Bulk replace a list of tags

[JMuller]

I have a list of tags in the format:
tagBefore1;tagAfter1
tagBefore2;tagAfter2
...

The format itself is not important and can be changed easily.

I'd like to know what kind of tool would be able to import this kind of list and do all the replacing for me automatically, across the Artists and Album Artist tags.

I learned about Masstagger on this post, however the tool is pretty limited, as its scripts can't (afaik) be edited easily outside of its interface. Additional Tagging Tools seemed promising, but is also too limited for my purpose, since it can't import a list of tags to replace.

[psychoadept]

Additional Tagging & Reporting Tools would definitely be my first thought. Can you explain in more detail exactly what you're having a hard time doing with it? Or better yet, post an explanation in the plugin thread, because there are folks who are way more adept with it than I am.

[JMuller]

My problem is that I have hundreds of tags I want to replace, and I see no way to import such a list in ATT, save from adding them manually one by one. I'll post in the ATT thread too.

[phred]

I see no way to import such a list in ATT

You don't (can't) import the tags. You select the tracks that contain the tags you wish to change. Then select the appropriate pre-set, click 'preview' and then change. I suggest you only do one or two tracks at a time at first just to make sure the results are what you expect.

[JMuller]

Here's a better example that shows you why I can't do it one by one:



These are pairs of tags I want to search & replace everywhere.

[frankz]

MP3Tag is probably what you need to do this, then rescan the files in musicbee.  Google mp3tag replace tags text file there are a wealth of options on how to do it whether it's a word1=word2 replace across a lot of files or some other method.

Honestly, this is probably going to be more work and a higher risk of major problems than it is worth in the end over just doing handfuls at a time manually.  What I would do is use MP3Tag to export my tags, open them as CSV in a spreadsheet program, open that replace list in the spreadsheet program, and then cross reference them. Then you'd have to reimport the tags in mp3tag (making sure everything stayed in the right order) and then rescan in MB.

I know this can be done, but I would not know exactly how (functions) to do it.  

MB is not the right tool for this IMO.

[hiccup]

Have you considered (re)tagging your music using MusicBrainz' Picard?
The MusicBrainz database usually contains artist names in correct type.
This could be an easy way to have your issues corrected in bulk.

[JMuller]

I like to have control over my tags and many of them aren't in Picard, so that's not an option either. I've managed to reverse engineer Foobar's Masstagger and wrote a ruby script that can write generate a masstagger script automatically from a text file, without having to use the interface where you'd have to manually add the pairs one by one.

I've uploaded the code here, for the curious. It's very crude, but it works and might be useful to others.

How it looks after loading the generated script: