5 Best Free and Open Source Linux Music Tag Editors

A tag editor (or tagger) is an application which allows users to edit metadata of multimedia files. Metadata is the data about the audio data. It lets information about the audio file such as the title, artist, conductor, album, track length, lyrics, embedded images, and other information be stored in the audio file itself.

The most common form of audio tag is ID3, of which there are two unrelated types (ID3v1 and ID3v2). There are also other types of audio tags, including Vorbis Comments (found in Ogg and FLAC audio files), and APE tags. Tag editors are not just confined to audio files. Taggers for graphic formats (such as JPEG and TIFF) are also available.

Tag editors are frequently used to correct and organise multimedia files and they support popular digital audio formats. They can rename files based on the tag information, replace words in tags and filenames, create playlists, and import/export tag information. An important feature we look for is the ability to make online database lookups, saving valuable time in collating tags and cover art for your music collection.

To provide an insight into the quality of software that is available, we have compiled a list of 5 proficient music tag editors. Hopefully, there will be something of interest here for anyone who wants to keep their music collection organised.

Here’s our verdict for each music tag editor.

Now, let’s explore the 5 music tag editors at hand. For each title we have compiled its own portal page, a full description with an in-depth analysis of its features, screenshots, together with links to relevant resources.

This article was last updated on 7 February 2019, which included adding our rating chart.