Andy Chase

When I began seriously researching banjos online a couple of years ago, I discovered that there are a lot of people out there who have graciously made wonderful MP3 recordings of themselves freely available for download.

In large part, it was this body of free music that fueled my original decision to learn the clawhammer style; I never would have known the difference between frailing and Scruggs style had I not heard it for myself.

I hope I've made it clear before I continue that I am grateful to all of these kind people for the time they've spent making the recordings and putting them online.

That being said, why doesn't anybody set the ID3 tags in the music files they put online? Any halfway functional MP3 software will let you do it, and it takes all of 10 seconds to set the names of the artist, title of the song, and album/track information if applicable. Genre I don't so much care about, since since everyone always rubber-stamps bluegrass/old-timey music as "Country" anyway.

Proper tagging can mean the difference between me keeping the track in my iTunes library, where I can easily find it by genre/artist/title, or throwing it in the trash because I won't remember what 'sndrp_fl.mp3' is 5 days from now.

If I keep the song in my library I'm likely to keep listening to it and coming back to your web site for more, which I'll be able to do because I'll have the "Artist" information right there in the file, and maybe even a well-placed URL in the "Comment" tag. Heck, I might even order a CD from you.

Sure, I could tag the info by myself, but I'm just the consumer, and I'm lazy... and if a nerd like me is too lazy to tag your MP3's, Joe Q. Banjo-enthusiast probably will be too.