Missing ID3 Tags

Is there an open-source app or one that supports PPC Macs that helps you fix missing ID3 tag data? ITunes 7 is amazing with the new search engine + cool UI to quickly pick the album of your choice.... HOWEVER, I have no use for this since some dork totally cleaned out my ID3 tags. I was able to use a software to convert filenames into ID3 tags that supply the Artist and Song title only. I'm in desperation to find a way to retrieve album information so I could use this new iTunes 7 feature. Is there another way than manually encoding album data on EVERY FILE? There's gotta be an app somewhere that picks artist and song data and hook up to a server database that checks for possible matches. I saw this article on MusicBrainz Tagger.... but I don't see support for Mac. Just Linux and Windows.

Hmmm... took a look and downloaded one of Doug's Scripts... It's the CDDB Safari Kit composed of two scripts.... the problem is: In order to get album info. you need to have all MP3s of the album... you need to sort this in the right order before the script will work well for you. What I'm hoping to see is that if I have just one MP3 track, I should be able to get the missing/wrong tag infos I need by just supplying the artist and song title to the script. I see a lot of Windows tools for this... I wonder if there's one for the Mac.

Similar Messages

Missing ID3 tags in acc files

Hi
If I import music to aac files, I'm missing the the ID3 tags in the music file (in file property). It works with MP3 files.
Why there are no ID3 tags in the aac files?
Any solutions to have the ID3 in aac as well?
Thanks!
(iTunes Ver. 7.5)
BR
ibex

These are songs you imported from a CD?
When you insert the CD, does the info show up on the CD in iTunes?

Missing ID3 Tags on Song Files

I have a obscure problem with iTunes that has me very frustrated. I selected my entire music library, then right click -> get info -> check boxes for artist, genre, album, etc and then hit okay. I thought this would look for missing tag information in songs and fill in the blanks, but instead it erased the tag information for all the songs in my library.
Luckily, my hard drive was spared. When I open up the C: drive and look at my music folder, nothing has changed. All of the mp3 files are still tagged with the correct information. The only problem is that when I try to access songs from iTunes they appear to have no such tag information.
I have tried fixing this by deleting everything from iTunes and then adding it all back, but this didn't help. Reinstalling iTunes and a full Windows system restore didn't help either.
The result of this is that I'm afraid to sync my iPod with my computer until this is all resolved. Any insight into the problem would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

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.

Missing ID3 tags - Volume correction

Hi
Adobe Soundbooth CS5
I have a lot of mp3 files when ID3 tag contains different titles - Artist names - Album names.
If I use "Tasks" - "Volume Correction" to match all volume's.
After I have Saving all the MP3 files , the ID3 tags i missing both song titles - Artist names - Album names of all mp3 - why?

These are songs you imported from a CD?
When you insert the CD, does the info show up on the CD in iTunes?

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.

The Case of Missing ID3 Tags... and non-Apple devices, like the Sonos

Ever since the debut of iTunes 6, devices other than my Mac and my iPod have been unable to find the ID3 tags associated with .mp3 files. If I rip a CD in iTunes 6 or 7, artist/album/track data (and album artwork) display properly in iTunes and on my iPod; but when I update my Sonos music library, for example, all it is able to see is the file name. So, for example, if I rip Jimi Hendrix's "Are You Experienced," the track "Purple Haze" shows up in iTunes correctly associated with "Hendrix" and "...Experienced." On the Sonos system, however, all it sees is the track "Purple Haze.mp3." No artist. No album. Ditto for placing one of these .mp3 files on a non-Apple mp3 player: track name only shows up. Bizarrely, if I rip CDs on an older PPC G4 running iTunes 4.0, and then import those files into either iTunes 6 or 7, the ID3 tags remain married to the files. Anyone have a solution to this vexing problem?
PowerBook G4 Mac OS X (10.4.8) 2 Gigs SDRAM
Core Duo iMac Mac OS X (10.4.8) 2 Gigs SDRAM

In the newer versions of itunes 6+7 (don't know about 5) iTunes by default will rename the file on the HD to match the info in the "Name" column of iTunes - this is true if you have the "Keep" option selected in iTunes prefs>Advanced>General.
With iTunes 4 this was not true. I would use one of Dougs scripts to rename all my files on the HD to be Artist-Song Name. You can still do this in iTunes 6+7 if you turn off the "Keep" option or you don't edit any info in the id3 tag once you have run the script.
I know nothing of the Sonos and other stuff - I can only think that is reading only the file sname and not the id3 tag info. If it doesn't have the capability of reading and displaying the id3 tag info then I think you are out of luck. iTunes is reading the id3 tag info.
MJ

Missing songs / won't add or import files / corrupt id3 tags?

Hey Folks,
I can't seem to get some songs/files to add or import to itunes...
My computer crashed while itunes was open. When I rebooted the itunes library was corrupted and all playlists and songs were missing.
... no problem...
I'll just add the itunes folder right... Which is what I did.
Problem is now a good 20% of the songs are missing. They are on the harddrive in the itunes music folder, but won't import or add to itunes.
I suspect maybe it has something to do with corrupt ID3 tags?
Anyone know the answer to this mystery?
Thx

I assume adding artwork is a tag-affecting change - but I can't
add on this track - it just reverts to the black image.
I take it the tags themselves are hidden. I see no direct
editing options for them although I read than they can be
set to different types - and there are utilities available to
clean, fix, re-set, etc.
Ok, now I see your edit - this isn't an mp3, it's .aiff.
Message was edited by: Tom Meade1

Creative Mediasource ID3 Tags - Edit more than one year at a ti

I use a 60gb Zen Xtra with Mediasource. I take pride in the ID3 tags of all my files especially those of my Jazz collection and my player is well organised. The only thing I have to ask is - is there any way of editing the year of, say, an entire album that was recorded in 959 for example all at the same time. It lets me do this for Artist, Album and Genre but not year. Is there any upgrade in software I can get or am I just missing something here?
Thanks in advance for your input,Matt

Shucks, I tried and you can't seem to do it. A curious oversight.
You can either use another copying program like which will let you do it, or simply get a mass tagger (but you will need to edit the tracks on the PC first, then copy). For some mass tagger recommendations look here in the Zen FAQ at Nomadness.net.

Archiving cds and why do i need id3 tags

here comes another one of those questions looking at which codec to use to store music.....i also have tag questions.....
i'm about to (re-)rip my cd collection and looking at some info re codecs and id3 tags
now.....i believe i understand the benefits of alac (lower file sizes, keeping id3 tags, lossless compression) v wav(no compression)
however (and for some out there) if we just entertain the fact that wav may have some minute benefit for me depending on my questions and answers given.....and yes i know wav and alac will sound the same to the human ear - i accept that as a given of lossless compression ......
points i'd like to outline:
i am looking to rip my cds, firstly and mostly, for an archiving purpose!! purpose numero uno!!
i could well want to re-create cds with these archived records in the future
size of files is of no concern to me at all
i'm using a mac nowadays
i will convert most of these files, where needed, to use with a portable music player (i'm not bothered with having, say a wav file and then also converting and having an alac file, as crazy as that sounds)
this is where i ask for info re the benefits of embedded tags that are found in alac:
are these tags that important?
where do they come into play in ripping and later converting music?
are these uses just bells and whistles that have no benefit to my needs?
if i rip cds to wav (or aiff), say, using itunes, will cd info and track listings be available on the downloading database (eg itunes) to name these wav files?
if i then ensure these song files are kept under the album's folder, have i just done what tags do? surely not. that is all i have needed in the past.
this is where i feel i may be really missing what id tags (can) do
are tags more than just managing song files and where they belong and where they have come from?
is it just a convenience of not personally managing your song files (as per previous paragraph)?
(in the past i had ripped cds to mp3 codec. i think i used "cd rip" or something like that on my pc.
my mp3 files were individually named and sorted and kept under album folders under artist name folders.
apart form the very odd occasion all track and album info i needed was found on a database that was attached to the ripping software.
i never had a problem managing/maintaining these files and folders.)
i welcome some enlightenment on some of my questions above and other info that may be relevant
and yes, i understand that music will sound the same as a wav file or alac file - but humour me re using wav and tell me why i need id3 tags
i guess the crux of it is:
why do i need id3 tags?
does my managing of my song file in the album folder do what tags do?
what problems/shortcomings/headaches may i encounter by not having those tags if i use wav as opposed to alac?
what do i not know about these little buggers?
what codec is best for my purpose of archiving and re creating of cds (for playing in cd players)
thanks in advance for your input and any clarity that i may experience through this
peter t
excuse my long windedness (i have spent some time editing this entry)

Crows2012 wrote:
as mentioned earlier if i just have songs (wav) in album folders, when i import these albums into itunes, do you know if these will come up under AN album with their file names purely using my filename setup (but with no artwork)?
Yes, iTunes will read the filename, such as "Track 1" or something else and display it. But nothing else. No Album or Artist.
so the tracks will remain grouped as an album based on their initial folder and the albums and tracks as per file name?
Crows2012 wrote:
also, does aiff have limitations (apart from the full size of the file)?
I'm not sure I understand what you mean. For all practical purposes AIFF and WAV are exactly the same thing. They're just file containers.
i thought that i had read somewhere that aiff tags could run into some issues with its tags - ie may not always be transferred 100% accurately with certain players (or hardware maybe)
Crows2012 wrote:
and how do these codecs work re-creating an album for the purposes of playing in a cd player? - this is a crucial question for the purpose of my archiving/backup of CDs THEMSELVES
That's actually going to depend on what burning software you use. Once you rip the tracks to whatever file container you choose (WAV/AIFF/ALAC) you'll never really exactly re-create the album. But for archiving purposes all three file containers will do what you want, which is to create a lossless archive. AIFF has the advantage of supporting embedded ID3, which ALAC has the additional advantage of the files also being about half the size of AIFF/WAV files.
i was thinking that maybe wav was able to recreate an album (in effect duplicate one) if my cd was lost or damaged in the future. i was thinking this IF when ripping to wav everything is unchanged (unless there is other data on the original cd). and maybe only possible with wav. the purpose for this would be to play recreated cds on my cd player
any idea on this one?
(i havent looked too thoroughly on this angle but i'll keep googling on this one)
much appreciate all info thus far
peter t

Bad bug with ID3 tags of different case for same artist

My itunes files and music library are on a different drive than my boot drive. It is an internal drive (always on) in my Mac Pro at /Volumes/Media1/iTunes with music library at /Volumes/Media1/iTunes/iTunes Music. iTunes is setup to automatically keep it organized and copy files to the media folder when adding. It has been this way for years, never a problem.
Just recently, and I think this may have coincided (but I'm not sure) with a 10.6.5 Snow Leopard update, my music started disappearing! The entries were still in the library, but with the missing exclamation mark in itunes with it reporting that it couldn't find the files. But only certain artists. After searching my computer, I found the missing files it at the same path, but on my boot drive, at /Media1/iTunes/iTunes Music/<missing artist>!
Trying to add these files back to my library would work briefly, but then they would magically disappear out of /Volumes/Media1/iTunes/iTunes Music and go back to /Media1/iTunes/iTunes Music/
I figured out the one thing the different artists that had this behavior had in common - some of the ID3 tags for the same artist, which are the basis for organization, were in different cases. I think there is a weird case sensitivity bug that is breaking things. When I add back only those songs for an artist with ID3 tags for the artist of the same case, the behaviour stops.
I'm posting less looking for an answer and more to raise visibility and hope this gets a fix.
Example entries from my iTunes Library.xml, notice how the 'k' in OutKast is a different case in the entries.
<key>Artist</key><string>OutKast</string>
<key>Location</key><string>file://localhost/Volumes/Media1/iTunes/iTunes%20Music/OutKast/Speakerboxxx,%20Th e%20Love%20Below%20(Disc%202)/13%20Pink%20&%20Blue.mp3</string>
<key>Artist</key><string>Outkast</string>
<key>Location</key><string>file://localhost/Volumes/Media1/iTunes/iTunes%20Music/Outkast/Aquemini/12%20Spot tieOttieDopaliscious.mp3</string>

I'd like to note that I'm experiencing the exact same issue. I'd add to this but petegas4life has it spot on. I'm just replying in hopes this thread gets noticed so the engineers at apple can look into this and hopefully fix it in the next release.
Reproducing the problem is pretty simple too. Just take one song from an album and change the case of the artist name. You'll see the music move to the boot drive and all of the songs from that artist won't work in itunes anymore. And if you're relying on iTunes to edit the tags, fixing the files is a PAIN because they keep disappearing on you.

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.

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?

How can I put ID3-Tag info into my MIDI songs

http://www.mp3machine.com/software/IDTunes/ says: "idTunes fixes those missing or wrong ID3 tags automatically, once and for all. Systematize, organize, remove duplicates and correct irregularites in your music collection, even add lyrics. Once and for all clean up your MP3 song collection without having to spend weeks typing and checking the info." but that's OS X and my computers can't run it
In Quicktime Player Pro when I get-properties then create annotations they only show up in QuickTime player - I need a method to embed them in the file so that in WindowsMediaSlayer the author, URL, title, length, recorded date, artists on track and such can be displayed.
Is there a version of QuicktimePlayerPro (for OS 9) that will let me export or save-as MIDI file so that WMP will 1) read the file and 2) recognize the annotations as ID3-Tags?
SOMEONE has to look out for the recognition of music creators and talented performers!
Thank you very much for this forum to ask my questions, and thank you dearly in advance for your answers.
Sincerely,
Teo

Teo4...
OK, I have a big heart...
Yep! And me too, which is why I'm sharing this 1/2 solution!
"Artly There" has forums, real Applish looking! Well, in a topic there:
http://www.artlythere.com/cgi-bin/forum/Blah.pl?m-1154280348/s-0/#num3
I got this lead:
From: http://www.harmony-central.com/Software/Mac/midi.html
I got MIDI Kit 2.7.1, I think it has put these tags in correctly:
1. Full Song Name
2. Copyright
3. Author
To see if it worked: http://givnology.com/eve/forums/a/ga/ul/8341026442/WhatYouSynco.mid
This is also all in my site's discussions here: http://givnology.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/80560593/m/7641057422 well the easy way is:
http://Givnology.com/music and click the "First try MIDI" topic. I wanted to let you know that I did find at least THIS MUCH of a solution...
In the © tag I put some good relational database type cross indexables.... yay!

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.

ID3 Tags won't write to file

I recently received a disc from a friend, the disc had 16 songs on it, with no ID3 Tag info. I went through and added the missing info manually using the "Get Info" option from the file in iTunes & hit OK, but when I was done, the files look complete in iTunes, but the original file copied to the hard drive was unchanged. When I used iTunes 10, it used to rewrite the ID tags for the file on my hard drive with the changed info via iTunes. I double checked to make sure that I "Let iTunes Organize" my files and folders. I've looked through threads, googled, etc, and I have NO clue what to do, or even if I did something. Help!
On a side note, where is the "Power Search" in the iTunes Store? That seems to be a never ending question floating around the threads as well.

i'd normally think about access permissions as iTunes will fail silently if it can't write out the updated tag however the fact that Winamp can manage it suggests another problem.
It may be that the files have multiple tags. It used to be common to add both a v1.x & v2.x tag and in theory multiple tags can be used to support different languages. iTunes likes a single tag and may silently fail when it tries to write the data back to the track, thus doing nothing without reporting an error. Next time you access the file the library will update to reflect the true values in the tag. For what it's worth I believe it's recommended to use ID3v2.3 tags with iTunes.
MP3Validator may be all you need, but if not try using the iTunes option *Convert ID3 Tags... > None* say 3 times in a row, then *Convert ID3 Tags... > v2.3* to see if that creates a situation in which your edits can hold.
tt2

Missing ID3 Tags

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