MP3 Tag Fixing with MusicIP Mixer

I'm a stickler about my digital music tags (the meta data about a song). I've been known to meticulously scour my collection and manually fix bad identifying information. Slow and annoying!

Enter MusicIP Mixer, which promises to fix improperly-tagged files based on their Music DNS database of over 26 million songs. A quick analysis of my collection tells me that about 21% of my collection needs some sort of data tweaking. After a few minutes of churning through my songs (7 seconds per thousand tracks if you'd like to benchmark), I now have (more) pristine data, and to me that means more accurate cataloging, storage, and mixing. During the process, though, I received a couple of errors telling me that the application AACTagReader.exe (installed with the Mixer) had unexpectedly quit. Not sure what that's all about (need to look into that one). I figured out that two problems were causing the tag fixing to halt: read-only files and any file names that were very very long. After repairing all of the bad files, re-running tag fixing worked beautifully for the most part.

Some--not all--files with quote marks (such as '12" remix') in the ID3 track name were an issue as well. Although the tag fixer told me it had repaired these files, re-running tag fixing continued to find the same problem files. I may have to fix these files manually.

The paid version of the Mixer (only $20) takes the fixing one step further and will normalize artist names for you, so all those "Eliot Smith" and "Elliot Smith" tracks become "Elliott Smith."


Disclosure: I've been paid by MusicIP for a freelance project unrelated to the Mixer.

Large Digital Music Collections Need MusicIP Mixer

If you're like me, you have a large collection of digital music sitting on a big hard drive connected to your home computer. Some days I just don't want to listen to a specific album or artist; I want my own personal radio station based on my musical mood.

I've spent more time with my new MP3 mixer/player, the fabulous and free MusicIP Mixer. I've written how it scans your music collection and based on the sonic qualities of each song, creates cross-references to other songs you have. The MusicIP model is not based on musicology, or a bunch of people sitting somewhere making connections between songs (see Pandora and Soundflavor). Instead it uses a patented method of actually dipping into the sound waves--the true characteristics of the songs--to create the correlations.

One of the coolest features of the power version of the program (costs you only $20) is the ability to create waypoint mixes. Click here for a demo:


Let's say you're creating a party mix that you want to start out slow, increase in tempo a bit during dinner, get rocking after dinner, then slow down to a bossa nova beat for late night, pick four songs that represent each milestone. Create the waypoint mix (under the Power Tools menu) and the software picks the songs in between each milestone. It's like 'tweening for animators--creating several key frames then letting the software calculate the shapes of objects between each frame. I've a little experimentation to do with this feature but my quick tests prove promising.

There are people out there in the world (like my wife) who always want to "hard code" their mixes--painstakingly choosing each song to play during a listening session. I'm not like that. I want predictable surprise. For those hard coders, MusicIP is not for you.

In college I was a DJ at 91 Rock, and I still listen to it more than any other music station. In the past couple of years it's been much easier to be a regular listener since they've added an automated MP3 player when DJs don't show up or during the summer when it's harder to fill all of the time slots. 91 uses a simple randomization method to automate the playback. No more dead air.

What if they were to incorporate a MusicIP Mixer that truly created automated "shows" based on waypoint mixes? Could DJs actually be remote and control the playback on the station?

MusicIP Mixer Initial Reactions

Last week I downloaded the free version of MusicIP Mixer in order to catalog my MP3s and create mixes based on similarities between tracks in my collection. What this allows you to do is select one song and create a mix based on the sonic qualities of that first song. I've been using the Winamp plug in from the same company for a while now and this was my first experiment with the standalone mixer.

After about four days of indexing 30,000 or so songs, I was quite surprised to find that only 80 or so songs were considered "unanalyzable." To compare, my most recent indexing via the Winamp plug-in (formerly known as Predixis MusicMatch) rendered nearly 2/3 of my collection unanalyzable. This was unacceptable; I'm concerned about the future relationship between Winamp and MusicIP.

FYI, I treat my music collection as my own personal radio station so I want as much "predictable randomization" as possible.

My first impressions of MusicIP Mixer have been incredible. I can select one song and create an instant mix of 20 songs, 20 minutes, or 20 megabytes, for example. Great for party mixes or that special mood, and the mixes render very quickly. I haven't yet played around with the preferences but you can tweak the criteria for mixing such as limiting the genre and number of songs by the same artist.

I'll post more about this great tool so stay tuned.

Crap, I have a lot of MP3s

I have now surpassed the 30,000 song mark. That's a lot of nuts!

A little bit about me: first of all, I'm a nazi about song organization. Second, I fear a meteor will crash on my house and I'll lose my beloved hard drive. [Shatner as Kirk voice] Must...back...up.

I'm in the process of indexing the files with MusicIP Mixer (formerly Predixis MusicMatch) because the MusicMatch plug in was never that reliable in Winamp. We'll see about the standalone MusicIP Mixer.

What MusicIP basically does is scour your music collection to find similar songs so you can make mix lists based on the original song. So, if you're in a Josh Rouse "1972" mood (which I frequently find myself), select that song and create a mix list of similar songs. MusicIP has some big-ass database behind the scenes that stores the similarity info. It does a darn good job in my experience, and is a must for large collections.