Renaming Music Files - working with ITunes Data Files

**Tahseen Shahzad** · 05-02-2008

I am using iTunes 7 version in Windows XP. When checked on the preferences tab there are 2 checkboxes to "keep ITunes Music Folder organized" and "copy files to ITunes Music Folder when adding to Library." I dont know how this checkbox play into the picture here. I have got lots of tracks that sometimes have extra information and punctuation in the song title. If I am in iTunes I want to change the filename of some song files, so what I can read some tracks easily. If I am doing this in iTunes, then how are the prefercences to be set so that when I change the filename in iTunes, it will actually change the filename of the actual file and out of the hard drive too? Can anyone tell me how to do this?

**dcenters** · 31-07-2009

I have the exact same issue. In my experience, MusicMatch, which came loaded on every Dell computer for a number of years, was a superior music player, loaded with great features, including its play window. When it got sold, it literally became dysfunctional - it no longer ran on the computers on which it was installed. And there was no way to make it run again, no matter what you did. I have never seen such an awesome piece of software be ruined so quickly as when Yahoo supposedly "took over" MusicMatch. Criminal. If anyone knows whether ITunes has the functionality to rename the actual .mp3 filenames on the harddrive via the song names on ITunes, please let me know!

I tried this, and didn't see any leads that resolved the issue. The two topics which came up were, "Correcting song titles with odd characters," and "If song titles look scrambled after importing from another application," neither of which seem to have anything to do with renaming the file names from the song titles.

However, in the meantime I have found a program that accomplishes the task. This is called Mp3tag (v2.43), it is freeware (suggested donation), and it is a fantastic program that puts all my music into a database format that lets me sort, manipulate all the song information (including bulk renaming of song file names from song titles), and even play the songs. Wow! Feels like one of those rare finds that you wish you had discovered years before.