CBT Bazar

If you have a large music library, you know how time consuming it can be to keep your tags updated. iTunes has limited tag information and cover art, because it is limited to what Apple has in its catalog.

If you have ripped a lot of CDs or purchased music elsewhere, chances are your tags may not be correct. Manually editing mp3 tags is not an option if you have more than a few hundred files, and chances are you will make mistakes.

Pollux is a low-cost solution to your music tagging problems. It is a very small application that costs $10 per year to use, and does a great job of updating your music’s tags. It works with iTunes, so all you do is fire up your iTunes library, select the songs you want to tag, and choose Tag Selected iTunes Tracks from the Pollux menu in OS X’s menu bar. Pollux uses the track’s fingerprint to identify it and tag it appropriately.

This is what the iTunes library looked like before we started Pollux.

Pollux went through the tracks we selected one at a time, and applied the correct album art, title, artist, year, track number, and even lyrics. The status screen shows you what track Pollux is editing. If you hide the status screen, you can choose to use Growl notifications on OS X.

This is what the iTunes library looks like after Pollux applied the correct album art and tags.

One of the best things about Pollux is that if the tracks are not tagged correctly once Pollux applies its changes, you can always use Pollux to revert to the original tag information. Select the files you want to revert and choose Undo Tagging of Selected Tracks from the Pollux menu. Pollux will undo all of the changes it made.

Pollux will save you a lot of time and energy by doing what iTunes (and other music management applications) still cannot do. It will clean up your entire collection, and provide you with more accurate tags than you started with.

If you have thousands of mp3s you need to update, Pollux will do it in the background for you, and you can always undo incorrect changes. It will also automatically update new tracks you add to iTunes. Pollux is available for Windows and OS X, and you can try it out on 20 tracks for free.