KLAGRECA  I tried a few other audio taggers and I bought this one. Why? What sold me was its simplified, straighforward interface. I simply want to correct tags from a online database and MPFreaker was able to get the job done quickly.

Developer is quick to respond to questions and problems.

Latest version works solid. There was a bug in a previous version that I found and the developer was quick to fix.

I highly recommend MPFreaker. Enjoy.  
(Version 1.8b11)

THEC13  Simply the best software for this job. I've tried them all and this is the only one I can say is worth the $20. Highly recommend.  
(Version 1.8)

SIDDHARTHA  Fantastic software!

Is the best to automatically fix ID3 tags, and add artwork to your library. Works relatively fast, too.

I have used a couple of programs to add artwork, but this one works well, and I am very satisfied.  
(Version 1.8b5)

GRUMPYTICO  I know this is a far-fetched scenario, but I have 35K+ songs and loading the library takes eons.

Not only that, but when the library finally loads and I try to get modificatios for *one* file, it beachballs for 2+ minutes and hangs the living sh*t of iTunes as well. It needs to be modified so it can scale up better.

OS 10.5.2 MBP 2 GB RAM  
(Version 1.7.4)

MICHAEL GUY  MPfreaker is a handy app to have around for when you need to mass-tag files, but its fairly non-specific. the other comments make note that it's slow and cumbersome, it also often screws up since it relies on public DB's of albums that can often have conflicting genres, album titles, artwork, etc.

if the engine behind MPfreaker used some kind of parallel search requests, it would work better, perhaps by using the compilation/album title to pre-fetch data for the album before securing the artwork. it could then give you a choice on what album data to use, since not all albums are tagged properly by private or public users.

apart from the severe lack of speed and the tendency to butcher tags if you set it to overwrite (not recommended), the artwork collected is fairly broad and it works well, far faster than doing it yourself, though not as good as letting itunes do it for you.

in conjunction with a specific art viewer/fetcher to fix up the mistakes MPfreaker constantly and innocently makes, MPfreaker is a fine app.   
(Version 1.6)

CONSTANTIN  I continue to use MPFreaker despite some annoying issues, even in version 1.5. However, it does what it is supposed to, and pretty well for the most part. MPFreaker allows the rather painless retrofit of lyrics, artwork, and other ID3 information to your audio file collection. For me it has worked well with both MP3 files as well as M4A files (i.e. apple lossless).

Unlike downloading artwork from the iTunes store, MPFreaker downloads artwork from around the web. As a result, it's potential reach is much higher, but the quality of the artwork is probably more variable as well. However, if you have a large collection (and anything that can be even remotely construed as obscure), the iTunes artwork servers are unlikely to have it, and MPfreaker may have a better shot at retrieving the info.

That is not to say that MPFreaker is incredibly successful. It too struggles to find artwork and other info sometimes. Then it's your opportunity to search google, amazon, and discogs, among other sites for the missing data. In these instances, I use MPFreaker to identify which albums are missing what, find the data online, and then paste it in via iTunes.

Another benefit of not using the iTunes store is to bypass the new artwork storage process that Apple has introduced as of iTunes 7.0... instead of storing the images in the song files themselves, the pictures are now stored separately in a folder for art. From a space/efficiency point of view, this is the right approach... Trouble is, many music/streaming devices out there do not yet have the ability built-in to read these folders, so I prefer to bloat my songfiles for now.

Unfortunately, every time the application hangs (and it does happen from time to time), the preferences file is obliterated and your registration information is lost. Frankly, re-entering the information over and over is getting awfully old. Perhaps the best approach is to make a copy of the preferences file so that I can simply copy it over the corrupted preference file.

While we are on the topic of improvement potential, how about a multi-threaded application that takes advantage of the fact that most of us have high-speed connections to the internet? The present app goes through the list one song at a time, and a review of IP traffic in that time shows almost no activity. By sending data requests for 10 songs at a time, MPfreaker could boost its output 10x and have zero impact on the host computer or its internet connection.

I bring this up because the average songfile takes 5+ seconds to process (never mind the time it takes to make "deep searches") and neither the CPU nor the Internet connection are the bottle-neck. Go over a couple of thousand files and your machine will be working on the problem for days. Combine that with stability issues, and you have a recipe for unhappiness. As I write this, MPFreaker is hung, again, while "Scanning Directory".

Another feature request that I would find very useful is if MPFreaker could hunt songfiles that have bitmap images in them and to convert them to JPGs at a set quality. Apparently, pasting images via iTunes may result in a bitmapped image being appended to the song file, so a lot of space gets wasted that way.  
(Version 1.5)

THOMAS STROMBERG  Getting images for 80GB of music was never easier or faster. I don't know what changed, but 1.2 is fast! This is the perfect counterpart to iEatBrainz, as neither tool gets all of the track information. :) This tool was definitely worth my money.  
(Version 1.2)

ANONYMOUS  here's a free solution: i eat brainz, it'll do everythign but the artwork. and if you realy want artwork, there's a widget that displays and can import art. sure it would take longer, but it's free-- and i bet if you konw javascript you could easily modify the widget to do it quickly and automatically.  
(Version 1.2)

ROBERT MITTON  MPFreaker is a program that you sort of love to hate, but need to have it, if you are dealing with thousands upon thousands of imageless audio files.

I have over 60,000 m4a audio files ALL lacking images! I honestly do not think that I would attempt to tackle all of these files, tagging them all without the use of MPFreaker. Since I am importing the music from music CDs, iTunes will mostly get all of the info correctly with the exception of the year sometimes. But it will never give you the image.

MPFreaker embeds the image into the audio file, something that iTunes cannot not do on its own and something that freeware programs like FetchArt do not do.

So this is what is so handy about using MPFreaker to clean up most your audio files and image tag them. Notice that I said most. There are certain "stumbling blocks" that MPFreaker either cannot overcome or has yet to be developed into it. Since MPFreaker is looking for the one correct image to tag to a song, it needs to be very accurate. It order to do this, it goes out to the database and only looks for EXACTLY the information it is given. Many times it is the users' fault that MPFreaker did not find the image for you. Spelling MUST be exact! There is no guessing involved here. If iTunes has tagged the 2nd, 3rd, 4th and so on CD in a set differently than the first one of the set, there is a HUGE chance that all but the first one DOES NOT get tagged!!!

This REALLY torx my butt, but so far there has yet to be a cure.

Also this is something every MPFreaker should know! iTunes will many, many times tag an audio as a Compilation when it is NOT! It is important to look through the MPFreaker window and look at all of the files to be sure that there are not albums checked off as compilations!!! iTunes is doing this! Not MPFreaker! But if you do not fix the problem, MPFreaker will probably pass that album worth of songs completely by!

So then what you must do is to go into your iTunes, find that album and GET INFO, it will ask if you want to edit multiple files at once. Yes! Now look at the info window. If the Compilation box is check YES then you must change that to no and click save. If you find MPFreaker saying it is a Compilation and iTunes does not show that, then just click the no box so it has the check mark in it now and then save. After you do this to all of the ones that are not Compilations, though they are shown as such in MPFreaker, then you are ready to start the program!

But what really pisses me off about this program is the fact that if I want to finish up the remaining audio files it did not finish, it is FAR easier and quicker for me to use yet another tagging tool to finish up the dirty work. This tool is Media Rage and is the NUMBER ONE tagging tool for Mac users. Does far and away more than MPFreaker and it gives to the ability to search the net for many images choices, as well as a very quick way to add images to an assigned folder/s. You cannot do that with MPFreaker!

And this is what really, really makes me the angriest with MPFreaker...

Though you can mass remove images with MPFreaker, you can not mass add images!!! That's crazy!

And say like MPFreaker all already has found the image for the album, but has left some of the songs undone. There is not an easy way to deal with this and I usually just have to use Media Rage to finish the job! That's terrible! I should be able to drag an image from MPFreaker and easily assign that image to ALL of the songs I select. It does not and that sucks! Or say like you have a four CD set and MPFreaker tags the first CD worth of songs. Now what?

Well first you must get that image! You can not take it from MPFreaker, so you have to go elsewhere to get it. So I end usually using iTunes, finding the correct image MPFreaker has already found and dragging it to the desktop (or I drag it right into Media Rage, as I am done with MPFreaker at this point of the project) and then I can drag that image back in MPFreaker, but for ONLY one frigging song at a time!!! Crazy! So I drag that image only once to Media Rage and then tell it to tag ALL of the songs that MPFreaker could do all at once! This to me is just bad programming on Leon's part and this he actually could do something about!

But I can throw thousands and thousands of audio files at one time to MPFreaker and it does get most of them done without me doing a thing and that alone is worth the $20.00 for me. But I should do wish I could get all of my images done with just one product! If you have 1000's and 1000's of audio files to tag with images this is one of the two tools you need. MPFreaker needs big-time changes before it would be the only tool you need for image tagging!  
(Version 1.1)

ANONYMOUS  I'm also getting a constant 'couldn't get path name / alias" error

I think it may have something to do with recent iTunes upgrades - but really it doesn't matter what's causing it - end result is the same - crap.

No support for this on the product page - no mention of the issue.

I'll happily move on to another product that does work with iTunes, because those that don't or can't, aren't worth my time or money.  
(Version 1.0)