ShibaTag

A small Windows app that tidies up the music folders ShibaDownloader makes: it fills in missing tags using the file names, and finds duplicate copies. It uses the same shiba look as ShibaDownloader.

Install

Download ShibaTag-Setup-<version>.exe from Releases and run it. It installs just for you (no admin needed) to %LOCALAPPDATA%\Programs\ShibaTag, adds ShibaTag to the Start menu (a desktop shortcut is optional), and adds an entry in Installed apps where you can uninstall it. Running a newer setup updates in place; /silent installs without any windows.

Prefer not to install? ShibaTag.exe from the same release is the portable version and runs from anywhere.

Usage

1. Open ShibaTag from the Start menu and press Choose folder, or drop a folder on the window or onto the exe. Subfolders are scanned too.
2. Tags tab: every MP3/M4A is listed with its current title, artist, album, track number, cover (yes/no), length and bitrate. Bitrates under 128 kbps are shown in red.
   • Orange values are what will be written. They come from the file name:
     • 01 - Artist - Title.mp3 inside a folder → title, artist, track = 01, album = folder name (an album or playlist).
     • Artist - Title.mp3 → title and artist only (a single).
   • Only empty tags get filled in. Existing tags are never overwritten, because file names lose information: ShibaDownloader removes characters like / : ? and cuts names off at 80 characters.
   • Find covers looks up missing covers on the iTunes Search API (free, no account). All songs in an album folder share one lookup; each single gets its own. A cover is only used when the artist matches and the album name (or, for a single, the song title) matches. Found covers appear as a thumbnail in the Cover column; hover over one for a bigger preview. They are written along with the tags.
     • Playlist folders usually find nothing, because the folder name isn't an album that iTunes knows. Compilations ("Various Artists") and songs that aren't on iTunes don't get a cover either.
     • iTunes allows about 20 lookups a minute. If it says to slow down, ShibaTag stops and keeps what it found so far; press Find covers again a minute later to continue.
   • Untick any rows you want to skip, then press Write tags to ticked files and confirm. Nothing is written before you confirm.
3. Duplicates tab: copies of the same song are grouped. Two files count as the same song when their titles match (ignoring case, punctuation and (feat. …)) and either the main artist matches or the lengths are within 2 seconds. The copy with the highest bitrate is marked best and left unticked; the other copies are ticked. Press Move ticked copies to the Recycle Bin and confirm. Files are only ever moved to the Recycle Bin, never deleted outright.

Also: ShibaTag.exe "D:\Music\Some Album" opens with that folder already scanned.

Build

.\build.ps1

This needs the .NET 10 SDK and produces two files in release\:

File	What it is
ShibaTag-Setup-<version>.exe	The installer (net48, which ships with Windows). The app is embedded inside it.
ShibaTag.exe	The portable app (~62 MB, includes the .NET runtime). It uses the same publish settings as ShibaDownloader.

The version lives in Directory.Build.props. The installer in Setup\ is a copy of ShibaDownloader's. The only library dependency is TagLibSharp, for reading and writing tags.

Self-test

.\release\ShibaTag.exe --selftest | Write-Output

• Checks file-name parsing, and checks cover matching against a canned iTunes response.
• Copies 3 real MP3s from %USERPROFILE%\Music\Global Warming into %TEMP%, plus one copy saved as a single. It writes tags to the copies, reads them back and checks that the planted duplicate is found.
• Does one live iTunes cover lookup and embeds the result in a temp copy. This prints SKIP instead of FAIL when you're offline or iTunes is rate-limiting.
• Your original files are only read, and their SHA-256 hashes are compared before and after.
• To use another folder: --selftest "D:\Music\Album".
• Exit code 0 means everything passed. The | Write-Output is needed because it's a GUI exe.

Not included

• Audio fingerprinting (AcoustID / Chromaprint). This would need the native fpcalc.exe (or a C# Chromaprint port plus an audio decoding pipeline) and a personal AcoustID API key. That's too much for a small tagger. ShibaDownloader's files already carry artist and title in their names, so file-name tagging and the iTunes cover lookup work without it.
• Overwriting existing tags, album-artist, and other tag fields.