Audio files not only contains the music you are listening to, but they store information about the track itself, such as title, artist name, album name and so on.
Most of users ignore the existence of song metadata, but you may not be one of them since you came here. You can choose to just listen to your songs ─ and that's fine ─ or you can get a tidy and beautiful music library by having your songs completely filled with every pieace of metadata information
Let's look at the next FAQ to see how AutomaTag can help you with this goal!
So, you know what a song metadata is.
AutomaTag is a tag editor, which is a tool that reads and writes metadata inside audio files so that you are able to see nice song information while browsing you song library in your music player.
AutomaTag is an automatic tag editor, which is a tool that pretty automatically updates your songs metadata with fresh information about your songs. You will be pleased to see how tidy is your music library while browsing it through a music player.
In short: song metadata will be moved along with your songs.
Yes, AutomaTag write metadata really inside your files so, moving them to another device, will keep your precious information safe with the files!
Inside this section I will got a little bit technical but it may help understand what's going on in case you face some problems using AutomaTag.
Since Android was early released, we know that there is a component inside it called MediaStore. This piece of software is in charge of scanning continuosly the device memory to find and record any media file it can find, may the be audios, videos or images. It keeps track of any media file and it also remembers of metadata information found inside files. In the case of our interest, the MediaStore saves information about things like title, artist, artwork image and so on.
What's the point of this?
MediaStore works like a caching system and it allows your music player app to fetch very quickly audio metadata so they can be displayed to you when you scroll song list while listening to the music. So, when playing a song, you see the title and artist metadata that MediaStore had previously extracted from the audio file and it stored them in a database for a faster retrieval.
We can say that MediaStore works just like a caching systemt to speed up metadata display in our everyday application we have on our devices
Here comes the troubles?
Sometimes MediaStore stops working so you change the artist name inside the physical audio file, but the MediaStore does not update its records. So the music player app ─ that ask metadata information to the MediaStore ─ displays to your the older artist name, even though the audio file contains the newer artist name.
How can I distinguish between not-updated MediaStore metadata and newer metadata actually contained into the file?
As said above, most music player apps ask for music metadata to the MediaStore to keep good performance while displaying songs, so they may show old information.
Song view and Album view you find in AutomaTag page work exactly like any music player, asking to the MediaStore for metadata information, so don't trust it neither.
When you open a song or album for editing and then you expang manual metadata editing section, it shows information that are actually contained into the file, without any help from the MediaStore.
If you are uncertain about whether AutomaTag edited a file out not, you may head to editing page for that song and verify that it contains updated tag information. Also find me tricks to fix MediaStore when misbehaving.
As soon as you land on the homepage of AutomaTag, you will see you have three different ways of viewing your songs:
Edit songs one by one, simple as selecting them from a list. This mode is usually used by users.
View songs grouped by album name and edit all the songs belonging to an album at once.
Album entities are automatically created by Android OS when indexing songs on the device and grouping them by album name contained in their tag.
Browse folders and files just like a file explorer app.
This is advised when specifically looking for audio files contained in a folder or in rare cases when you see nothing in song view.
Let's supposed you want to edit metadata for a song and you tap on it from Song view page. You will be directed to the editing page, which is made of some blocks starting from the top:
Displays metadata that are currently available inside the audio file. You are able to view song title and artist name, along with album artwork on the background.
AutomaTag puts in this place a possible match that corresponds to what the audio file should actually contains as metadata.
This match is the result of an online search that compares current title and artist name owned by the song against online databases. You will be promped with a full set of metadata ranging from title, artist, album, genre and year to artwork image, track number and disc number.
Tap on the best match to apply both artwork image and tag information to the song.
This section is dedicated to manual metadata editing and it's tipically collapsed. You need to press a button to expand it.
Here you can type manually tag information for the selected song/album just like you would do with any other tag editor.
Along with the artwork image you see in AutomaTag best match section, here you find a list of other artowrk suggestions.
Tap on a cover image proposal to apply it to the song.
Along with the tag information you see in AutomaTag best match section, here you find a list of other tag suggestions.
Tap on a tag information proposal to apply it to the song.
When opening a song or an album for editing, you tipically have many other options. To access the list of available options, tap on the three dots you see in the top right part of the editing page.
You can set AutomaTag so that it renames the audio file according to tag information that the file contains.
To decide you preferred renaming pattern, head to AutomaTag settings > File renaming.
Audio files have a very complex data strcture inside them so it may happen that sometimes AutomaTag is not able to handle them and you receive an error telling you the file is not uspported by AutomaTag.
This may happen because of a large variety of factors, but usually it's about a malformed or badly converted files. A good suggestion would be to get another valid version of your audio file and replace the older one.
File edited but not supported at the same time!?
Some audio files are malformed but AutomaTag id still able to edit them. These files may be unsupported from Android OS and they can be unplayable or you won't able to see them in your music player app because Android does not recognize them as valid audio files.
First off: if editing was successful then editing was successful.
When AutomaTag says it updated tag information correctly, you might want to believe it, trust me. The problem is somewhere else outside of AutomaTag and it's usually due to its complex way of indexing metadata information for media files on your device. You can refer to this explaination if you wish to know more about how Android handles media files.
Said that you can't probably blame AutomaTag for such a problem, there are some workarounds that helped many users in past years:
Many music players ─ yes, also the ones provided with stock versions of Android ─ have trubles displaying song lyrics.
The good news is that fixing it should be very easy for you! Just got to AutomaTag preference > ID3 Mode and set the option to Force to ID3v2.3.
After you did this, go back open the song with AutomaTag and just save it again. Doing so, lyrics will be updated with the newer ID3 mode and they should be compatible with your music player.
This is a common problem when metadata contain UTF-8 characters which do not really get along with Android OS.
The good news is that fixing it should be very easy for you! Just got to AutomaTag preference > ID3 Mode and set the option to Force to ID3v2.4.
After you did this, go back open the song with AutomaTag and just save it again. Doing so, song metadata should be updated and displayed correctly.
This behavior is not linked to AutomaTag, but to Android MediaStore instead and it can't be really changed.
Said that you read the explaination about Android MediaStore I linked above, you should know that song artworks are treated from Android OS as "album artworks". This means that Android groups songs by album name and it picks only one artwork image to be displayed for all the songs with the same album name.
As you may think, the only way to get around this is to use different album name for each song.
Tip: AutomaTag already puts a unique album name if you leave album field blank. The final album name will be made or "%title% - Single".
Accessing and editing files located to external storage like an SD card is not straightforward, depending on the Android OS version you use.
There are no restrictions on older versions of Android so you can access those files without any further action.
This OS version was deisigned by Google so that none of the applications you find on the Play Store are able to access external storage in any way. This makes impossible for AutomaTag to edit songs located on external storage.
If you own a rooted device, you can get around this limitation following a guide, but it's not advised to do so.
With Android Lollipop, you can gain access files on external storage, but you should follow a specific procedure. Here you find the steps to do follow when AutomaTag warns you are trying to edit a file on external storage:
Audio files have a very complex data strcture inside them so it may happen that sometimes AutomaTag is not able to handle them and you receive an error telling you the file is not uspported by AutomaTag.
This may happens because of a large variety of factors, but usually it's about a malformed or badly converted files. A good suggestion would be to get another valid version of your audio file and replace the older one.
AFTER HIM! A true inspiration for the children. What are you hacking off? Is it my torso?! 'It is!' My precious torso! I saw you with those two "ladies of the evening" at Elzars. Explain that. She also liked to shut up! Why not indeed!
Example: I feel like I was mauled by Jesus. Hello, little man. I will destroy you!
I meant 'physically'. Look, perhaps you could let me work for a little food? I could clean the floors or paint a fence, or service you sexually? When the lights go out, it's nobody's business what goes on between two consenting adults.
Example: Nay, I respect and admire Harold Zoid too much to beat him to death with his own Oscar.
Hey, what kinda party is this? There's no booze and only one hooker. I'm just glad my fat, ugly mama isn't alive to see this day. Wow! A superpowers drug you can just rub onto your skin? You'd think it would be something you'd have to freebase. Well, let's just dump it in the sewer and say we delivered it. You guys realize you live in a sewer, right?
Example: Oh Leela! You're the only person I could turn to; you're the only person who ever loved me.
PUNY HUMAN NUMBER ONE, PUNY HUMAN NUMBER TWO, and Morbo's good friend, Richard Nixon. Interesting. No, wait, the other thing: tedious. All I want is to be a monkey of moderate intelligence who wears a suit… that's why I'm transferring to business school! Morbo can't understand his teleprompter because he forgot how you say that letter that's shaped like a man wearing a hat.
Example: If rubbin' frozen dirt in your crotch is wrong, hey I don't wanna be right.
Yes, they are! Once you buy them, there is no deadline for them to be used.
Your purchases are safe and sound because they are linked to your Google account.
As long as you use the same Google account on the new smartphone, your purchases are fully available.
Sometimes it may happen that AutomaTag forgets about your previous purchases, but don't worry! Head gain to the purchase page from the side menu and use Restore now button.
If the restore still unsuccessful, first check that AutomaTag was downloaded from the Play Store app using the correct Google account previously used to perform purchases.
As last chance, try cleaning Google Play app cache & data from device settings and try again to restore purchases.
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You should find pretty everything in this FAQs sheet, but you can still contact the developer if your problem is not listed here.
Not getting a response? Probably you did not write your inquiry in English, or the developer is just busy.