# How do you tag "cover" songs?
**URL:** https://community.mp3tag.de/t/how-do-you-tag-cover-songs/48428
**Category:** General Discussion
**Created:** [April 5, 2020, 1:47pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/how-do-you-tag-cover-songs/48428 "2020-04-05T13:47:26Z")
**Posts on this page:** 5
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Rigido](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/Rigido)
#### Post date: [April 5, 2020, 1:47pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/how-do-you-tag-cover-songs/48428/1 "2020-04-05T13:47:26Z")
Hi,
I hope this is not completely off-topic and NO, I'm not talking about covert-art.
These days of quarantine pushed me to take a look and "standardize" my MP3 library, so I found a lot of "cover" songs tagged in many, different, ways and **I would like to know I'm listening to a cover**. So, how do you tag cover songs? I found two possible, not yet tested, solutions: [SNIP]
While I was writing this I tried to search for it and found out that there are a lot of "Original..." tags, and "Original artist(s)/performer(s) (TOPE)" on both ID3v2.3 and .4 and now I put it on MP3Tag "TAG panel" but...does iTunes or Plex player show this information somewhere somehow?!
Thanks,
Andrea.
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### Author:  [@ohrenkino](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/ohrenkino)
#### Post date: [April 5, 2020, 2:30pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/how-do-you-tag-cover-songs/48428/2 "2020-04-05T14:30:37Z")
Isn't it the composer who stays the same for all these songs?
I cannot tell you anything about the features of
> [@Rigido](#):
>
> iTunes or Plex player
in respect of the handling these "original" tag fields.
If you need the information to be visible more or less at once, it should be included in a field by which you would frequently search, e.g. TITLE and then add that information with a unique separator e.g. [Original].
The whole thing would become interesting if you know that you have a cover version - but not the original.
e.g. "Why can't we live together" by Sade but not by Timmy Thomas
or "This flight tonight" by Nazareth but not by Joni Mitchell ...
What would you do with melody covers like "Men in black" by Will Smith who took a good part from "Forget me nots" by Patrice Rushen or "Crying at the discotheque" by Alcazar and "Spacer" by Sheila and B. Devotion?
And so on.
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### Author:  [@Romano](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/Romano)
#### Post date: [April 5, 2020, 4:53pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/how-do-you-tag-cover-songs/48428/3 "2020-04-05T16:53:28Z")
i like to put Artist/Album/Song (Cover)
its just that simple i only change the name of the song.
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### Author:  [@poster](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/poster)
#### Post date: [April 5, 2020, 4:56pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/how-do-you-tag-cover-songs/48428/4 "2020-04-05T16:56:58Z")
In the history of popular music it was very different what would be called an original or a cover.
In the last decades the singer-songwriters became more and more popular.
In former times composer mainly wrote songs for other artists and did not perform themselves.
So sometimes an original is suggested to be the first recording of a song, sometimes it is not the first but the most popular, sometimes it is the singer-songwriter.
What I want to say:
It does not make much sense to regard a recording as an original or as a cover.
Just an example.
Most people should know the song "Me and Bobby Mcgee".
Do you regard most popular version of Janis Joplin as the original or do you think it's the version of Kris Kristofferson, who wrote and recorded the song too. Or is it the version of Roger Miller who recorded and released the song before all others. And even the versions of Gordon Lightfoot became popular some months before Janis Joplins version was released after her death as a single.
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### Author:  [@Rigido](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/Rigido)
#### Post date: [April 5, 2020, 5:56pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/how-do-you-tag-cover-songs/48428/5 "2020-04-05T17:56:42Z")
Hi and thank you all for your answers,
I might understand what you're saying, but I'm talking about "real" covers, songs that some bands recorded (and declared themselves) as _homage_ to the same song originally recorded or just played by another artist, many times you can read it on the track list itself.
Right now I think I will go with the new extended-tag TOPE to write the original artist and I'll adopt the "Romano" way, just adding "(Cover)" to the title tag. Maybe in the next future iTunes or Plex will show that information or, better yet, will let the user choose what information to display.
Thank you very much.