Use the rename command : To add the album title at the beginning :$ rename -v 's/^/TITLE-HERE-/' *.mp3 -v : verbose s : substitute. it acts in the same way as regular expressions do in SED. To replace a part of filename: $ rename -v 's/MISC\.\ -/Fossils-/' *.mp3 e.g. :- MISC. - 01.mp3 to Fossils-01.mp3 MISC. - 02.mp3 to Fossils-02.mp3 MISC. - 03.mp3 to Fossils-03.mp3 To rename to lower case: $ rename 'y/A-Z/a-z/' * To rename recursively: $ find ./ -type f -exec rename 'y/A-Z/a-z/' {} \;