It’s amazing how many artists take the time to pour over the intricacies of a track to get it “just right” for release – spending hours, days, weeks, months on projects – then to just slap some random name on the mp3 file without any proper detail and every chance that it will get lost in the shuffle when they send it to people.  Unless you don’t mind your tracks getting lost in the shuffle tagging is important. AND IT’S EASY.  Let’s break it down.

1. Download Itunes and install it on your computer.  It’s free and it’s what most people use to organize their libraries.  It also tags mp3s very easily.

2. Once you have Itunes installed just open the mp3 file in question (If you need to create an mp3 from your .WAV/.AIFF first Itunes will also do that)

3. Once you have the mp3 in the Itunes window simply right-click on it.  What you will see is something like the following:

4. Now select “Get Info” and Itunes will look like this…

5. You will see that there are some tabs that appear, like above. Select the “Info” tab and you will then see this…

Here’s where you fill in your info – track name, your artist name, name of the album or EP etc.  Notice that there’s also an “Artwork” tab so that if you have artwork for your release you can add this and Itunes will automatically show it.

Once you have an mp3, this tagging process literally takes a minute or two.  I think that’s worth it to make sure that your release gets properly credited to you by anyone you might send it to – especially if it’s going to busy djs who generally have bad memories and don’t have time to research a file they got two weeks ago that only says “Theshizbounce3″ in the file name.  By using this simple tagging method, your file info will show up in Itunes, CDJs, Serato etc. whenever your track is played.  Make the most of your music and tag it to ensure it doesn’t get lost in the shuffle!

Finally – just to visualize the difference, here’s what happens when I hover over an untagged and a tagged file.  Notice the info in the yellow box.