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.

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 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

My iTunes library and metadata/ID3 tags issue

Since 2010, iTunes is the only media player I use to play music. My library consists of music purchased from the iTunes Store, CD rips and stuff many artists these days release as freebies on the internet to promote a new album. Also, M4A and MP3 are the only formats I use so far.
Since iTunes, I really got into editing my library's metadata tags by hand, in order to create a custom archive which serves my preferences best. I should mention that besides iTunes being the only software I use to play my music library, it's also the only software I use to edit their metadata. Also, before iTunes – when my library was on different media players – I never bothered with editing them.
A few days ago, I found how a lot of people in forums complain about the way iTunes edits and stores metadata. So, I experimented and moved a few of my songs to other media players after editing their tags within iTunes. And indeed the tags and/or artwork were often displayed messed up and/or incorrect, some times partially and some times completely.
Some people were referring to the version of the ID3 tags being the issue, while others suggested using the "convert ID3 tags" feature. I myself am a little bit confused. "Converting the ID3 tags" wasn't available for my M4A files and once I performed it for my MP3's I didn't know which setting I should apply or what version to choose. I chose one version randomly but I'm not sure what happened.
My goal is to make my music library able to play and display my custom metadata on the majority of the popular media players. I hope that firstly this is possible and that secondly it won't be a solution which requires me going through every single song individually.
I really hope that all those years work on my library wasn't for nothing.
I'm using a MacBook running Snow Leopard 10.6.8 and my iTunes version is 10.7
While my music library is more important that my iTunes version, I do like iTunes 10 more than 11.
I apologize for any grammar mistakes, since English is not my first language. Thank you all for your time and any suggestion is welcome.

itsjamesd wrote:
Hello turingtest2 and thank you for your reply.
In response to "a possible cause of problems is multiple embedded tags", what exactly does that mean and how can I avoid doing it in the future?
Anything ripped with iTunes should get a single tag. If multiple tags in some of your older mp3 rips are the cause of the problems when you try to access the files elsewhere then you should apply the suggested remedy selectively, not to the whole library indiscriminately. Once fixed you shouldn't have the problem again unless you use different ripping software. If so check the options to ensure you generate a single ID3v2.3 tag. Downloads from elsewhere are pot luck.
If I use Convert ID3 Tags>None before converting to v2.3 as you suggested, how many times is "several times" and why do I have to do it more than once? Also, what are your thoughts on 'v2.3 vs. v2.4'?
Several is at least two, but more could be needed if a file has both v1 and v2 tags in multiple languages. If there are two tags, the first conversion to none should remove the first one, and the second conversion the second. Experiment, And stick to v2.3.
In response to "the process removes any embedded art but otherwise preserves the data that iTunes knows". All fields excluding cover art remain the same? Does that mean that I will have to start from scratch and apply new cover art individually for each album? That would be too time consuming given the fact that I embed custom art.
Yes, everything but artwork is held in the iTunes database and is restored with the final Convert ID3 Tags... v2.3. Use Doug's scripts SaveAlbumArtJpeg before you start and RestoreArtworkFromAlbumFolder afterwards to save and the restore your existing artwork.
Also, what happens with my M4A files' metadata? ID3 tags are only used for MP3's, right?
Yes, m4a/aac files have a different tag mechanism. Multiple ID3 tags is just one possible issue that you might have. You said:
So, I experimented and moved a few of my songs to other media players after editing their tags within iTunes. And indeed the tags and/or artwork were often displayed messed up and/or incorrect, some times partially and some times completely.
It might be worth going into some more detail about exactly what differences you noticed. iTunes can automatically associate (instead of embedding) artwork when it can match the album in the store which could be why some tracks didn't get artwork.
tt2

ITunes 11 Changing ID3 Tags

Ok, I've been using iTunes for years and like many I've found the new version, 11, to be frustrating.
The main thing is ID3 Tags.
These have always been customiseable. For someone OCD like me, being able to edit and customise ID3 tags is very important in keeping my iTunes "tidy". I don't want one album saying "Florence + The Machine" and another saying "Florence & The Machine". I want them both the same.
But what I really want, more than anything else, is 100% control over what the ID3 tags say. On all the old versions of iTunes, I had this. Now, I don't.
I've just listened to two albums by Dead Prez. They're stylised thus: 'dead prez'. So, it is that version which I've always had on my iTunes. However, after listening to one of the albums, iTunes decided to change the name back to 'Dead Prez'. This was nothing to do with me. Why has it changed?
Worse, I've just listened to a song by David Gray, and I've now found it stored under U - for Unknown. It's not 'Unknown', because I've known for all the years that I've owned that file that the song was by David Gray. I haven't had to edit the information for years.
Is this a bug?
Is this a new feature of iTunes? Can I turn it off? If not, can Apple/ someone provide me with an explanation as to WHY this has changed?
Cheers,
Guy

In iTunes go to Edit > Preferences > Store and turn off
Show iTunes in the Cloud purchases
Share details about your library with Apple
On any iOS device go to Settings > Music and turn off
Show All Music
Close and reopen iTunes and/or reset the device and you should see your version of the metadata for each track rather than the original store data.
tt2

MP3 song information not retained after iTunes 7.0 - ID3 tags at fault?

I'm having some strange problems with track information in iTunes. I first noticed it when I tried to copy some mp3's from my Mac to my mobile phone: certain tracks did not retain the song information, like artist, album etc., while others did.
A similar problem has been discussed in this post:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=3698498
However, my problem seems to be a little bit more specific.
If I look at the music in my library in iTunes, all the track information is there. However, for MP3's encoded after 16th October last year, the "Imported With" field, using Get Info, is shown as "Unknown". Before this date, it is shown as "iTunes v7.0". For all MP3's the ID3 version is v2.2.
I believe that I must have upgraded to iTunes 7.0.1 around this time, since I have a number of Apple Lossless audio files which have also been imported and don't show this problem.
The main problem is with the file ID3 tag information (I think). If I select one of the problem tracks, find the original file, open it up in Quicktime and "Get Info", no track/album/artist/composer information is displayed. This is NOT true for 1) MP3's encoded before 16th October 2006 and 2) Apple Lossless files encoded at any time.
In other words, the track information for songs encoded with iTunes 7.0.1 and later is either encoded in a way that no other application can read, OR is only being stored in the iTunes playlist, NOT the file itself. I can see all the track information for these problem files on my iPod, but NOT my mobile phone (where I have to manually copy them over), even if I drag and drop them directly from iTunes.
I have this problem with Quicktime, my mobile phone music player and RealPlayer, so I'm assuming it's "system wide". It even occurs if I copy a problem file out of my music folder and onto the the Desktop, then manually add the track to iTunes: all the song information has disappeared.
I have all my music stored on an external hard disk - 160GB Freecom ToughDrive formatted as HFS+. Previously it was stored on an external disk formatted as FAT32, but copying the files over to the new disk didn't change the problem.
I considered using the "convert ID3 tags" option to see if it would make a difference, but both the good and bad files are listed as using v2.2. I also don't understand enough about them to feel confident converting them to something different - perhaps to v2.3 or v2.4 - just to see if it makes a difference.
Any information on how to "recover" the missing information (for anything other than iTunes) would be greatly appreciated!
MacBook Pro 17" 2.16 GHz 2GB RAM Mac OS X (10.4.9) iTunes 7.1.1

Okay, some more information as I try and track down the source of the problem.
By using an id3 tag editing program - ID3 Editor - I was able to view the song information for each track, even though all the other music players I had tried would not show it. If I then chose to modify and update the ID3 information, this would somehow modify the tags in such a way that they become readable in all other programs.
I tried using the "Convert ID3" tags option in iTunes, just on a whim, but without any success. Saving the song information in ID3 Editor doesn't change the version of the ID3 tag - it's still listed as v2.2 in iTunes - but it DOES make it readable in other programs. I also tried the various text conversion options, again without any success.
This looks to me like a bug in iTunes. While its possible for me to get around it, in an extremely long winded way, I still can't understand why iTunes would be writing ID3 information that other Apple programs cannot read.
Any suggestions? Should I be posting this question in a different forum perhaps?

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.

ID3 tags that look fine in iTunes are ungood on the iPod touch

I've got 60,000-plus MP3 tracks, collected over a decade, that were encoded by a variety of apps on Macs and PCs. The tracks look OK in iTunes on a Mac, but on an iPod touch, many songs are missing artwork, and others display the lyrics in garbled "mojibake" characters.
If the garbling occurred in all the ID3 tags (Name, Artist, Album, etc.) of a track instead of just the lyrics tag, I'd simply reverse the unicode; but as it's not, the solution has to force the misbehaving ID3 tags/artwork to display correctly. I've tried selecting the problem songs and reassigning the ID3 tag, but iTunes can't or won't overwrite the bad tags.
What does work as a solution is toggling the ID3 tags off and on by selecting the bad tracks in iTunes, right-clicking and choosing "Convert ID3 Tags...", then assigning "None" as the ID3 tag version. Next step is to select "Convert ID3 Tags..." again, this time choosing v2.3 or v2.4 as the ID3 version. That does the trick every time, stripping away corruption in the ID3 tags and forcing the tracks to accept artwork. However, it also truncates tags longer than 30 characters, and deletes existing lyrics and artwork. That makes for a lot of cleanup editing.
Is there a way to make iTunes assign ID3 v2.3 to tracks so as to overwrite the corrupt tags without going through the steps I've outlined? If not, is there an app out there with the mojo to fix these corrupt files?

If the song is in iTunes, and it is in a playlist that you auto-sync your Touch to, then the only things that might cause this problem are:
1- Is this new song un-checked in iTunes? If your Touch is set to sync only checked items that would prevent it from syncing. If that's the case, just enable the checkmark next to the new song and re-sync.
2- Is this playlist a smart playlist that is forced to be limited in size? If so, there is a bug with the 3.1.x OS such that smart playlists that are limited in size will have different contents (and sorted differently) when you compare the playlist on iTunes vs. on the Touch. The solution in this case is to disable Live Updating in the smart playlist definition, then the two versions of the playlist will agree.
3- Is the new song tagged as "Skip when Shuffling"? If so, and if your Touch is in shuffle mode, then the song count in the playlist will not include songs that are designated to be skipped.
See if any of those three things are what is going on. If not, then perhaps you need to reset or restore your Touch, but I doubt that.

Missing ID3 Tags on MP3 CD burned with iTunes

I have a Sony CD Player in my car. This Player supports mp3 CD's. To Burn such CD's with iTunes is not the Problem.
iTunes seems not to set the ID3-Tag in it's Libary. Is it possible to set the iTunes-Libary-Informations (as they are displayed on my Screen) as ID3 Tags to the Files ? Are there Risks within ?

Ooops. You just created a lot of work by erasing the tag info.
I think there are some scripts out there that can fill in ID3 tags based on file names.
This page is from an apple discussions regular poster:
http://samsoft.org.uk/iTunes/scripts.asp
You could try the "TagFromFilename" script.
For future, itunes does not have the ability to update tag info like Windows Media Player does. I suppose you could see what WMP will do, before trying that script.
Since I haven't used either one to do this, I can't say how well either works.

Altering ID3 Tags with 3rd party software and having it recognized by iTunes

Hi,
Long time mp3 user but new to the iPod/iTunes family so I'm super unfamiliar with how it works. I currently use as separate mp3 retagger to batch process new ID3 tags and I noticed my iTunes library doesn't update the changes. Is there an easy way to keep updating folders without having to delete everything and reimport?
So, I have VA albums but itunes shows them as different albums with only one track in them - how do I change/fix this? Example: Punk-o-Rama vol 1 is a best of collection but instead of 1 album with multiple artists, iTunes shows it as multiple albums with 1 artist per "album" and only stores the album art on the alphabetically first "album". Fix please?

Maybe this has something to do with connection timeout for Oracle network configuration settings:
in file sqlnet.ora (located on server side), check these values or set them
appropriately:
SQLNET.INBOUND_CONNECT_TIMEOUT
SQLNET.RECV_TIMEOUT
SQLNET.SEND_TIMEOUT
See http://download-east.oracle.com/docs/cd/B19306_01/network.102/b14213/sqlnet.htm#sthref370

"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.

ITunes + ID3 tags..

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