Yate is intended to help you organize your music library by adding metadata to files in various audio and video formats, such as MP3, M4A, MP4, AIFF, WAV, APE, ORG and FLAC. At first sight, the application looks like many other similar tools, which is not bad in terms of the learning curve. The interface may look a little bit cluttered, though. However, there are many other not so visible features that make it stand out from the crowd. Because of this, I recommend studying the accompanying guide if you really want to get the most from this product.
When you work with Yate, it is a good idea to think it has two layers. The first layer lets you do common things like previewing the contents of the file in your library and manually editing tags. In this respect, it is possible to modify file tags not only individually but in batches as well. Such information may include song title, artists, album title, composer and genre. Sometimes it happens that an artist’s name has some inconsistencies, in such cases, you can also use this tool to normalize names. Fortunately, it also lets you use some additional tag fields to add further data about the selected track.
The second layer, in turn, contains lots of features related to automating your tagging workflow. In this regard, it is excellent that Yate can automatically find matching information for your tracks in online music databases, such as Discogs and MusicBrainz. Likewise, it can download artwork from not only the already mentioned databases but also The Movie Database. Luckily, the application does a calculation of the acoustic fingerprint of the songs, which makes the results more accurate. Finding online info is also useful when you need to complete the list of tracks in an album, as the tool can even locate the missing songs for you. Yate also lets you rename files automatically using the desired formula and the selected tags. Last but not least, an important part of automation can be done via “actions”, which allow meeting more specific demands by writing your own code using a rather simple scripting procedure.
Fortunately, Yate integrates perfectly with iTunes. This works by linking the files, which can be done by simply dragging them. Such information about the linked files as rating and play count can easily be shared between the two apps. Likewise, it is possible to have Yate automatically add new files to iTunes.
All in all, Yate is undoubtedly among the best music taggers available right now. However, before deciding to buy it, you should probably consider the usage you intend to give it because for simple tagging tasks, there are other products easier to use and more affordable. I really recommend taking the opportunity to try it free of charge.
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