

Puddletag 1.0 running on Ubuntu

Puddletag, the open source metadata editor for audio files has reached its version 1.0 milestone. The release adds several new features, and a large number of bugs have been fixed since the last stable release in August 2011. Tag editors such as Puddletag are used to manipulate the metadata information attached to files in a music collection – media players usually display this information instead of simply showing the file names.

The biggest new feature in Puddletag 1.0 is support for AcoustID, an open service that aims to create a free-of-charge database of audio fingerprints that works with the MusicBrainz metadata database. AcoustID aims to be a replacement for the proprietary Gracenote service that many audio tagging systems use to automatically fetch metadata information for music tracks. AcoustID's server software is open source and the database is licensed under a Creative Commons licence.

Other new features include more stable mass tagging of files, and the Amazon tag source has been modified as Amazon now requires an Amazon AssociateTag to do data lookups; users must now enter their own AssociateTag. The icon for the application has also been redesigned and the program's metadata parser has been improved.

Support for Mp3tag-style tag sources is now complete in this version. Puddletag was written as a Linux alternative to the Windows-based Mp3tag metadata editor and the layout of its user interface will immediately be familiar to users of Mp3tag. It also duplicates many of Mp3tag's features, including support for MP3, Ogg Vorbis, FLAC and other formats.

Puddletag 1.0 is available from the project's web site as source code and in binary form for many different Linux distributions. Puddletag is licensed under the GPLv3. A detailed list of changes since the last stable release can be found in the change log.

(fab)