How To Straighten Out Your Music Files
As a lover of music, my secondary use for my BlackBerry 10 device is to play some tunes. There is nothing more frustrating than the songs not lining up in the native music player correctly. It is not your phone, it's not the OS, and it's not your memory card. It's the mp3 tags, and I'm gonna tell you how to fix it.
First, make sure that all albums are in separate folders, meaning that the songs on one album are separate from the songs of another. You can use the native file explorer on the device for this step. For instance, five folders cannot be titled Smashing Pumpkins, but one folder can be titled Smashing Pumpkins and inside that folder you can place the five folders that represent five of their albums (name each folder after the album or song it represents). Yes, individual songs not part of a full album are also better off in a separate folder. Basically, your SD card should have no loose music songs at root. All songs need to be in a folder for better organization, plus it just looks less sloppy.
Inside each folder should be nothing but the songs and a Folder.jpg file ( if applicable for cover art). If it's a main folder that houses five folders (albums) by the same artist as described above, only folders should be in the root of that main folder. That means if in any folder, main or sub, you find album art small or. Ptl or desktop.ini, DELETE THEM. Once this is cleaned up, you are ready to start fixing mp3 tags.
To edit mp3 tags, there is only one program I trust: Mp3tag v2.58. It's free and I have used it for years so I can vouch for it. It works on a Windows PC, but I'm not sure about Mac. Download it, install it, then connect your device via USB cable.
To check mp3 tags, navigate to your device SD card (best place to store music, but if you're not using one, go to internal storage). Pick a song (or highlight an entire album of songs), then right click them, select Mp3 tag, and left click it. Mp3tag will automatically open and populate with all of the songs (or song) that you selected.
This is the fun part. You can batch edit songs by highlighting all in the main Window, or you can edit each one by one. Either way, left click on the song (or songs) to highlight it. On the left side of the screen, your mp3 tag info will display. Note that this mainly works for mp3 and m4a files, so if you have wma or flac files, you need to import them first into iTunes on your PC, then find them in your music library (right click song in iTunes, Show in Windows Explorer), and from there, you can copy and paste and replace the flac or wma files on your device with those.
There are only FIVE tags you need to use. Album, Artist, Title, Year, and Track. For everything else, select BLANK from the respective drop down menu. When you are done, be sure to click the save button (blue floppy disc icon) at the top left. Almost done!
Next, you have to check Extended Tags as well, because authors love to put extra crap in there too. Remember the ones you need, and for the ones you don't, highlight them and click the red X. Click OK to save. Tags are now edited!
Occasionally, the tags were so bad the device is confused and can't reorganize them because it can't forget the original tags. Easy fix. Copy and paste the songs from your device to your PC. Delete them off the device, then copy and paste them back on to the device again. Now the device will recognize the newly edited mp3 tags!
I used my Q10 to create this CrackBerry madness!