What Is Metadata and Why Is It Important to Have Accurate Metadata in Your Audio Files?

If you really love your music and have a seemingly endless number of digital files in your collection, it might be a tall order to organize them into any sort of cohesive order. This is the part where metadata comes into the picture.

Using metadata will make it very easy to browse through your music files without spending many hours in alphabetizing your digital folders. 

The info contained in the metadata of your audio files typically include the following:

Apart from that, it also has other types of musical information that will help you to search for and locate your desired album and file as soon as possible. In short, any data that can help you to identify and subsequently find the content should be on your metadata file. 

This data is usually embedded into the track whenever the file is created. FLAC, MP3, and AIFF formats take full advantage of metadata descriptions. On the other hand, WAV files only allow a very small metadata footprint that might not be very helpful for browsing your vast personal music library.

If you only have very few files in your database, you might not need a large metadata file. But in case you want to locate a specific album or number, you will need its metadata description.  In case you don’t have the specific DC or vinyl in front of you, the file’s metadata is your best option to find out just which file contains which number. 

Let us suppose that all of your huge music collection has been jampacked into a lone hard drive and there is no particular order in which you have stored your files. In case you are interested in navigating through your music files via a certain album or artist, you will need their respective metadata descriptions. If you don’t have that, it would be futile to expect any productive results. 

 

If you have full metadata on your files, you will be able to breeze through your whole collection with the help of network streamers such as Stream Magic, 6851N  or CXN. 

What to Do in Case the Metadata Is Present but Not Organized Properly 

If the metadata is there, but it is as random as your file-based library, you might need to manually input at least some of the data to ensure a quick search and retrieval process. There are also a number of programs such as Audacity and  Media Monkey that can help you to track down your missing metadata. 

If you want more information on inserting and using metadata in audio files just visit our website and we will be sure to answer all your queries on how to optimize your music library.