Since there was some discussion on the forums a few days ago about tagging software, I contacted Evgeny Efimov about possibly obtaining a discount on Tag and Rename for the members of this forum. He has agreed to give us a 30% discount which will be available for the next 30 days.

Below is the information you need to use when ordering the software.

Here is the link for Empeg owners with 30% discount (i.e. Tag&Rename costs $17.46). This link will be valid for one month.

https://www.regnow.com/softsell/nph-softsell.cgi?item=2921-1&ss_coupon=EMPE-XD08

Alternatively you can use normal by now link:

https://www.regnow.com/softsell/nph-softsell.cgi?item=2921-1

and enter this promotional code: EMPE-XD08 on final ordering step.

As with the normal Tag and Rename license, purchase price includes lifetime upgrades and support and I have found that Evgeny is quick to stomp out bugs and handle support in general.

Hope some of you find this useful.

That's very cool of you!

good software, too. (I'm registered)

First, thanks for the work to get this discount for us..

I am using ID3-TagIt, which is free - http://www.id3-tagit.de . I tried Tag&Rename and it was nice but I found little difference between the two.

Perhaps someone here can comment on the difference.. The feature set seemed very similar to T&R but I don't know about performance..

-John M

I loaded ID3-Tagit up real quick and had a look and I didn't see any CDDB support in that program. Could have been there and I just missed it.

CDDB and AllMusic support are the strong points of T&R with AllMusic being the bright spot. Essentially you can go to AllMusic's website from within the program and find an album and tag it from AllMusic's database.

I also think that T&R is a bit more customizable than ID3-Tagit but T&R does take some getting used to. My main thing, though is that I'm sick of buying software to have the author weasel out of continued support and the T&R author doesn't seem to be that way. T&R has been around for a while now and he continues to improve it.

Case in point.. I bought another MP3 tag program called Helium a couple of years ago. The program offered "Lifetime support for Helium owners" and to get out of supporting the registered users, the CROOKS that make the software simply changed the name to Helium II and made everyone buy an upgrade. To me, T&R author's commitment is worth $18.00.

I haven't even payed with Tag and Rename, but I'll go online and buy it this weekend. I can already tell it's worth it just by looking at the few screen shots and the reading I've done in the other thread. It was as easy a choice when I looked at Audiograbber. I have a knack for telling which software I'll really end up liking. I especially like devlopers that "get it" and have a flare for putting together a good interface coupled with powerful features. It's a balance in software design and programming that not everyone is suited to, so I'm always glad to support these efforts.

Bruno

I can already tell it's worth it just by looking at the few screen shots and the reading I've done in the other thread.

I do the same thing. After looking at a few hundred pieces of software over the course of a few years, it's easy to take just one look at a screenshot of a program and decide if it's any good. That magical combination of layout, graphic design, and even the naming of the commands, just jumps out. I'm a big fan of T&R, it's one of those programs.

its all about cdtag.. thou no cddb support.. i love it.. i sware by it.. and will never change.. thou it has a link to the cddb it never got updated when ther servers chaged

do you know if tag and rename supports or is going to support wma?

No info on the website mentioned for WMA. And there isn't any "coming-soon" list that I've seen.

Bruno

Just registered and about to download...

Speaking of WMA does anyone know a good tagger that supports it? ive tried a couple but they dont really seem very good.

The best one ive found is eMusics tag editor, but thats now expired and i dont really want to buy it for the very few WMA files i have.

Already Registered it at full price a couple months ago..

I have A few small improvments to suggest to Evgeny, but It's the still by far and away the closest to what I would write myself if I had the time....

Thanks for the info. I was playing around with it, and loved the feature of getting things from All Music. It's helping me out with my E-music tracks(Some are strangly labeled, and several didn't have genre or track # tags. So far it's worth the price.

Well, I spoke too soon about T&R unfortunately. It's "OK" but I pre-judged it to be far better than it is. The other applications mentioned in the other threads still hold many features over T&R.

Now, the nasty: It is very easy to move files to unwanted places as well as destroy tag data due to T&R's confusion of paradigms. The author has created a fair list interface but has mixed its use with a file-tree on the left and a static field area at the top. This static field area is useful for batch work on directories without having to see the files, but it is not convenient when being used with the list interface. Emplode is far superior in this respect.

He's using check-boxes as well as highlights for selection. Which one will work with which features? I know which, but this is very confusing. Plus there's no option to add checkmarks in the context menu when you click the file list. Pretty big oversight.

ID3V2 MULTI tagging. This isn't part of a context menu! Ugh. Anyway, popping to the dedicated panel at the top you will notice it says clearly that ONLY selected fields will be modified. Well let me tell you, DO NOT PRESS REMOVE TAGS. This will remove *ALL* tags, not only the selected one (the selected note is only for when adding tags).

It is also a very slow process for me to use this. If I want to browse all my files, each time I launch the program it has to build a database of all 6000 of my tracks. It's not terribly fast, all things considered. The program also doesn't seem to multithread when doing things like clicking the CDDB feature or AllMusic feature (both of which are only useful for full albums). I found the allmusic feature pretty useless for anything less than a full album (plus what's the deal with it showing you ALL your tracks again after you press the get button? - it's not very nice to pop up a list of 6000 files to scroll through.

I'm going to have to use this for very selective and careful editing. And I hope that the glaring problems and bugs (I didn't even begin to mention the bugs I found here ) get addressed soon.

Bruno

Bruno, drop Evgeny a line with your suggestions and concerns. He is very receptive to new ideas and suggestions and usually gets on bug fixes pretty fast. I've found a few bugs in 2.5 but nothing that's earth shattering so I haven't bothered to submit them.

The first problem I encountered removed all the mp3s from one of my artist folders. Selecting a folder on the tree view seems to do nothing. Double-clicking it causes it to be scanned and contents shown on the right. I thought perhaps that dragging it to the right might do the same thing.

I tried this when there was currently nothing in the right side. Poof, all the tracks from the artist folder I dragged disappeared. I had to search my drives to find out where they went. They wound up on my C: drive within some new folder the app created.

I have just tried Tag-It. I can say that I am VERY pleased with it so far. My suggestion for Tag and Rename right now is to look at Tag-It and emplode, and copy their best features, eliminating the overlap that already exists from T&R. Tag-It and emplode handle multi-file tagging better. Tag-It allows editing of much more info than any other program I've used. emplode has the benefit of pre-filling fields which are common between multiple selections.

Tag and Rename does have a very useful Auto-numbering feature and its table cell highlighting. Plus being able to move files up and down the list is useful for when doing the renumbering.

I think I'll hold off before telling Evgeny to take a different approach to his application. My first suggestion would be to eliminate the entire options bar thing at the top. Or at least be able to have it dynamically change its information based on what you select. Right now he uses both that bar as well as a pop-up window (if you choose to do advanced/Winamp tags).

And then there are useful features and customizing abilities in MP3 Tag Studio that none of these programs have. It's a pain in the arse having all of them around (though by using Tag-It I just found out that MP3TS was responsible for destroying my "of #" tags in most of my collection (that's why this info didn't appear in emplode).

Hmm.. Might be a good idea to get some sleep. Been working like a SOB most of the day.

Bruno

I have tried T&R too, but I'm not very impressed.
It get me confused and after losing ten minutes on it, I came back to good old Mp3 Tag Studio.
Even in the apparent complexity of Tag Studio, the first time I used it after ten minutes I was tagging and renaming at full speed

The only reason I am messing with Tag&Rename at this time is because of its ability to screen-scrape the Allmusic.com database. There's very little else I would use it for.