Modulate This! - News, Tips and Links for Electronic Musicians and Producers

MP3TAG - Great Windows Shareware Tool for Editing MP3 Tags

I've begun releasing .mp3 singles for my new album REBOOT. Prior to releasing the songs, I spent a fair amount of time researching the the best way to tag my MP3s. I wanted to add information to the .MP3s so that I could "bind" songs together into a virtual album via the tags, make my album art show up in your favorite player, and embed info within the tracks so you could find my web site from within the song info.

One issue with tagging with your favorite media player such as iTunes or Windows Media Player is these applications don't support all the tags all the possible tags and tag formats. Also, media players assume you want import your songs into your music library. Rather than import songs into my music library, I wanted to leave the songs where they were - in their own project folders on my system - and simply edit their tags.

The solution I picked is MP3TAG. Here is the marketing blurb:

"Mp3tag is a powerful and yet easy-to-use tool to edit metadata (ID3, Vorbis Comments and APE) of common audio formats. It can rename files based on the tag information, replace characters or words from tags and filenames, import/export tag information, create playlists and more. The program supports online freedb database lookups for selected files, allowing you to automatically gather proper tag information for select files or CDs."

I found the software simple and easy to use and recommend it. Give it a try yourself by downloading the software from here - http://www.mp3tag.de/en/index.html. The software is free, but if you use it and like it I highly encourage you to donate to support their development efforts.

New iTunes Feature 'Complete My Album' Explained

Apple iTunes now supports a new feature called 'Complete My Album'. The concept behind this feature is to allow those who have purchased one or more songs from an album to buy the rest of the album at a reduced price.

Prior to this feature, if you purchased a song or songs for $.99 then decided you liked the artist wanted by the entire album you had one of two choices. First, you could buy the rest of the songs on the album individually and lose out on the album discount. Second, you could buy the album which meant your were buying songs you already own.

Now with "Complete My Album", Apple will give you a credit for every song previously purchased. The credit is then automatically applied towards  the purchase of the entire album. So, if you bought two singles songs at $.99 a piece , you would be credited $1.98 towards a $9.99 bringing the album price to $8.01.

There is one small catch however - the price reduction is only valid 180 days after the initial purchase. For songs purchased prior to the availability of this feature, Apple is offering a retroactive offer for a limited time. For these songs you only have 90 days to complete your albums.

There is a new link in the "Quick Links"  section of the iTunes store that will bring you to a page that allow you to complete you albums.

iTunes 7.0.1 does not fix Error - "iTunes Unable to Browse Album Covers On This Computer"

Apple just release iTunes 1.0.7 (I installed it and my version is 7.0.1.8). You can download it from here. According to Apple, "iTunes 7.0.1 addresses stability and performance issues with Cover Flow, CD importing, iPod syncing, and more."

Unfortunately, this release did NOT  remedy cover flow problems on my XP System. If the video driver is not configured properly, you will still get the cryptic "iTunes 7 Error - iTunes Unable to Browse Album Covers On This Computer."

If you are receiving this error, check out this article in my blog for possible fixes.

Mark Mosher
www.modulatethis.com
www.markmoshermusic.com

iTunes 7 Error - iTunes Unable to Browse Album Covers On This Computer

Update -  If you are having this issue, please read the rest of this post plus the comments at the bottom of the post.

I just upgraded to itunes 7. I'm on Windows XP by the way.  I was really excited to try out the new feature, Cover Flow which according to Apple "With Cover Flow, you can flip through your digital music and video collection just as you would CDs."

The update seemed to go fine. I then selected "Music" in my Library and hit the
Cover Flow button. Much to my surprise, I got the error listed below "iTunes is unable to browse album covers on this computer."

I googled, searched blogs, searched Apples support and found nothing. Then I remembered I had set my video card to disable hardware acceleration. Sure enough, when I cranked up my hardware acceleration, iTunes worked fine. I'm blogging this here because I know tons of you musicians out there use iTunes and this post could save you hours of chasing your tail - especially since the error is not very clear that the issue is related to your video settings.

Possible remedies:

• Enable hardware acceleration
• Use 32-bit True Color

These settings can be accessed by , Right clicking on your desktop, select the "Settings Tab". Select 32-bit.  To turn on hardware acceleration, click advanced.

Then click the "Troubleshoot" tab and slide  the Hardware acceleration slider to the right.

Update to my original post:

According to  http://completelygeeked.com/, two other issues might cause this:

Possibility 1: QuickTime is out of date...

Possibility 2: Video Driver is out of date...

CompletelyGeek also sites this forum on Apple.

See comments link below for even more discussion about this issue.

Mark Mosher
www.modulatethis.com
www.markmoshermusic.com

Copyright 2006, Newecho Productions, LLC

iTunes 6.0 has released and iTunes now carries over 2,000 music videos

Seems like only yesterday iTunes 5.0 came out - oh yeah it was last month - and now iTunes 6.0 is here! Those engineers at Apple must never sleep.

Well, it's clear that the release of iTunes and it's enhanced support for video is releated to the new video capable iPods. I mean what good is an iPod that plays video unless you have some content. So, iTunes now has videos for sale. For example, I just got into Lost (yeah, I know, I'm a year behind). You can get episodes on iTunes :^).

Here is the list of what's new in 6.0.

• Music Videos at the iTunes Music Store -browse more than 2,000 (you can play them straight out of iTunes and don't need a video capable ipod). They cost $1.99.
• TV Shows - Download full seasons or the latest episodes. Seems like only certain networks are on board right now.
• Customer Reviews - Post your own reviews and ratings and read what others are saying
• Buy and send music and videos as gifts with iTunes gift certificates.

Of course, since 4.9 you can also:

• Sample and subscribe to thousands of free podcasts at the iTunes Music Store.

And you can still:

• Download thousands of popular radio programs on iTunes.

For those who have not tried it, click the banner below to give it a try - I think you'll like it. Best of all, its free!