I’ve been converting vinyl to MP3s. The resulting files play on my PC and in all three of my cars. BUT, for the MP3s I rendered in Audacity after ripping the vinyl, the metadata (artist, title) doesn’t get read in the car. The only way I can get to these files is to navigate the directory structure of the USB device I’m using. Once I get there, the MP3 plays with no problem. I just can’t figure out how to get the artist and title to be listed.
Any ideas as to what I might be doing wrong?
I’ve been playing with Mp3Tag to add, remove, and update tags but I haven’t had much success.
Yes, metadata from the other MP3s on the USB device shows up on all three cars. They were all either purchased/downloaded as MP3s or ripped from CDs. The only ones that don’t work are the ones I created out of Audacity.
Interesting question about Windows Media Player. It and Media Monkey both see the complete metadata, including album art.
There are ID3V1 and ID3V2 tags and some variations/options for those. Click the Wrench icon in MP3TAG and go to Tags → Mpeg and compare your “good” and “bad” files.
Audacity has some issues with tags and it doesn’t support artwork but MP3TAG is usually excellent…
I’ve heard of problems with FLAC files that had ID3 tags (they should have Vorbis Comments) and MP3 files where the artwork was too-big or too-high resolution.
Well… You said it works in Windows Media Player and Media Monkey… Different software/firmware might fix it.
Personally, I would NOT attempt it myself (assuming firmware updates are even available) because there is a chance of “bricking” the car stereo if the old firmware is erased or overwritten. Sometimes the original is saved and there’s a way to recover but it’s not something I’d mess with.
IF it could solve the problem I MIGHT pay the dealer to do it. Of course, the dealer can’t guarantee that your metadata will work, but they are responsible if they foul-up the stereo.
BUT you said that other MP3s work so there should be a better-easier-cheaper way to fix it.
I’m definitely not looking for a firmware solution. And the breadth of the issue – five cars from three manufacturers in cars built over an eight-year span – suggests that it’s the media, not the player.
At this point I’d suggest trying another tag editor. I can’t recommend one… I’ve only used MP3TAG and the capabilities built-into Audacity and a few audio player applications.
And it would be a good idea to start with a “clean” recording with no metadata.
Or try MP3TAG on a new recording with no metadata. I’m thinking that maybe some “bad tags” or blank tags are blocking the good tags.
Oh!!!.. On the bottom of that list there is MP3 Diags which is a diagnosis & repair program. It’s really advanced and complicated but it flags errors, it can show the tags and apparently it can edit the tags. I haven’t tried editing tags with it.
But I just opened a random MP3 and when I click “Tag details” it’s showing ID3V2.3.0, ID3V1, the artwork, ReplayGain tags, and some other stuff. And when I click “All notes” it’s showing a few errors including tag errors, although I’m not having any trouble with this file.
I don’t understand much of what MP3 Diags does but it has several “repair” options and sometimes when I’ve had a “problem MP3”, I just let it apply all of the repair tools. (I never had it screw-up a file, but it’s a good idea to back-up first since it’s making unknown changes.)
I have run into similar issues myself, and my solution was to modify the MP3 tags using the ability to edit them in MS Windows’ File Explorer, and that did/does solve the problem for me.
To be clear, the source of the lacking tags was not always Audacity, sometimes it was because I wanted to change the way the tags were muddied by Amazon Music, and so on.
I am also intrigued by the issue you are having with tags going AWOL. Are you willing to share some examples I could download and delve into? Say two albums that work okay and two that don’t.
Mark B
Update: I sent Mark (EvilMrB) a few files that worked and about a dozen that didn’t. He dug in (THANKS, Mark!) but was not able to find any difference in the tagging, either.
Following up on @DVDdoug’s comment above, Audacity by default writes only ID3v2 tags. Many car players can only read ID3v1. Have you or @EvilMrB confirmed the problem files contain ID3v1 tags?
I plan to give MP3Diags a try, but in the interim here’s an update.
In Mp3Tag,I took one file and used “Remove tag” on the right-click menu and hand-entered the title, album, artist, and album artist and saved it. That worked perfectly.
I’m trying to figure out if I have to do this (remove tag; hand-enter metadata) one file at a time to retain the title of each track. I can do bulk updates for artist and album which will make the process a little less onerous.
ChatGPT advised using “ID3v2.3 UTF-16 (or ISO-8859-1 for wider compatibility)” . What I couldn’t find in the problem files was consistency. When trying MP3Diags I found some had no 3v2.3 tags at all which the program said was the most popular type and some did indeed have them but they didn’t show up when playing in Mitch’s cars. One song that did play OK in the cars had both 3v2.3 and 3v2.4 tags and TWO lots of 3v1. So there was no obvious pattern there that I could see.
Load your files into Mp3tag, select all and click on the “Remove tags” icon (red X), then immediately click on “Undo” (green back arrow). This will rewrite all tags cleanly.
@evilmrb, my experience (with my dad’s Honda and my brother’s Ford truck) is that USB players factory-installed in cars can be primitive. The safest bet is to encode all files with both ID3v1 and ID3v2.3 tags.