SongKong Comparisons
This articles compares SongKong with other music taggers. All taggers have their different strengths and weaknesses, but we are confident that SongKong stands up well against competitor products and have tried to provide more in-depth comparison of features then is available on generic software comparison websites. We realize we cannot be completely unbiased but have tried to be fair and accurate.
Disclaimer: All Information on this webpage is based on the observations of the author and believed in good faith to be correct at the time of writing but is for general informational purposes only, we accept no liability for any errors or omissions but if a reader considers anything is incorrect please contact support@jthink.net so it can be corrected. All product and company names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders, use of them does not imply any affiliation with or endorsement by them.
We have split the comparisons into Mac, Windows and Linux sections, there is a more in-depth review available for every tagger compared, just select the tagger name hyperlink to access
Mac Taggers
Below we compare support for key features. For more in-depth comparison click on the tagger name
Windows Taggers
Below we compare support for key features. For more in-depth comparison click on the tagger name
Linux Taggers
Below we compare support for key features. For more in-depth comparison click on the tagger name
Description of Features
Where necessary we explain what some of the features listed above in more detail
Standard Install
Can tagger be installed easily without having to install 3rd party additional software for it to work
Intuitive Ease of Use
Is it possible to start using taggers features by just playing with it, or do you need to read the help first to understand how to use it.
Desktop UI
Does the tagger provide a standard Graphical User Interface (GUI) suitable for the operating system they are running on, for ecxample an application running on MacOS should like a MacOS application, and on Windows it should look like a Windows application. A GUI should enable the application to be largely be controlled by a mouse.
Web UI
Does the tagger provide a Web UI for controlling the application. This is not only useful for headless servers such as nas servers that do not have a monitor directly attached, it also allows the tagger on a PC, Mac or Desktop Linux server to be controlled from another device such as an iPad or smartphone.
Command Line UI
Does the tagger provide a Command Line UI for controlling the application. This is not only useful for headless servers such as nas servers that do not have a monitor directly attached, it also allows the application to be controlled as part of an automated script.
Single Album MusicBrainz Matching
Can a selection of files or folder representing an album be automatically matched to a MusicBrainz album
Single Album Discogs Matching
Can a selection of files or folder representing an album be automatically matched to a Discogs album
Single Album Bandcamp Matching
Can a selection of files or folder representing an album be automatically matched to a Bandcamp album
Automatic Multi Album Matching
Can the tagger match multiple albums in one go instead of having to match one album at a time, and does it group and match the songs as an album rather than just processing each song independently which can result in songs from one album being split into multiple albums.
Combined Acoustid Fingerprinting with Album Matching
Does the tagger support acoustid fingerprinting to allow songs without metadata to be identified and is this done in conjunction with album matching to ensure we match the correct album not just the correct song rather than just processing each song independently which can result in songs from one album being split into multiple albums.
Batch Automatch Large Libraries
Can multi album matching be done on a library of 10,000 songs in one go without crashing or freezing
Max No of text Fields that can be autoadded
This counts the different fields that the tagger can update automatically from online sources such as MusicBrainz or Discogs. We only include fields that are known to SongKong, fields that are not supported by SongKong are not included.
Dedicated Private MusicBrainz or Discogs Server
Does the tagger have to rely on the public MusicBrainz server for song matching or does it provide its own MusicBrainz server optimized for its own tagger queries and not restricted by downtime or bandwidth limitations of the public MusicBrainz server. This is a private tagger accessed over the internet by the tagger. It does not mean allowing the option to setup a local MusicBrainz server on their computer because this would require alot of work by the customer and is not practical for non techie users.
Classical Music Support
Does the tagger have any special support for Classical Music such as automatic identification of classical music, and special options for classical music.
Delete Duplicates
Can the tagger identify duplicate songs
Delete Duplicates by Metadata
Can the tagger identify duplicate songs based on metadata fields
Delete Duplicates by MusicBrainz
Can the tagger identify duplicate songs based on musicbrainz or acoustid ids
Basic File Renaming
Can the tagger rename files by creating a filename mask based on their selected metadata fields.
Scriptable File Renaming
Can the tagger use custom functions and use if logic to create advanced filename mask, for example can it organize albums so each are stored in a A-Z folder based on the first letter of the album artist.
Front Cover Artwork Lookup
Can the tagger automatically find front cover artwork.
Back Cover Lookup
Can the tagger automatically find back cover artwork
Artist Artwork Lookup
Can the tagger automatically find artist photos.
Auto Monitor Folder
Can the tagger automatically monitor a folder for new music files and process them as they are created.
Modifications Saved to Reports
Does the tagger log changes made by tasks so user has a record of what the tagger has done.
Persistent Undo
Are all changes saved to internal database so they can be undone at later date even after restarting the tagger.
Manual Editing of Fields
Does the tagger allow manual editing of metadata fields.
Spreadsheet Style Editing
Does the tagger allow editing of multiple fields in a spreadsheet style, for example can you copy a field and then paste into multiple other fields.
Find and Replace
Does the tagger allow to run a find and replace on a field to modify it in all selected files
Multi Field Find and Replace
Does the tagger allow to run a find and replace on multiple fields to modify them in all selected files in one go
Capitalizer
Does the tagger allow to run capitalization such as title case or lowercase on a field to modify it in all selected files
Multi Field Capitalizer
Does the tagger allow to run capitalization such as title case or lowercase on multiple fields to modify them in all selected files in one go
Scriptable Editing
Does the tagger allow text changes to be made to multiple files in one go with general puprose scripting language. These are usually quite powerful but also quite difficult for novice users to use.
Apple Music Integration
Apple Music is the defacto music player on Apple macs, it maintains its own music index so when the tagger modifies files can it inform Apple Music of the files it has modified to keep Apple Music synchronized.
Roon Integration
Roon is powerful music server software, it is a popular alternative to uPnp music servers. Does the tagger have any support for Roon custom metadata fields such as Personnel or AlbumTag
MinimServer Integration
MinimServer is a powerful and popular uPnP Server, does the tagger offer any support for unique MinimServer fields (such as Group) or does it allow the automatic update of MinimServer indexes from the tagger.
Regular Code Updates
Is the application updated at least twice a year. Regular updates are usually required just to keep upto date with platform changes and api changes of any third party services.
Major Code Updates
Is the application continually updated with new features and improvements not just bug fixes.
User Forum
Support via a user forum allows customers to discuss issues and share ideas, it encourages the developer to respond in a timely manner.
Public Bug Tracker
All applications have bugs, a public bug tracker makes it much easier for customers to know and check progress of bugs. It can also give them information on future improvements and new features as well .
Feature Count
We have totalled up the features that each tagger has.
Notes
1 - Standard Plugins
Some tagger provides the option to write plugins, we only consider standard plugins when considering features, because only standard plugins have been verified to work properly by the tagger developers.
2 - beets Platforms
In theory beets is available for Linux, Windows and MacOS. But installation for all platforms requires the installation of additional 3rd party libraries, this is quite common on Linux but not on Windows and Mac. The installation on these platforms is simply too difficult for most users to be considered a realistic option, especially when we consider that beets only works from the command line and usually Mac and Windows applications are Gui based. So for these reasons we only add beets to the Linux section.