Q: iTunes 12.2.0 Extremely Slow When Editing Any mp3 Tags

Ive also got this problem, but to be honest, I think iTunes has been a mess for a while. For me, it was at its best circa 2010, when you could still open playlists in separate windows. Which if you're a serious music collector like myself, was very handy when cataloging my tunes!

Ive got a massive music collection, all physical discs imported to iTunes (almost half a years worth of solid listening!) and Ive spent years organising it all into playlists that make sense to me (kind of like back in the 90s when it was only 'you' in control of how your music was set out), so it really burns my arse when Apple come along with changes they deem worthy for the masses that grate with my organisation.

I'll take the old iTunes over this overly glossed rubbish, built for people who just plonk music in without thought (and there's nothing wrong with that, but it doesn't work for me!). To be fair, it pretty much lets me do that now still, it's just a lot slower than it was, I just want the 'open playlist in a separate window' feature to return and a promise that my 10 years of cataloging isnt going to get screwed up by an update!

But yeah, back to the topic, version 12.2 is incredibly slow!

This occurred previously with an older iTunes 'upgrade'.  It took Apple about a week to fix it that time. I called them about this a week ago and hoped it would have been fixed by now. However....

Remind me now to install new iTunes when they become available. May be better to wait a couple of weeks.

What greatly annoys me is that I actually took the time to do a full system restore from Time Machine, to before the latest iTunes came out.  And it was wonderful, and everything worked great... for about 24 hours, when 12.2 reinstalled itself without asking me, and messed everything up all over again. 

I have the same hang up issue with editing in 'Get Info' and I do not use the cloud.

I think I found the cause of the spinning rainbow. And that is your song library is located on an external drive. If all your song would have been located on the internal this would not happened. Try this:

1. Quit iTunes

2. Hold option and start iTunes, in the pop up window create a new library

3. Save it on your desktop

4. The iTunes will open only library of songs purchased from iTunes

5. Drag any song into the iTunes music window, and try to change the title.

The problem is gone. In my opinion its a bug, which needs to be addressed.

I called Apple and they suggested to leave a suggestion to Apple developers.

I told the same Apple support, that I am not going to have my thousands of songs on my internal drive. They assured me that the next update will fix the issue. Which did not today. I just updated to 12.2.1, the same problem.

Well, add me in with this one. Doing anything produces a "wait", edit any ID3 tag or add artwork you get a wait, add a song, a wait, convert an aiff file, yes a wait. I've timed it and it's always 20 seconds and doesn't vary whether you're editing one file or 20. This started with the 12.2 update and persists with 12.2.1. I have a moderately large library at at 40,000 songs and yes it's on an external drive BUT I've been checking clients and friends machines and they all have it, just usually a bit shorter (maybe 8 seconds). Response time prior to this update was instant and I have ALL Apple Music  and iCloud Music Library/Match features disabled.

This is REALLY bad.

Apparently Apple development team have not tried to change ID3 tags or change the song title. Otherwise they would fix the issue before offering the update. The user becomes the second quality control department to find bugs and glitches that was missed during the development. It applies to new technology in almost any field.

I have the same problem, and I think it is definitely a bug. By chance, I found a way to avoid this problem, that should be fixed by Apple anyhow: selecting the songs to edit with your music library sorted as songs, instead of artists or albums. Obviously I have no idea why this works, but it does.

Thanks for the idea, still makes it harder to find songs and do changes, but at least no spinning annoying clock.

Most likely Apple development team has no idea what is going on, after the bugs get discovered, otherwise this issue would have been resolved in the next update, which was not. It takes a while for the word to be spread. The issues would get resolved much quicker if the user had a direct contact with their Quality Control department.

There is a way to submit a bug report, but you need to be an Apple developer login.

I am glad I found this thread as I searched for this issue but did not come across this post initially, and I received no reponses to mine a couple weeks ago. Same issue, large library, use several libraries on internal and external drives, iTunes uses nearly 100% CPU, stays unresponsive with spinning beachball almost a minute and sometimes more when editing tags or adding song or any type of usage of the Get Info window. Super annoying, clearly a bug, reminds me of the one where you had to hide the status bar to avoid the endless beachball. If you desire an even longer unresponsive iTunes, play a song while editing and the time doubles. It takes a couple of minutes when editing tags for an entire album. And the temporary fix works for me as well. So thanks for the temporary fix, hopefully more than one developer found this bug and submitted a bug report to Apple to get this fixed. I have given plenty of iTunes feedback for this and  previous issues, unfortunately, few of them have been fixed. Not a fan of iTunes 12 as I primarily use iTunes to manage my music and care little for Apple Music and iCloud Library.

Many thanks for this, it's saved my sanity. I can't believe Apple don't fix this. It's clearly an issue with iTunes itself and the way the data is being presented.

I have the same problem, and it seems to be happening more and more. 

Editing metadate through the "Get Info" window often - but not always - leads to Itunes becoming unresponsive and hour-long beachball sessions.  The only way to proceed is to force quit itunes.  While working on itunes this can mean like 30-50 force quits an hour.  Completely unacceptable.

I have a 27 inch imac and a very large library (2tb+) on external drive.