How to find MP3 files without ID3 tags?

Question

I have a lot of mp3 files without any ID3 tag information. This is very annoying, because my iPod does not show them correctly.
My Banshee shows them as "unknown artist" and the title. I would like to find them all in a bunch to batch update them.

Is there an easy way to do this?

Solution 1

You can use Windows Explorer or any of the taggers mentioned by studiohack for this. Basically, get a list of all your MP3s loaded into an application that will let you sort on (for example) Title.

Aw, just saw your Linux tag. You may be able to do the same thing using similar tools in whatever window manager you are using; it probably depends on what version of Linux you are using.

To do it in Explorer:

1. Press Windows Key -> F, or Start Menu -> Search -> For files or folders (in WinXP; it's slightly different in newer OSes)
2. Search for files named "*.mp3" (without the quotes), on whatever hard drive stores your MP3s
3. When the search is done, make sure the Title column is showing (right click on the column header and check the "Title" checkbox if it is not). Then click the Title column header to sort.
4. All the files at the top of the list, with no title, are untagged.

Now I wonder what you plan to do with all of these files. If you're just going to delete them, you can do it from there. If you want to keep them and tag them, then you can use one of the taggers. Some or all of them provide a way to set the MP3 tags from the filename, if you want to quickly get them tagged.

Sometimes files with no tags were downloaded incompletely or are corrupted, so it could be that your player is having problems with them because they are not valid MP3 files.

Solution 2

Here's a bash one-liner:

find . -iname "*.mp3" -exec bash -c \
    'soxi "{}" | grep -q "^Artist" || echo "{}"' \;

This finds all mp3 files, uses soxi* to check their metadata, and echos the filename if there is no "Artist" tag (if grep fails to find anything).

You can change Artist to what ever tag you care about (e.g. Title, Album, etc.). Run soxi on a properly-tagged file to see the available options.

* You may need to install libsox-fmt-mp3 (or similar) on top of sox to make soxi work with mp3 files [thanks dirkt!].

Comments

[fisotemp]

I don't search for a tagger, but for a command, an application to find files without a tag

[Doug Harris]

True, but those tools will likely allow you to sort and/or filter by one or more tags. With that, you can find files w/o artist tag and then update -- which is the end goal you described in your question.

[stone]

Agreed, not only are the taggers the best way to get the list, but they can perform the next step as well. Just having a list of filenames won't be much use.

[Pat]

Don't bother with the rest, just go with MusicBrainz Picard. It's crossp-platform and open-source and it will do a great job identifying and ret-tagging (and renaming, moving, if you want) your files. Can't recommend it more.

[dirkt]

I just tried this in Debian, and found I have to install libsox-fmt-mp3 on top of sox to make soxi work with mp3 files.

[dirkt]

Nope, there are not similar tools integrated in the Window Manager for Linux; Linux has its own tools.

[dirkt]

You've seen the "linux" tag?

[dirkt]

In addition to soxi, you can use any other id3 program, e.g. id3tool, id3mtag, id3v2 with a similar one-liner (though the argument to grep will be different).

[naught101]

@dirkt: I guess id3v2 is the most likely to be available on any given system, yeah? But it doesn't seem to have consistent output across files... ahh, because it reports id3v1 and id3v2 tags very differently...

[dirkt]

I've no idea what is to be "most likely" installed, not even on Debian, and not at all on other distros. In the end, it doesn't matter - just use the one that works best for what you want to do.

[stone]

A quick Google search shows there are hundreds of different Linux window managers. But you are sure that none of them can sort by mp3 tags?

[naught101]

KDE can. Right click the column headers, and in Audio there are options for Artist, Album, Duration, and Track.