How do I store information with music files?

Question - I read avidly every copy of i computer active. Inspired by this, I am quite prepared to go along with the idea of digitizing all of my music on to hard disks and other storage devices. however, 1 can't recall reading about how I might retain the information regarding musicians, recording dates, venues and so forth. Is this possible? Perhaps you know of a means by which i might record such information via a microphone, rather than typing?

Answer - Your email suggests you’re already I comfortable with the process of turning your music into digital audio files. However, the type of music digitized and the method used both affect the answer to your question.

If, for example, you' re using windows media player (or similar) to rip a collection of commercial music CDs to mp3 format, then much, if not all, of the information you want is probably already there: just locate a music file, right-click it and choose properties. In the dialogue box that appears, click the details tab to see the metadata that’s attached to the file. The details can be edited simply by clicking the relevant field and typing the new information. incidentally, this extra information is often referred to as an1 id3 tag' and you can read a lot more about how these work in the article published in previous issue.

As for your second question, we suspect you mean that you would like to add your own audio annotations to music files. While possible, the process would be quite onerous and require an audio-recording and editing program like audacity.

Alternatively, if you mean that you would like to be able to speak rather than type the details (and have the computer recognize your voice), both vista and windows 7 have a built-in speech-recognition tool: click start followed by control panel, then click ease of access followed by speech recognition and follow the prompts to set it up.