Like many internet users, I scoop up mp3s here and there, sometimes as a recommendation from a Blogcritic, or at some place groovy like Tofuhut. Eventually I get around to playing these goodies. A lot of them don't turn out to be much, and they might get kept or trashed.

Once in a while, though, something grabs my attention out of the mix, and I want to know more. For example, this week I've been grabbed by a rockin' little singer-songwritery nugget called "Undercover Maggie." Hey, this is a damned catchy little tune with a strong rhythm. Daddy like. What is this?

Obvious starting place, look at the MusicMatch Jukebox program that's playing the song. Track tags say it's a John Vorhees. Ah, there's the website. I remember now that he had left the link HERE for THIS BADASS PLAYLIST. Mr Vorhees is even a Blogcritic, in fact.

The info in the track tags of his mp3 conveniently brought me right to his website, where I have found some other grooviness, including "The Movie."

Now, it doesn't take a genius to add simple track tags to your band's mp3 files. Heck, almost any player program, Windows Media Player say, will let you add song titles, artist names, album, year, lyrics, bio, even an album cover- pretty much as much of any kind of simple text as you feel like dumping in. You can pretty well put a whole decent little press kit in there.

Yet so much of the stuff I get doesn't even show the competence to put in basic info in promotional mp3s. I'd understand if it was just idiots on P2P being sloppy about crap they're just bootlegging for fun.

You'd think, however, that record labels and bands that go to the bother of writing, recording and distributing these files would take the time to put some basic contact and identification info. Yet so often they don't.

For example, I was just listening to something named "Track 8." No artist or song title. Looking back to the file name, I can guess that either the song or the band is called "Slipping Through the Sensors." Unless I'm REAL impressed with the damned song, I'm not going to be motivated to jump through hoops to look them up.

Happens that I recognize the pattern because I have a bunch of similarly half-assed mp3 tags from stuff I picked up at the Sub Pop website. They have quite a bunch of freebies to sample. Hint: This is the BEST GOODIE at the site.

Yet none of these files have any track tags. Sub Pop is a serious professional label of some standing- yet even they don't have enough sense to spend 1 minute to add basic information to an mp3 before they send them out. Unless you happen to listen to the thing IMMEDIATELY while you're looking at their page, you wouldn't know how to find the band or the label. If a friend has forwarded you the file, or direct linked it, you'd really have no clue where the thing came from.

People, mp3 track tags work: USE THEM. MP3s are a great promotional tool, a simple way to put out samples of your work. But it don't do much good if listeners don't know who you are or how to find you later.