Mark Dicker

ID3TAG your it!

I’ve just upgraded my MP3 player to a Creative Zen Vision:M. It’s a lovely piece of kit but i’ve come across a problem. My old MP3 player used folders to organise the tracks. The Zen allows sorting by ID3TAG only. Now that’s quite handy because I can choose to listen to a particular artist or album, but therein lies the rub.

I listen to a lot of podcasts and seems podcasters don’t set the ID3 tags correctly. They’re differerent between tracks even in episodes of the the same podcast. I don’t know if this is because the software they use cannot handle ID3 tags or they don’t know how or just can’t be bothered. However, it’s a big issue for people like me that can only sort via ID3 tags.

Fortunately I found a piece of software called MP3TAG that allowed me to change them en-mass. But i’ll probably end up doing this everytime I update my feeds.

So i’m asking nicely, please, pretty please can you set the ID3 tags consistently in your podcasts. If your software doesn’t allow you, get MP3TAG and use that to do it. Yes it adds a few minutes to your workflow but you’ll gain appreciation, and subscribers, from a whole load more people.