Unknown Artist

[fornoman]

I have nilly 500 MP3's and some of them say unknown artist and then the name next to them... Iv tried re-naming them to stop it saying unknown artist but it just says there... is there a possible reason for this and how can I go about fixing it?

Thanx

[DJ Egg]

Probably something to do with ID3 tags, or the lack of them.
Are these MP3's ones that you've encoded/ripped yourself?
Most downloadable MP3's already have ID3 tags, but you'll need to create them for those that don't.

You have two choices:
Either enable or disable ID3 tag usage.

Goto: Prefs -> Input -> MPEG Audio Decoder -> Configure -> Title tab
Check or uncheck "Use ID3v1/v2 tags"

If you uncheck it, then Winamp will display whatever you state in the title formatting box above.
Default = %7 (filename)
Renaming the actual files as you have been doing will then take effect.
However, this will then disable the use/display of other MP3's with ID3 tags.

If you checkmark the option, then all you need to do is right click the relevant entries in the playlist editor and select "View File Info"
This will bring up the ID3 tag editor.
Enter the relevant data for artist, title, etc
If you want to display more than just artist & title, then the available options are in the same config utility as mentioned above.
ID3 tag title formatting:
%1 - %2 = artist & title (default)
See config utilty for other available parameters.

Let us know if this was the problem