music>ItunesMedia>Music folder is also being edited and corrected as well?

If so, then I am in perfect shape and don't need to do anything except back up and re-back up the 113 gigs of music...

My fear, which would be controlled if I experimented with a few albums on their own, is that when and if I need to re-import all this media to my computer HD, I will be left with 6000 or so items in my itunes library with no artist name, album or song title.....ugh....

ya think i am safe?

so if you change any aspect of the file in itunes, it *should* change the tag associated with the mp3. if you have it set to automatically manage files it will change the filename as well. if you then back these files up, they will be appropriately tagged. i only say *should* because this is exactly how mine works but i think you should test it out.

get a free tag editor, use it on an album that you particularly remember being jacked up when you imported it, and see if its correct. my bet is that it will be. i no longer use a tag editor, i just import everything and then change the tags in itunes, saves a lot of hassle and everything backs up and restores just fine

OK, I think it worked, and if I did it right, I saved myself a lot of heartache...

Im gonna try a few more times, and if it works, I'm golden!

Thx Patrick