Tagging Your Music Collection in Google Play

When you buy MP3s from retailers such as Google Play, Amazon and iTunes, the files are usually already tagged correctly. It is quite possible however to have improperly tagged, yet legally acquired files making up the bulk of your collection. When you rip backups of your CD's using certain software, it will often access a database such as Gracenote to identify the music and fill in the tags for you automatically. If you ripped your music at a time when you didn't have internet access, or used software that isn't capable of looking up this information, your music will be left with only the filename on its back. If your songs aren't tagged correctly on Google Play, it will be harder find, sort and play your music. This may seem inconsequential when you can just use the search engine to search for Right Said Fred and your copy of right_Said_Fred-imtoosexy.mp3 shows up in the results regardless. Pay no attention to those useful search results behind that monitor! Making sure that your music is properly tagged is both useful and easy!

You may have already started uploading your music to Google Play. In our last article we suggested that you go ahead and upload some of your favorite music (we referred to it as the start of a bulletproof collection of the world's greatest music, thank you very much) and if you've done that already, you are on top of your game!

We provided this image in an earlier post as an example of what a small collection of poorly tagged albums looks like:

Pitiful.

Does your collection resemble this image? Is it perfect? If there aren't any problems and every single album contains every song it is supposed to, in the correct order, you're pretty lucky! If it isn't, we'll help you get your music tagged and help address some common problems that may arise.

The Google Play music application shows the last fourteen albums that you have interacted with on the Home page. When you are uploading your albums little by little, this page is useful for seeing what needs to be tended to. If you are listening to music while you upload, the Home page can become diluted with recently listened to music, so if you are using this page to track your uploads, you may want to use the Auto Playlist Last added instead.

Lets go over the currently available tags, and the usefulness of each:

NAME
This is the name of the track, or more commonly: the song title. If you upload an untagged MP3, by default the name will be the filename, such as 2Pac-Changes.mp3. Since Google Play already knows that the file is an MP3, it is safe to delete the file extension from the title.

Just Add Delete!

ARTIST/ALBUM ARTIST
These fields are used to identify the artist of the audio file you are currently editing, shockingly enough. If there are multiple artists on the album, you would put the Album Artist as Various, editing each individual track's Artist field to reflect the artist on that particular song.  We go into more detail about these fields below.

ALBUM
Finally, a field without a ton of baggage and conditions! Those other fields are so needy! Almost always you will use this field to denote the name of the collection of songs it represents. Any other use is just plain bonkers.

ALBUM COVER
You are also able to change the album artwork. Google Play will automatically size and crop any the image that you upload, so it doesn't have to be a certain size, or even a square to work. If you don't have a copy of the artwork available, Google Image search is very useful for this, and you can quickly download the artwork to your desktop and upload it to Play.

COMPOSER
One of the few useless fields on the tag editing screen. There is currently no way to search and sort by composer and this information only shows up on the Edit Tag screen. Even if you could sort your collection by composer, is this something that you would use? This field can be used in lieu of a more useful field, such as one for notes or comments, and no one will know the difference!

Our little secret!

YEAR
This is another field that is not yet searchable, though we would actually find that to be a useful feature. It is probably a good idea to go ahead and add this information if you know it, as the ability to search and sort your music by year is a no-brainer, and it will be likely added in the future.

TRACK #
We're not going to insult your intelligence by explaining these fields, so instead we will offer this useful tip! If you have a certain compilation or album of which its order is of no consequence, if you remove all of the track numbers from the tags, Google Play will sort the album alphabetically instead. We use this technique on self-made compilations and other large collections of music, so that locating certain music in a list is easier. This is not useful on collections such as The Pet Sounds Sessions, where chronology is important.

Don't judge!

DISC #
For multiple disc albums, this field is absolutely necessarily. If a double album is missing these tags, all of the songs will be combined into one giant mishmash. Not a tragedy, though it could upset the flow of some albums. For example, the Greatest Hits album by The Cure is a double album. The first disc contains the original hits, while disc two contains acoustic interpretations of the exact same songs.

If the album and tracks aren't marked as a two disc album, Google Play will combine both discs, sorting the songs by track number, as shown below.

GENRE
Finally, a searchable, usable field! The obvious purpose of this field is to denote the genre of the music you are editing. Unfortunately, this tag is usually all over the place before you even touch your collection. This is a good task to do if you are bored out of your mind. The benefit is the ability to play collections of certain genres of music on demand.

After uploading your already existing collection, there are several common issues that can be fixed with tagging. Here are some solutions to common problems with Google Play uploads.

Some of my music is showing up as Unknown Album/Artist

An album or song will still show up as Unknown Album/Artist if it is missing tags, even if the actual file is named perfectly. For instance, Wilco-Yankee Hotel Foxtrot-07-Heavy Metal Drummer.mp3 tells us nearly everything we absolutely need to know about the music contained therein. If the tags aren't filled in, Google Play is unable to tell which part is the band name and which is the song title.

If you click on the arrow next to the song title and click the option to Edit song info, you see that the fields Artist and Album Artist aren't filled in. Simply fill in the artist name under the Artist section, and to help you decide if you need to also put the band name under the Album Artist, please read the section below this one.

A recently uploaded album is split up into two or more parts

Sometimes when you upload an album it is somehow inexplicably split into two or more albums in the Google Play music application. Most single albums are meant to be experienced as one single entity, so splitting it up into separate parts seems counterproductive. Why does this happen?

In the highlighted section you will see that there are two fields for the artist. When an album only contains the music of one artist or band, then both fields should contain that one name. For instance, in the example above, the selected album only contains the music of Mrs. Miller, therefore both fields should reflect this.

So why all the confusion? Isn't one field enough? NO! The Album Artist field is useful when there are multiple credited artists on one album. Examples would include a compilation of hits or a tribute album such as For Love of Harry: Everybody Sings Nilsson, as shown below.

This one album contains many different artists, or various artists, you could say. To make sure that Google Play shows the correct artist while playing your music, in nearly all cases the performer of the song your are currently editing goes in the Artist field.

For the Album Artist field, if the album you are editing is a greatest hits collection with multiple artists, a tribute album or any other compilation, (i.e. your album contains various artists) then feel free to mark the Album Artist as Various or Various Artists, whatever fulfills your needs. If you have compilations in your collection that aren't marked as so, it is always a good idea to go ahead and fix it.

For various reasons, sometimes an album with one artist will sometimes have tracks with missing Artist Album fields. If it is filled in on some songs and not others, Google Play will treat the tracks as if they are on different albums. If an album is split up into two, this is usually the reason. Simply copying the Artist field over to the Album Artist field should fix you right up!