5 Best Tools to Manage Your MP3 Music Collection

Managing your MP3 library can be both confusing and frustrating. Allowing your music to pile up without any organization can spell disaster. Fortunately, there are plenty of tools available to help you manage your MP3s.

MediaMonkey also works as a music player and MP3 organizing software. This makes it a great desktop tool, especially if you’ve found a lot of music while searching for audio files on your Windows computer. Before you jump in and grab MediaMonkey, it’s worth noting that this is not a lightweight application. It’s a very comprehensive way to keep your music collection under control. This means that beginners can struggle with the various tools available.

However, if you’re interested in MediaMonkey, then the whole world of MP3 management is in front of you. First, you can organize your music by genre, year, artist name, or album title. This means that finding files will be much easier. Not only that, but you can edit tags for each individual music file. The software includes several tools that can do this for you automatically.

Whether your MP3 collection consists of podcasts, audiobooks, or plain old music, MediaMonkey offers consistency across the board. MediaMonkey also puts you in control of your playlists with full playlist creation and editing. Plus, every time you add music to the library folders on your hard drive, MediaMonkey will update it the next time you launch it.

The last feature we’d like to highlight is the ability to share your music between devices. So if your computer is set up as a media server, you can wirelessly connect your smartphone to it and play files remotely. This means you don’t even have to physically store your music on your smartphone, making MP3 organization even easier! There is also a Pro version that adds many more features to the free version of the app.

Download: MediaMonkey for Windows (Free, Gold Edition available)

Download: MediaMonkey for Android (Free, Pro version available)

Note: MediaMonkey is also available for macOS as a Wineskin application

MusicBrainz Picard is a cross-platform open source MP3 organizing software. It is available for Windows, MacOS, Linux, Haiku, FreeBSD and OpenBSD. Best of all, it’s completely free. This means you can organize your music collection without paying for an expensive package. Moreover, it supports a wide range of formats. So whether you have MP3, WAV or FLAC files, MusicBrainz Picard is on hand to get it all right.

However, one of the best features has to be the AcoustID track identifier. Even the most organized MP3 collection will have tracks with very little or no metadata. Maybe the song is even named incorrectly. AcoustID works by comparing a song’s “acoustic fingerprint” against a database of songs. If it finds a match, it fills in the label information for you, saving you the work.

Of course, you can still edit all the metadata yourself. Clicking on the MP3 file that MusicBrainz Picard found will bring up the editing pane. The current data will be displayed along with the missing items. You can add them yourself by entering text. The more metadata that matches, say, other tracks in an album, the better organized your MP3 collection will be. You won’t have random MP3 files piling up on your hard drive.

Download:MusicBrainz Picard (Free)

Mp3tag is excellent if you have a large number of rogue MP3 files. This is because it has a really cool batch converter. This means you can take a whole bunch of your MP3s and let Mp3tag sort through them.

You can also edit the metadata yourself. It’s quite similar to MusicBrainz Picard in terms of what it’s capable of, apart from the batch converter. It can actually use the MusicBrainz database to get file information.

Despite the name, Mp3tag supports a wide range of popular (and some less so) media formats. The app also supports album covers, EPs and singles. This will save the cover to the file itself. So your music will not only be organized, but it will also look good when you browse MP3 files.

The app is also appealing because it allows you to export your library data. With all HTML, RTF and CSV exports available, you’ll be able to see exactly what’s in your collection – all in a nice table format. This helps you keep track of what’s there, and the data can be organized in any way that suits you. You can download Mp3tag for Windows and macOS.

Download: Mp3tag for Windows | macOS (free)

Some people love Apple Music and some people hate it. However, there’s no denying the fact that it’s a great tool for organizing your music. If you have an existing MP3 collection and don’t mind paying for a subscription, you can import it into Apple Music and let the service organize everything for you. It even lets you sync your iTunes library through your Apple ID.

It will collect songs from albums together under one album name, add an image and name all songs correctly. Just sit back and let Apple Music do the dirty work. This is not always a perfect exercise. If your ID3 tags are not consistent, Apple Music may not recognize certain songs as belonging to a collection.

In this case, it may be best to use an ID3 tag remover first. This gives you a clean slate, meaning you can then run your music through Apple Music without any problems. With the ID3 tags removed, Apple Music should be able to organize your music the way it should be organized if it wasn’t possible in the first place.

Of course, Apple Music also has the advantage of being a media player, so you can organize ALL of your media libraries with it. Once you add your MP3s to Apple Music, you’ll be able to view them with nice, shiny artwork, proper titles, and proper artist names. Apple Music is a very functional MP3 organizer and player that will make your music collection look neat and proper. And if you want to step out of your comfort zone, Apple Music is quite useful for discovering new music.

Download: Apple Music for Android | iOS | Windows (requires subscription)

If your music library is starting to overflow to the point that it would take centuries to organize it yourself, TagScanner offers you tools for multitasking. Instead of tagging one track at a time, you can tag multiple files, including entire folders.

It pulls this information from ID3 tags, APE (v1 and v2), Vorbis Comments, WMA, even iTunes metadata or imports from Freedb and Amazon, which is fantastic considering the sheer number of albums on the web.

One standout tool is the ability to rename your audio files based on tag information. Maybe you just wanted a handful of specific tracks from an album rather than the whole album. This way you can group these free audio files together even if you don’t have a full playlist. And with MusicBrainz, Freedb or Discogs you can quickly search for covers and add them while you’re at it.

TagScanner also casts a pretty wide net for supported audio formats. Why stop at MP3? You have MP4 and WAV, but also OGG, FLAC, WMA, MPEG-4, Opus, Musepack, Monkey’s Audio, AAC, OptimFROG, SPEEX, WavPack, TrueAudio, AIFF and DSD. It’s a nice mix of lossy, lossless and uncompressed formats!

Download:TagScanner (Free)

With so many great options, there’s really no reason to let your MP3 collection fall apart. Just think of it as spring cleaning. It will be tedious no matter what software you use, but you’ll feel a lot better when you’re done.

When it comes to which tools are right for you, there are a few questions you can ask yourself when considering each one. Is it free or subscription based? Does the software support the required extensions or the platform you are on? Need a multipurpose tool or just looking for organization and music playback? If any of the software passes the screening, then you are successful.