Itunes id3 tags help

here is the question:
in itunes no matter how many times ive tried ID3 tag editing and software for editing id3 tags the songs never stay in one album the songs split up and thier is like 10 songs in their own album when they should be together what should i do ive tried id3 tag editing it wont work..
[email protected]
Message was edited by: giants29
Message was edited by: giants29

Apple have this help, which I guess you will have seen:
http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1468
There is a very comprehensive discussion of the issue in this post:
http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=8180252#8180252

Similar Messages

Itunes, ID3 tags, & hard drive corruption

My wife is having a strange problem with her iMac, and it’s got me a bit mystified. I’m hoping someone here can shed some light on what might be going on. I apologize in advance for the long post.
The problem is that when she plays some songs in iTunes, and entirely different (wrong) song plays instead. Most songs play fine, but some just play entirely different songs (or sections of a song or podcast). All of the tracks are MP3 (either 192 kbps or 256 kbps) and almost all of them were encoded using Windows Media Player on an XP machine. Initially, I copied the music over from an NTFS drive to a newly formatted (Mac OS/HFS+) drive on the Mac, then I ran iTunes and created the library. At that point, everything seemed fine. All the meta data (song title, album title, artist, album artist, genre, album art) showed up in iTunes, and everything played correctly.
Now we’re getting this weird behavior where we play some songs and get the wrong music. At first I thought the iTunes library files (ITL and/or XML) had been corrupted, but it seems on closer inspection that the entire hard drive has been corrupted. When I look at the files on Mac hard drive via the Finder, all seems ok – the directory structure is intact, the file names and sizes are all correct, and a Get Info on any MP3 file shows that the ID3 data is all there and seems accurate. This is true even for the songs that play wrong, but if I play one of those songs using the little mini player in the Get Info dialog, the wrong song plays (the same wrong song as in iTunes). So now I’m getting the behavior straight off the drive, with iTunes closed and the iTunes library completely out of the equation.
Some other interesting clues/evidence:
* This has happened before. When her first hard drive got corrupted (in the same way), I was mystified but chalked it up as a bad hard drive and got her a new one. Then we started over with a clean HFS+ formatted drive and clean music files and built a new iTunes library. And now the same thing has happened again. So I don’t think it’s just a bad hard drive.
* It seems to be progressive. That is, everything was fine in the beginning, but over time more and more files get messed up. We know this because we have a backup that’s about a month old on which we can locate files that are fine (on the backup) but that are messed up on her connected day-to-day drive. So it seems like some activity on the drive is causing problems that are growing over time.
* There is some weird meta data (ID3) behavior. I copied a few hundred MP3 files from the Mac drive back to the PC (over our home network) and looked at them in the Windows Explorer. The first thing I saw was that the same (wrong) music played for the bad tracks as had on the Mac. And I also saw that a lot of ID3 tags were not showing on the Windows side. Lots of tracks have no ID3 data (album, artist, genre, etc. is missing) when I look at them on the PC. There are many albums where tags show up correctly for some of the tracks but not for others. In fact, the number of files where the ID3 tags aren’t visible on the PC far exceeds the number of songs that play incorrectly on the Mac. When I look back on the Mac at the songs that have no ID3 data on the PC and do a Get Info, I see the ID3 data.
* Often, though I can’t say always for sure, the wrong music that plays on the Mac is stuff that has been recently added. Either podcasts or music that my wife has added since the initial library was established.
My best guess (though still full of holes):
Something is confusing the Mac OS into writing on top of occupied space on the hard drive or into mapping files incorrectly in the drive’s allocation table, and chaos results. The Mac doesn’t think anything is wrong, and it shows everything as being clean in the Finder. So I started thinking about the kind of reads & writes my wife is doing on that drive. She rips new CDs to add to the library, she downloads new Podcasts and deletes old ones, and she changes ID3 tags.
I’m focusing on the changing ID3 tag activity. My wife doesn’t like the way I tag genre. I like big broad categories, an she likes smaller, more specific categories. So she has gone through the initial library of 42K+ songs and changed the genre on thousands of songs. She’s change some from Pop to Power Pop or from Pop to Indie Pop or from Rock to Indie Rock, etc. Both WMP (where the tags were created) and iTunes support ID3v2.3, and so these two programs ought to be able to change tags in a totally interchangeable and safe way. But what if iTunes writes its new genre tags in a way that’s slightly different from WMP? Could iTunes be writing to memory/disk locations that are outside the boundaries of the file and thus creating some kind of buffer overrun?
It really doesn’t make a lot of sense, but it does tie back to the evidence that this has something to do with meta data, gets worse over time, happened on more than one disk, and seems to be a file allocation table issue.
Even if I get to the bottom of this, I think my wife’s HD is toast for sure. Here’s what I think I will do: I’ll reformat the drive, re-copy the music over from the PC, and build a new iTunes library. Then, first thing, I’ll open iTunes, select all the songs in the new library, and run “Convert ID3 Tags” to ID3v2.4. If that works and everything behaves correctly, I’ll try to change some genre tags and test the results. The problem is that the library is so large that problems can go undetected for a long time, so maybe I should do this first with a small subset of the music as a trial run.
The thing I want to avoid is having to do this (ever) again, so I’d feel more comfortable if I understood the bug/problem before just following this guess (which feels like a roll of the dice). If anyone has seem similar behavior or has heard of any IDS incompatibilities between WMP 11 and iTunes 7, I’d love to hear about it. Any help is appreciated.
Jim

Wow, that was a long and detailed post. I haven't the energy to reply in equal fervor, but I will just say that lately these boards have been peppered with posts from people whose MP3s are being eaten alive by iTunes. What I don't get is why you suspect the hard drive is at fault. Unless the rest of the system is caving in, I don't think there's any reason to suspect a failing drive. Check the S.M.A.R.T. status in Disk Utility if you haven't already, and perform whatever maintenance you believe is in order.
For the most reliable ID3 tag editing, I'd certainly recommend using foobar2000 on a Windows PC (or a Mac with Windows installed) or MP3Tag. I would definitely, at least for the time being, not put your huge music collection at risk by doing any further editing of the tags in iTunes.

ITunes, ID3 Tags, and Metadata

Oh hai der!
I'm new and I'm so sorry if this questioned has been answered before. But I've done some research on the web and I've got some questions about iTunes and what it does to my music.
First, here's my situation. I love iTunes, it's awesome, helps me edit my library beautifully. But that's only when all the songs, movies, videos, and so on have their information. Otherwise it's a huge mess. Which is what I'm dealing with.
I like to use XBMC. I own a Samsung Galaxy S2, and an iPod Touch. The files I've edited and whose data I've put in manually, show up wonderfully on my iPod. But not my Samsung and media library software, or other device. I was wondering if iTunes actually edits the metadata and ID3 tags of the actual file in my computer. Not just in the iTunes program. See, let's say I have a song titled "Track 01 ", and in iTunes I change the name of the track to "Yesterday". Will iTunes actually edit the title of the song WITHIN the file itself? Or just in iTunes itself? So that after I edit the title within iTunes, it shows up in other software, such as XBMC, and devices like my Galaxy S2 as "Yesterday" and not "Track 01"?
I don't get my music from iTunes. I've only got a few albums from iTunes, that's it. But for the rest, they're not from iTunes. It may not sound like a lot to most of you. But I've got a library that's over 50GB's large in music. That's over 8,000 songs. Only about 1,000 of those songs have their data such as lyrics, artwork, artist, album, and so on. But for the rest of the 7,000 songs, it's just a mess. I've looked up many programs that edit my library for me. But I'm in a situation where I can't spend much money. So I'm looking for freeware. But that's not all.
I'm looking for a piece of software that'll implement lyrics, artwork, album, artist, etc, into the song file itself. Or just in iTunes? I know of TuneUp, and Rinse My Music. I was wondering if there was other software out there? I've also heard of Beets, but it seems way too complicated for me to install properly.
So to summarize, what I want to know is:
1) Is there some freeware out there that'll help me edit my iTunes library?
2) Does editing song info within iTunes actually do anything to the song file itself?
3) Will I have to use some other software that organizes my media and actually edits a file's properties to display proper data?

Oh hai der!
I'm new and I'm so sorry if this questioned has been answered before. But I've done some research on the web and I've got some questions about iTunes and what it does to my music.
First, here's my situation. I love iTunes, it's awesome, helps me edit my library beautifully. But that's only when all the songs, movies, videos, and so on have their information. Otherwise it's a huge mess. Which is what I'm dealing with.
I like to use XBMC. I own a Samsung Galaxy S2, and an iPod Touch. The files I've edited and whose data I've put in manually, show up wonderfully on my iPod. But not my Samsung and media library software, or other device. I was wondering if iTunes actually edits the metadata and ID3 tags of the actual file in my computer. Not just in the iTunes program. See, let's say I have a song titled "Track 01 ", and in iTunes I change the name of the track to "Yesterday". Will iTunes actually edit the title of the song WITHIN the file itself? Or just in iTunes itself? So that after I edit the title within iTunes, it shows up in other software, such as XBMC, and devices like my Galaxy S2 as "Yesterday" and not "Track 01"?
I don't get my music from iTunes. I've only got a few albums from iTunes, that's it. But for the rest, they're not from iTunes. It may not sound like a lot to most of you. But I've got a library that's over 50GB's large in music. That's over 8,000 songs. Only about 1,000 of those songs have their data such as lyrics, artwork, artist, album, and so on. But for the rest of the 7,000 songs, it's just a mess. I've looked up many programs that edit my library for me. But I'm in a situation where I can't spend much money. So I'm looking for freeware. But that's not all.
I'm looking for a piece of software that'll implement lyrics, artwork, album, artist, etc, into the song file itself. Or just in iTunes? I know of TuneUp, and Rinse My Music. I was wondering if there was other software out there? I've also heard of Beets, but it seems way too complicated for me to install properly.
So to summarize, what I want to know is:
1) Is there some freeware out there that'll help me edit my iTunes library?
2) Does editing song info within iTunes actually do anything to the song file itself?
3) Will I have to use some other software that organizes my media and actually edits a file's properties to display proper data?

ITunes ID3 tags handling for artwork

I have created MP3 versions of my band's artwork for inclusion in an online radio. I am running into some issues with ID3 tags.    The MP3s show the artwork and everything just fine on my Mac. However the artwork doesn't show up in the radio software (Centova) when the files are uploaded. Because of this, I've got a crash course in ID3 tags--at least the album artwork tags.
It turns out, in ID3 tags version 2, there are no less than 15 different ID3 tags reserved for artwork--meaning you can attach up to 15 separate pieces of artwork (in theory) to each MP3 file. Here are the tag reservations:
$00     Other
$01     32x32 pixels 'file icon' (PNG only)
$02     Other file icon
$03     Cover (front)
$04     Cover (back)
$05     Leaflet page
$06     Media (e.g. label side of CD)
$07     Lead artist/lead performer/soloist
$08     Artist/performer
$09     Conductor
$0A     Band/Orchestra
$0B     Composer
$0C     Lyricist/text writer
$0D     Recording Location
$0E     During recording
$0F     During performance
$10     Movie/video screen capture
$11     A bright coloured fish
$12     Illustration
$13     Band/artist logotype
$14     Publisher/Studio logotype
Yes, you read that right, there's a tag for "A bright colored fish". So here's the rub: I'm finding that iTunes defaults album artowrk to the first position (00), which has a certain logic to it. But, I'm finding that this radio software, and some other pro level software looks for cover art in the third tag (Cover Art) be default. This makes a number of problems. It means that I'm having to find a serious ID3 tag editor to change the iTunes artowork tag from "00-Other" to "03-Cover Art" in order for it to be properly displayed.
NOW THE QUESTION: Does iTunes have any sort of method to select which "type" of cover atwork tag you want to apply to the added artwork? Or am I at the mercy of iTunes' default designation and that's that?

Apple have this help, which I guess you will have seen:
http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1468
There is a very comprehensive discussion of the issue in this post:
http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=8180252#8180252

ITunes + ID3 tags..

Hey guys its my first post here
I don't really have a problem relating to connectivity or anything major. But I do have a question.
When I drag and drop songs into my playlists in iTunes 6.01, I later re-edit the artsists name and album to my liking and have it shown exactly how it is on my iPod Nano. But the problem is the ID3 tags on the actual MP3 is also changed at the same time. Is there anyway to have iTunes not touch the ID3 tags on the mp3 itself after editing it thru iTunes?
I currently like the way I have the artists and album names all sorted out, but I just found out, it also edited my actual mp3 files, and thats not really good for me because I have the mp3 files according to an sfv file which checks CRC's..
any help is appreciated guys.
Intel P4 Windows XP Pro

Is there anyway to have iTunes not touch the ID3 tags
on the mp3 itself after editing it thru iTunes?
No. When you edit the song info in iTunes, you are editing the file tags. That is a tag editor, not just a "iTunes Information" editor.
I currently like the way I have the artists and album
names all sorted out, but I just found out, it also
edited my actual mp3 files, and thats not really good
for me because I have the mp3 files according to an
sfv file which checks CRC's..
If you don't want to change the tags, then don't use the tag editor to change the tags.

I need to be taught about ID3 tags - help, anyone?

Some of my songs are only appearing on 'Songs' on my iPod, and not simultaneously under 'Artists'. I have found this is because probably because of ID3 tags.....I don't know what they really are and I don't know how to fix ones that aren't 'complete' - in that they aren't under 'Artists' on my iPod. All help (including tips on any programs to help fix this) is appreciated!

Don't worry, I found out about Media Monkey and through that I got the missing tags from amazon!

Can not edit id3 tags since upgrade to iTunes 8.1: permissions problem (?)

Hi all,
I am angry at myself for having upgraded to 8.1 before I knew that it's ok, and angry at Apple releasing this update with too many problems. Here is my list:
(1) I cannot change ID3 tags within iTunes for certain tracks. I usually click on one or several tracks, press Command+i for information, then change the desired tags (e.g. genre, album, etc.) and click ok. Only that iTunes won't let me write anything. I found that I have no longer write permission to exactly these tracks (my music is on an external LaCie Firewire800 HD). What I did so far:
- I tried to run "Repair permissions" on the internal HD.
- I clicked on the iTunes music folder on the external hard drive, opened the information window and changed under "Sharing & Permissions" the rights to read&write for my user account. I clicked on "Apply to enclosed items", which should set the permissions to all elements within the folder.
Any ideas? My system is freshly installed (~3weeks old), everything is updated.
(2) Probably related to (1): certain files and documents on my internal hard drive have wrong permissions. Firefox for example is locked as read only, and I cannot update it via the "Check for update" in the help menu. I know there is an update available, as I am using 3.0.6 and the newest is 3.0.8. Repair permissions did not help. See the screen shot for the grayed out "Check for updates" menu entry.
http://img18.imageshack.us/img18/6567/picture2rxl.png
(3) In iTunes, I have a smart playlist in which all songs rated with four or more stars are gathered. I found songs in this list that I did not rate yet, and they all have odd "empty" stars in comparison to the songs I rated myself. What's up with that? See screenshot, some of the songs of the album "I love Jazz" have these odd stars:
http://img23.imageshack.us/img23/8702/picture1zkg.png

That's exactly what I did, it took ~20sec to complete the "apply to enclosed items" command (there was heavy disk access), but it does not improve. The permissions stay the same for the files/folders in question. It's very odd, have a look at the screenshot:
Some folders have correct permissions, others (to which I have no access through iTunes) show "admin" twice as the only user who is allowed to write. Repair permission does not help. I have hundreds of files/folders where permissions are wrong, only since the upgrade recently.
http://img4.imageshack.us/img4/33/permission.png
Message was edited by: JJulian (added screenshot)

How do i get all the tags i see in the iTunes library to be the ID3 tags?

I have a huge collection of mp3 in iTunes (the latest version), and they are all perfectly organized, but when i open those mp3 files in any other player i see old tags or no tags, because the id3 tags on the mp3 files are not the same as the ones i see on itunes. I've tried the "convert id3 tags" tool but it does not seem to help. How do i get the id3 tags to be the same as iTunes tags?

+HEy any reason why you pick version 2.3,+
itunes didn't work well with 3rd-party plugins and v2.4, and former forum regular Otto told me to use v2.3
+what is the difference between the different id3 tag versions..+
read up on it using google

Are anyone else's ID3 tags all jacked up after upgrading to iTunes 11?

I have a large library that I'm downright OCD in managing tag information. All are set at v2.4 and genres, album artist, groups, both track and cd #'s as well as album art have been MANUALLY scrubbed religiously upon import to ensure a manageable library. I've noticed in the past that iTunes does a fairly horrible job in actually changing the ID3 tag info of the AAC or MP3 file itself resulting in horrible tag info when using the files in another system (Chrysler's MyGig system, Microsoft's Sync system, etc.) but iTunes always listed the songs correctly, making my smart playlists, sort and playback very easy and clean. That is until I upgraded to iTunes 11. Apparently they've re-read all the file ID3 tag info as I now have MANY different genres listed and album artist info has disappeared as well as track listing info. Do I need to get an external tag editor and redo all the tag editing I had done previously to now clean this up or have they fixed iTunes to do a better job of actually editing the file info itself?

Get Info on the song within iTunes is how I know the comment field is empty.
I don't have Match or iCloud enabled.
All other tag info is there and left untouched, only the comment field is blank. Tried removing and re-adding the tracks multiple times, but that didn't help.
Reason this annoys me is that I add information to my comment field such as additional genre/style information, band origin or location, related artists, etc. Very helpful stuff for smart playlists.
I can try Stephen Spark's suggestion to convert my ID3 tag version, but I've never, ever had to do that before, so, if iTunes 11 is suddenly only reliably reads one correctly it seems to be a bug with iTunes.

"Converting ID3 Tags" Option disappeared? iTunes 8.0.2

Hey everyone!
I'm right now struggling to get my iPod to work again, and I have so many problems, but I think converting ID3 tags would help.
But then the option of "Converting ID3 tags" seemed to have disappeared.
It's not in the Advanced tab, nor is it in the right-click menu.
I need help asap, since my iPod is already acting crazy by not being able to download all of my files in once sync.
Thanks a bunch guys!

It's still there. (iTunes 8.0.2)
In the right-click option menue.
Just select the song(s) in iTunes library view.

My ID3 tags not being recognized by iTunes 10.2.2

Can't quite find my unique problem on this board so hopefully someone can help me.
I have imported a lot of MP3 files into iTunes, successfully, which have v2.4 ID3 tags on them. I screwed up the song titles on one (Grateful Dead) show, and all songs came in titled '04'...
I deleted the files in iTunes (and asked iTunes to remove the files as well), fixed up the ID3 tags in the originals, and reimported. But, titles are still '04'!?
Since my music library is on my Linux box and I am mounting and importing from there, I thought maybe something was getting cached so I copied the whole album directory over to my iMac, but still I get the same '04' title for every song.
I also changed the Album attribute in the ID3 tags, but that is still also coming out the old (wrong) way.
It is as if iTunes has some sort of 'fingerprint' of the songs and refuses to recognize the ID3 tags.
This is on OS X 10.6.7 on iTunes 10.2.2, so I'm up to date on all software. And, I've imported A TON of shows like this without issue, it otherwise works just fine.
Anyone ever see this weird problem before?

Sorry, should have been clearer.
The first time I applied the ID3 tags my script for parsing the artist, album and track names from the directory name hierarchy and filenames (e.g. ~/Music/<artist>/<album>/<track number>-<filename>), my script had a bug and all ID3 'title' values were set to the month number of the concert (04 = April).
So, the first time I imported into iTunes, all tracks were titled '04'. I deleted those in iTunes, fixed my script, but now despite apparently having correct ID3 tags, all songs continue to be named '04'. I also changed the album value to, changing from 'Hartford 04262010' to 'Hartford Apr 26, 2010', but again the original value appears to be "sticky", and despite the apparently revised ID3 tag, the album name also is the same as the first time I imported (i.e. Hartford 04262010).
Like I said, it appears that iTunes is somehow caching the original values and not recognizing the new / revised ID3 tags.

ID3 tags and itunes refusing to add music to library

As my music collection is growing, I decided to organize it a bit more and fill in the different ID3 tags in windows.
I have emptied my itunes library before I did all this, and after changing the ID3 tags I added the different albums back to itunes.
However, for some reason itunes does not want to import several albums anymore, while they do play in windows media player. Furthermore, itunes refuses in many cases to make use of the new ID3 tags I made. Even after uninstalling and reinstalling itunes, itunes seems to remember my settings and the ID3 tags the different MP3s had before.
Anyone a clue what is happening here? Has it someting to do with the new version of itunes, or is it something else?
ciao, Gregorius

Hey, first of all, thanks for your help, but I'm still in problems.
I have noticed that itunes imports the music files before I alter the ID3 tags (from backup files). However, as soon as I try to add the same file to my itunes library after I have edited the ID3 file (via windows itself), itunes does not add the file to its library anymore. This is happening to a considerable amount of my music. When I try to play the same files in windows mediaplayer, they play without a problem, so I guess the problem is with itunes.
Somebody can please help me out, because I like to be in control of my music, and not itunes,
adios Gregorius

ITunes re-writing id3 tags with deleted / edited information

Help I think I'm going insane. I keep my iTunes music folder on a LaCie 160 gig Rugged drive. iTunes keeps on re-writing id3 tags on certain files with information I have previously deleted or changed. This info auto fills as soon as I play the file again. I'm not using any other application to change tags.
Also if I reset the music library location and then put it back to the external drive it finds loads of new files without me adding.
Any idea what is going on here? Totally confused. Ghost in the system! Is it cofusing 2 databases? There's only 1 iTunes library file in the folder.

There is a setting in iTunes.
'Automatically download missing album artwork'. In the past that interfered with anything not being complete. Is it switched on?
The second reason is when you get MP3 files from a PC and the details were added through XP itself, updating it in Winamp would give all kinds of problems, perhaps a similar thing is happening here.
There is no real solution. The only solution that worked in my past was to clean out the details and enter them again, but NOT through the file manager of XP.

ITunes Slow Writing ID3 Tags From External Drive

When adding files (music) located on my WD External Hardrive, and upon trying to add the album art, the process slows down... a lot. As opposed to when I add filed on my internal hardrive (from my laptop directly), which is a lot faster (seconds whereas from the External takes about 2-3 minutes per album of 12-16 songs)
It takes FOREVER to write these ID3 tags. Is there a way to speed this up? What gives?

Sorry, where is the file iTunes Library.itl? If you're not certain and don't know how to find out use this script: iTunesXMLPath
External drives take longer to process file operations than internal drives. Every operation in iTunes causes the database to be updated so if this is on a sluggish drive you will notice.
May help to exclude the library & media folders from any anti-virus scans. iTunes also slows up as you increase the number of playlists and the size of the library.
Are you certain your computer is running USB 2.0? What happens if you power down the computer and remove all USB devices except keyboard, mouse and external drive? (Of course this might be your usual config.) Is iTunes any faster? Are you connected to the front USB ports or the rear? The drive should not be connected through an external USB hub.
tt2

Can't edit ID3-tags in iTunes 7.3.1

I can't edit any of the properties in the id3-tag editor in iTunes. My files are mp3 and are not protected.
It seems to work if I convert my files to mp3 (although they are already mp3s) but there a lot of files to convert then.
What should I do?

open system preferences
open network pane
select airport in the left list
click the advanced button
go to the TCP/IP tab
set the configure IPv6 field to OFF.
click OK
click apply
now try again to connect to your remote speakers.
if this doesn't help, you may be suffering from wireless interference.
download iStumbler and note the channels other networks in the vicinity are broadcasting on, then change the channel your network is using as far away as possible from those.

Itunes id3 tags help

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