How to tag music

“Tagging music” means two different things. One is fixing the details saved inside music files, like the title, artist and album art. The other is labeling songs by how they feel and when you play them, like “late night” or “high energy”, so you can find them again. This guide covers both, then gives you a simple tagging system that works for streaming too.

Tagging music files

If you have MP3s or other downloaded music, each file stores details like title, artist, album, genre, year and artwork. Music players read them to sort your library. To fix them, use a tag editor: Mp3tag and MusicBrainz Picard are popular free ones, and many music players let you edit these details too.

These details describe what a song is. They don’t say much about when you’d want to hear it, and they don’t help with music you stream.

Tagging songs by mood, energy and moment

The other kind of tagging is personal: you decide what the labels are. A song can be “sad”, “acoustic”, “rainy day” and five stars all at once. Later you ask for acoustic and rainy day and get exactly that. It works for streaming music too, because the tags belong to your library, not to the files.

A tagging system that sticks

1. Start with a few categories. For example: Mood (happy, sad, dreamy, dark, calm), Energy (low, medium, high), Moment (focus, gym, driving, late night, party), Genre (only the ones you actually think in) and Sound (acoustic, instrumental, female vocals).
2. Keep each list small. If you can’t remember a tag exists, you won’t use it. Five to ten per category is plenty to start.
3. Use the words you’d search for. Write tags the way you’ll look for them later: “late night”, not “songs for when it’s late”.
4. Tag as you listen. Tag the song that’s playing when it fits. Your library gets organized over a few weeks without one big sorting session.
5. Add a tag when you notice a gap. If you keep wishing you could find “songs for cooking”, that’s your next tag.

See how other people tag

Most people find their system by borrowing. On Community you can browse the tags people actually use, see the songs they put them on and how they group them, and add the ones you like to your own tags.

Browse every tag

Where to start

• You listen on Spotify. Tag in your browser on Community, or inside Spotify desktop with Tagify. How to tag songs on Spotify compares them.
• You have downloaded music. Use a tag editor for the file details, and your own tags for moods and moments.
• You DJ. DJ apps like rekordbox have their own custom tag fields, worth using alongside genre, key and BPM.