Added composer but it doesn't show up with I play the song

Audacity 3 Help Forum
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When I record or download music into Audacity from a cassette, LP, etc. I add a line for composer in the metadata but when I play the music the composer column shows “unknown”. With some CDs I download the composer is already in the metadata file and some are not. When the composer is added automatically then it will show when the song is played. If I have to add a line to the metadata for a CD the composer shows up “unknown”.
I am using an HP laptop with Ubuntu 22.04.2 LTS and Rhythmbox as my player.
Any help would be appreciated.

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See also: Composer information not copied in 3.2.0

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Try to find a tagging/metadata program. I’m a Windows guy and I don’t know what’s available for Linux. (I use MP3Tag on Windows and it supports virtually every format, not just MP3.)

Rhythmbox may be able to add/edit metadata. Or “the Internet” seems to be recommending EazyTAG.

Audacity also doesn’t support album art so you’ll also need to use something different if you want to embed the album cover artwork.

Note that different audio formats use different tag formats. MP3 uses ID3tags (and there are a couple of different ID3 versions). FLAC uses Vorbis Comments. Metadata for WAV is not well standardized.

Also… If you open a compressed file in Audacity it gets decompressed and every time you export it creates a new file (or overwrites the old file). So if you open a lossy file in Audacity and edit the metadata (or the audio) the audio goes through another generation of lossy compression.

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Thanks for your input. I found out that recording in wav I couldn’t make any corrections or edit any of my metadata info. When recording in mp3 I can make corrections and edit my metadata. Actually it’s very easy once you learn how. I found by opening the LP or cassette I’ve recorded in Rhythm Box I can select all the songs on that LP or cassette and edit the items that are the same, i.e. year, artist (if only one artist), album art, etc. and it will enter that data on all songs at once. Then I can go song by song to edit composer(s) or artist if there are various artists on the LP or cassette.
Thanks again for putting me on the right track.

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