Metadata Hell
![[Metadata screencap]](https://reviews.musicwhore.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/01/metadata_style_screencap_cropped.jpg "[Three services, three style guides. Let there be one to rule them all.]")
I’ve been in metadata tagging hell.
I updated iTunes a few weeks ago and somehow managed to wipe out my music library. Not to worry — it was only metadata that got lost, not any files. So reconstructing the library wouldn’t be difficult, just tedious.
I’ve used Musicbrainz to manage the tagging of my files since 2006, but the service has expanded greatly since then, supporting a number of fields that weren’t available when I first ran my library through its database.
So I thought I’d take the time to re-tag my collection and perhaps contribute a few more edits to Musicbrainz itself.
The effort reminded me of a big blind spot that the recorded music industry refuses to acknowledge — the lack of an industry-wide standard for metadata.