Guides

How to identify a song from an audio file

Track ID Deck · Last updated: 1 October 2026

You have the file but not the name: track_07 (1).mp3, 0123456789.m4a, AUD-20240817-WA0031.opus. Most song-recognition apps listen through a microphone, which is awkward when the song is a file in a folder rather than music in the room. Here are three ways to name it, free ones first.

1. Read the tags inside the file (free)

A file’s name and a file’s tags are two separate things. The name is what the folder shows. The tags are stored inside the file, and that is where the artist and title normally live. A song that was renamed to a row of numbers on its way to you often still has both, untouched.

• Windows: right-click the file, choose Properties, then the Details tab.
• Mac: select the file in Finder and press Command-I, then open More Info.
• Any computer or phone: open the file in a music player. If it shows a title and an artist instead of the file name, the tags are there.

For more than a few files, Track ID Deck does this step for a whole folder at once and renames each file to Artist – Title. This part is free, and it happens in your browser: the files are not uploaded.

2. Play it to a listening app (free, one song at a time)

If the tags are empty, the simplest free method is to play the file out loud and let a song-recognition app hear it: Shazam, SoundHound, or the “what’s this song” feature built into many phones. It works well for a handful of songs.

The limits show up with a folder full of them:

• It is one song at a time, and each needs a few seconds of playing.
• You need a second device, or an app that can listen to sound playing on the same phone.
• The app tells you the name, but the file keeps its old one. You still rename it by hand.

3. Fingerprint the file itself

An audio fingerprint is a short signature worked out from the sound of a recording. It does not depend on the file name, the tags or the format, so the same song gives the same fingerprint whether it reached you as an mp3 or was squeezed into an opus file by a chat app. A tool compares the fingerprint with a catalogue of known recordings and returns the match. No microphone is involved; the tool reads the file directly.

On a computer, free: MusicBrainz Picard

MusicBrainz Picard is a free, open-source tagger for Windows, Mac and Linux. It fingerprints your files and looks them up in the MusicBrainz database, which volunteers maintain. It is at its best with complete tracks from released albums, and it needs installing and a little setting up.

In a browser: Track ID Deck

Track ID Deck is our tool. It runs on a web page, so there is nothing to install:

1. Open trackidentify.com and choose your files, or open a whole folder.
2. Let it name everything it can from the tags already there. That part is free.
3. Sign in with your email (a one-time link, no password) and identify the rest. Each identification uses one credit. Normally only a twelve-second sample of the song is sent, and nothing is kept once the answer comes back.
4. Check each match and edit it if it is not quite right. In Chrome or Edge on a computer the files are renamed where they sit; anywhere else you download renamed copies, one by one or as a zip.

A lookup that finds no match still uses a credit, because the lookup was paid for either way. A failure on our side uses nothing. Credits come in one-time packs with no subscription; the current price is under pricing.

Which method fits

What no tool can name

Fingerprinting matches a file against released recordings. If the recording was never released, there is nothing to match. Expect no result for:

• voice notes and other speech;
• a phone recording of a concert, a radio or a room;
• DJ mixes, mash-ups and unofficial remixes;
• sped-up, slowed-down or heavily edited versions;
• very short clips, and audio that is badly distorted.

Those are worth labelling by hand rather than spending a lookup on.

Common questions

Does the file format matter?

Not much. The fingerprint comes from the sound, not from the container it is stored in. Track ID Deck handles mp3, m4a, opus, ogg and wav.

Is my music uploaded?

Mostly no. The files are read in your own browser, and anything that can be named from its tags never leaves your machine. Only a file that needs identifying is sent — normally as a twelve-second sample, or whole if your browser cannot cut a sample from that format. Nothing is kept afterwards. The privacy policy has the detail.

Can I do a whole folder at once?

Yes. That is the case the tool is built for: open the folder, name what can be named for free, then identify whatever is left in one go.

Where can I read more?

For a whole folder, see how to batch rename music files to Artist – Title. For songs a chat app saved as AUD-…, see what song is AUD-…-WA0031.opus? And for how the desktop tools differ, see Mp3tag vs MusicBrainz Picard vs Track ID Deck.