Tagging when there is no database to look it up in. Updated July 2026.
Database lookup can help tag commercially released music when a matching release is available. For your own exports, demos, live recordings, field recordings, DJ edits and sample packs, the details often need to come from filenames or your own notes.
Which problem do you have
Getting this the wrong way round is why people bounce between tools. The two cases barely overlap.
For the second case the useful question is where the information already lives. Usually it is the filename: 2026-03-14 rehearsal take 3.wav holds a date, a context and a take number that no database has. A tool that converts filenames into tags with one pattern turns that into structured metadata in a single pass. Batch rules reduce the amount of manual entry.
Free first
Free and open source. Fingerprints the audio itself, matches it against MusicBrainz, and writes correct titles, artists and albums for entire collections. Review the suggested release before saving tags across a collection. For unreleased material there is nothing to match, and it has little to offer.
Free and already there. Select tracks, ⌘I, edit titles, artists, album and artwork. It edits the library's view of your music. It cannot batch-rename files, build tags from filenames, or touch anything outside the library.
Free and open source. ID3, Vorbis, MP4 and more, converts between tag versions, scriptable for unusual jobs. The interface is dense and thoroughly un-Mac-like, but if you need a tag format the others do not touch, Kid3 probably reads it.
Paid
Paid, free 7-day trial. Available as a Mac app. Batch editing across MP3, MP4, M4V, MKV, FLAC, Ogg, Opus, AIF, DSF, MPC, WV and WAV, plus Discogs and MusicBrainz lookups. If you used it on Windows, everything you know still applies.
€24.99, free 3-day trial, also on SetApp and the App Store. Built around editing many files as easily as one, and writes ID3v1, ID3v2.3 and 2.4, MP4, Vorbis, INFO and APE. Runs on macOS 10.13 or later, Intel included — so it works on Macs ours will not even install on.
Native Mac, batch editing across MP3, M4A, AIFF, WAV, FLAC, APE, Ogg and WMA, with bulk transform functions and online lookups. APE, Ogg and WMA are formats ours does not handle. Check the site for current pricing.
€15, once. Built for the case at the top of this page: turn filenames into tags and tags into filenames with one pattern, number an album in one click, batch-edit with a preview of every change before it is written, and keep artwork inside MP3, FLAC, M4A, WAV and AIFF. The audio stream is never re-encoded and every save is verified. macOS 14+, Apple silicon or Intel.
Narrower than Mp3tag, Meta and Metadatics, and deliberately so. If you need APE or WMA, or a Mac older than macOS 14, one of those is your answer.
Three things that bite
A car stereo, a phone and a DJ app show what is inside the file. A perfectly named folder with empty tags still says "Unknown artist" everywhere it matters.
A cover image sitting next to the tracks travels nowhere. Embedded artwork does — which is why the album looks right on the Mac and wrong on everything else until it is written into the files themselves.
A correct tag editor rewrites metadata blocks and leaves the audio stream byte-for-byte alone. Whatever you use, confirm that saving does not re-encode — on a lossy file, repeated re-encoding degrades it every time.
PX7 Digital makes PX7 Audio Tag, so this page is not neutral. Prices, formats and system requirements for the other tools were taken from their own sites on 31 July 2026, and where a vendor does not publish a price this page says so. If your library is released music, Picard is free and is the right tool. Tell us if something is out of date.