The Corollary to the Last Post

Since I mentioned that I would like to use Quod Libet as my music manager, I therefore have to eventually convert my wma music files to mp3 files. This is better in the long run for linux anyway, since many programs can't deal with wma files (like sound editors and such). It will take some time, but I do have access to the source for my wma files, so I can convert from the source instead of from my own unprotected wma files (which would be a copy of a copy).

Also, I'm really interested in the development of Songbird. It's basically a mashup of Rythmbox and Firefox. I think it's a perfect idea, and Songbird has a lot of great features. But it's still in development. I installed it on my test Ubuntu laptop, and I like it alot, but there are missing features and bugs right now, so I'll wait and see before I let it crunch on my main music collection.

MP3 and WMA Tagging

So I've been playing around with different music organizer applications, and I think I've found a system that works for me:

Rythmbox - reads and plays all my mp3 and wma files
Quod Libet - reads and plays my mp3 files; allows easy tag editing and renaming files
MusicBrainz Picard - tag lookup and CD database; automatically renames files

Last week I started going through my music collection with Picard. The great thing about MusicBrainz is that it is standardized and doesn't rely on music labels to provide CD information, which can lead to strange music tags. For example, I have a Puff Daddy song that is organized by Windows Media Player into a "Dave Grohl" directory! Or I have one song from Moon Safari by Air that is not in the "Air/Moon Safari" directory with the rest of the files but instead is in an "Air-Beth Hirsch/Moon Safari" directory! This is because these songs feature Dave Grohl and Beth Hirsch, respectively, but the record labels put that information into the artist tag instead of the title or contributing tags. So I basically navigate down through all my music directories and use Picard to update the music tags (I'm up to the "R" artist directories now). It works well since once Picard updates the tags, it can also move it to the proper directory if need be. I can also lookup CD information on the MusicBrainz website, then open up the CD information in Picard (which is quicker if I have the whole CD already). One quick note, though. In order to read and edit mp3 files in Ubuntu, you have to install libtunepimp5-mp3.

Quod Libet is probably the best music manager in Linux I've seen (and I have checked out Amarok). The only problem is that it doesn't read WMA files (this makes sense because almost no open source software can edit WMA tags). Quod Libet can view your music library by tags (like iTunes) or by album list (like BMP or Windows Media Player 11), which is frickin' awesome because there are times when I need to use both. Also, Quod Libet can rename files from their tags, so I can use it to quickly move, say, a Soundgarden song on a movie sountrack from the "Various Artists" directory to the "Soundgarden" directory. The best part about it is that I have complete control now over the organization of my music files (mp3 at least) and once it's organized, it will stay that way.