Meta — Music Tag Editor 4+

Does a lot of things right, but suffers with larger libraries; crashes

For the price I expected better. As others have pointed out, the app hangs for long periods of time when music is added. This is especially painful when adding large amounts of music from SMB shares. Adding ~3k files takes 5-10 minutes and this needs to be repeated _every time you launch the app_. Adding ~30k files, I gave up after a couple of hours. Once the data is loaded, it’s a very competent tag editor. I have experienced multiple crashes while editing tags, and one crash when the app was just in the background. Annoyingly, if there are any hiccups with file shares, then the app produces an endless stream of modal dialogs (I had to force quit the app). If you have a small-ish library, I can recommend this app. If you have a medium-to-large library, the price of this app is not justified. Update: I received a reply from the developer regarding this, confirming that the app does indeed lend itself better to collections that aren’t massive. Upgrading to a fourth star for an honest and prompt reply.

Developer Response ,

Hello! Thanks for your feedback. Meta is indeed more apt at dealing with smaller batches, and was conceived for everyday, regular use: that is where it shines most!! It can handle large amounts of files, but as you said, 3K is a good upper limit to consider, at once. — Ben

Consistently Awesome

I've been using Meta for tagging my files for a couple of years now, and wouldn't even consider another program. It does a great job with tagging and cover art. Then, last night out of the blue I discovered that I can use it to move files into a directory with my chosen folder format. I had no idea Meta could do that, and it's value to me personally just skyrocketed. Solid program, thanks for your hard work.

poor experience (but growing on me?)

Doesn't save any sort of state so every time you open, you have to navigate to your files and load metadata for all your files from scratch. This can take hours.

Crashes often, so then have to load all metadata from scratch, potentially costing you hours.

Automates virtually nothing. You will get no assistance from web databases of music like Musicbrainz, discogs, lastfm. You will have to manually edit all metadata with no assistance.

This app is probably ok if you just download or rip stuff and want to get it into itunes piecemeal, but is not great for managing a library you have no interest in putting into iTunes/Music.

UPDATE after more time giving the app a chance:
I may have been using it wrong or at least in a way it wasn't intended. It seems it is best used as a scalpel. In other words, don't load your full library into the app every time you launch, but rather go in and edit specific artists/albums. When I limit its use to manage a catalog of local music for my bluesound home audio system, it is much more manageable.

Still occasionally the app struggles to save metadata to files and often gets stuck forcing me to cancel and close/reopen.

With some stability improvements and future integrations of internet sources of info will possibly make this a 4 or 5 star app. Until then, it is just the best looking id3 tag editor, but not quite the best.

Developer Response ,

Hi! I would advise to update to macOS Big Sur, and Meta to v2.0.4 for overall stability and performance improvements. — Ben