How to Install puddletag in Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal? (Audio "Tag" Editor)

By default MP3 files (including other multimedia files) store information about the file such as Artist/Track Name/Year or Album cover (including pictures) in a file called ID. After the "ID" was introduced, these days we're "having" the ID version - 3.

In both GNU/Linux and MS Windows you can easily access this ID3 or Tag of an MP3 file by right clicking on it and selecting properties and once opened, you can manually change the above mentioned data (artist/track/year, etc). This is known as MP3 tag editing. And as said not just MP3 files but almost all other major audio/video files (flac, AAC, etc) also have their own "tags" as well.

Almost all the major music players for GNU/Linux support this feature (including embedding an album art picture into the tag) but changing tag after tag in an audio album where you have hundreds of files ain't gonna be that pleasant. Luckily some music players nowadays can even do this automatically by reading the MP3 file and downloading its meta-data/tag-data via online sources and automatically changing them but this is not always possible.

If you want to manually change a lot of tags of your audio collection (including the above mentioned "automated" option) with ease in Ubuntu then there is a small yet useful dedicated tool called "puddletag".

Main features...

*. Written in Python language and the GUI is designed using the gorgeous Qt-4 toolkit.

*. Change all the MP3 tag information such as - Year/Title/Album name/Track-Genre, etc and you can even add your own comments as well.

*. Easy to use GUI.

*. Supports a lot of audio formats such as - MP3, MP4 (mp4, m4a, etc.), VorbisComments (ogg, flac), Musepack (mpc), Monkey’s Audio (.ape) and WavPack (wv).

*. puddletag also has the ability to use online sources (Amazon, FreeDB, Discogs, etc) and automatically update tag information (including album covers).

*. Load hundreds/thousands of file into the main window.

If you use Ubuntu 11.04 (including 10.04/10.10) and want to install puddletag, then download the package from here and double click on it once downloaded. Follow the instructions on your screen and it'll automatically install it, including all the dependencies.

If you use Fedora Core 15/14 or other version then you should be able to install it using the below command as well.

yum install puddletag

Enjoy!.