Help! iTunes automatically changes my song tags.

Hey, when I add new songs to my iTunes library, iTunes automatically updates the tags giving it its own album artist, album, track numbers, etc. I personally find this very annoying and sometimes forces my library to become very unorganized. Any help in fixing this? Any option to just turn off the auto update of song tags?
Thanks!

Hi,
I still have this problem. I have two PCs, both of them have Vista (though different versions) and exactly the same version of iTunes. On one PC, iTunes automatically updates tags, on the other it doesn't. And right now tags are only changed when I play a song in iTunes. It drives me crazy. A few observations and speculations:
There may be a process running (outside iTunes) which checks the properties of an MP3 file played by iTunes and adds certain tags which are not present. Unlikely, but impossible?
The properties you see when you check the file info are taken from the iTunes Music Library.xml file and not from the MP3 file itself. If you look at the file properties in Windows Explorer, you can sometimes see that it can have information for ID3 tags which is not visible in iTunes. When the information is added in iTunes, it is taken from the MP3 file tags and added to the xml file, I think. This means that when you delete the tags from the MP3 file itself, using TagScanner, for instance, it is impossible for iTunes to add it to the xml file and display it in iTunes. I've been experimenting with this and it seems to work.
If the above is true, the question remains why iTunes adds or updates tag information when I have explicitly forbidden it to do that by disabling all the options mentioned here. I still have no clue. Anyone else?
Sietze
Message was edited by: sietze

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Why is iTunes automatically changing edited song and album information?

Hi guys, I've seen this question asked several times but I haven't seen an answer or advice that specifically relates to the problems I've been having with my iTunes library of late.
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A handful of others have complained about this recently. Seems to happen to iTunes Store purchases only. Somehow they are connecting back to the Store and refreshing label information. There may be a solution but few seem to try experimenting with settings to see if something stops it.
2014 discussion about edited tags for Store purchases reverting to originals - https://discussions.apple.com/message/26077896 - edited tags are still present in the media file but revert to the originals in the iTunes library file. Workaround is to refresh tags so media file tags are re-read and used in library file.
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I'd like to know if there is a way to automatically change song info of all the tracks in a specific playlist.
More specifically, I'd like to know how to make itunes automatically change the Grouping of songs as I add or remove them from any given playlist.
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Why is iTunes automatically changing my genre metadata?

MacBook Pro 15-inch, Mid 2012
Processor: 2.6 GHz Intel Core i7
Memory: 8 GB 1600 MHz DDR3
Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M 1024 MB
Software: OS X 10.9.3 (13D65)
iTunes 11-2-2 (3)
64-bit
Why is iTunes automatically changing my genre metadata?
For the past couple months I’ve noticed that iTunes has been changing genre information in my music library. This is a problem because I’ve spent the past decade tweaking the metadata in my iTunes Library to be exactly the way that I want it (particularly with genre and grouping information).
I have a very large iTunes library and I’ve changed genre and grouping info for organizational reasons. When iTunes changes the genre of my music, it’s effecting my smart playlists and causing a domino effect of mis-organization. Tracks and albums are popping up in multiple genres, and things are getting disorganized very quickly.
I suspect that iTunes is changing the genre info of my purchased music back to how it appears in the iTunes store and that this is going to be a new ongoing Apple issue that is quietly ignored. If that’s the case, then I would like some feedback from other users who may have some helpful advise to disconnect iTunes from the mother ship of the iTunes Store. If this is the way it’s going to be, then I’ll simply stop buying music from iTunes and try to use iTunes as a stand alone music player (if possible). If that is NOT possible, then I’ll be looking into moving my entire music library to different software and completely removing myself from iTunes. After a decade of loving iTunes, that would obviously be a shame, but losing control of my library is a deal breaker.
Any assistance is greatly appreciated.
Other notes/observations:
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-Genius is turned OFF
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-Not all tracks purchased from the iTunes Store is being automatically edited
-If I Command-Info a track that has been edited by iTunes, the metadata changes back to what I had changed it to. But ONLY when I Command-Info or play the track. Otherwise the track stays lost in it’s reversed genre and the track disappears from smart playlists that it’s included in.

2014 discussion about edited tags for Store purchases reverting to originals - https://discussions.apple.com/message/26077896
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Send feedback to Apple and wait very patiently and keep fingers crossed they do something about it, eventually, someday.
http://www.apple.com/feedback/itunesapp.html

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Hi,
every time I add my music folder to the iTunes library some track names end up getting a different tag. I'd estimate that it's about 1/6 of all my songs that this happens to. It's basically every track on certain albums. Most tags change to this format: http://bayimg.com/image/haoabaabn.jpg (the highlighted one I've clicked on and thereby changed the tag to the correct one)
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Thank you for your answer. First of all, I managed to get albums sorted by year now so thank you for that one. Too bad I can't do the other changes. I tag all my songs in an application called 'Mp3tag' and I've been consistent on tagging track numbers as 2 for example instead of 02 or 2/14. I guess I'll have to fill in the 'x of y' in iTunes then so I can get the correct track sorting in iTunes.
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I use foobar2000 for audio playback and everything shows up just fine in it. A solution to the problem would be if I could play or double click all my songs at the same time but I can only assume that that is impossible? Do you perhaps have any idea how I can solve the problem?
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ITunes automatically changing song information

when i scroll through the songs in iTunes, the comments will automatically fill with random numbers. Also, the track # disappears. for example:
Track 1 of 5 becomes
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after i scroll through. the 5 disappears.
A lot of my album art is also gone.
I have the latest iTunes by the way. HELP PLEASE

You are definitely not alone. This has been happening for at least 2 or 3 versions now. There are multiple threads about this but I haven't found one yet with a solution for the problem.
There have been lots of possible causes thrown around but none of them have worked for me. I've heard the following suggested so far:
Sound Check
ID3 Tag Version
Tag Editor used
It's really frustrating because I have over 11000 songs and never know which ones are going to be corrupted each day. I have almost 4500 songs with random numbers in the comments although it is interesting that not all of them have lost the artwork and track count. Another interesting thing is that once any song in an album has this happen, the rest of the songs have the problem.

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I'm having a really big issue. I finally took the plunge and decided to properly label and categorize all my music. I spent almost a month, 3-4 hours a day, getting all the album art, correcting all the information, etc on 4,000+ songs. At the end I was SO pleased. However this past week I started to notice something was wrong. The names of of some tracks were changing back to their old names, also in the comments field I hate reading all the crap people write in their so I cleared it all out, now it's coming back too! What's going on! Can anyone help me make it so whatever I change the tracks info to it sticks?

Go into Windows Media Player and turn off all automatic updating of info.
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Note that the tags have already been changed by WMP and when you play them in iTunes, the info will change to match the tags that WMP has already changed.
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ITunes Keeps Changing My Song Info

Forgive me if this is an easy fix (of which I hope it is). On my father's laptop it seems like every Wednesday iTunes updates his song library which causes any information he changed to revert back to where it was originally. For example, he has bought individual songs from four separate Elton John albums but condenses them into one custom album that he created. He makes sure all the sorting options match that of his custom album information, but come Wednesday those songs are automatically modified to revert back to their previous settings.
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Is there a setting I am missing to turn this off? I don't recall having similar issues on my personal iTunes account on a separate computer. He uses Windows, I use OSX.
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When you double click on the song in iTunes, does the progress bar at the top of the window move at all?
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Help! iTunes automatically changes my song tags.

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