GPaas

Q: How do I overwrite metadata for my iCloud Apple Music?

To be more precise:

 

My music library on my desktop is the main library from which I want all my devices and other computers to feed from. This means I would like my iTunes in the iCloud to reflect exactly what I have on my desktop (album title, album artist, artist, composer, genre, artwork).

 

After months of trying to get my 25k+ song library to work properly, and hours and hours spent on the phone with Apple's tech support, I still have a few problems:

 

1) Art work, genre, and some other meta data on many of my songs is incorrect, as is sorting.

 

2) There are still quite a few songs that have the meta data and artwork for another, completely unrelated, song (i.e., a Rolling Stones song will have the Beatles meta data, which indicates to me that there is something wrong in the file storage in the library, but that's for later).

 

3) Songs that had been burned by me onto my hard drive (legitimately, for those asking) still need to be downloaded from the iCould, even though the file exists on my hard drive.

 

Any feedback is appreciated. Also, is there a master-level iTunes class or book someone can direct me to? I am familiar with all basic iTunes skills (I think), and need an in-depth tutorial.

iMac, OS X Yosemite (10.10.4)

Posted on Feb 18, 2016 1:31 PM

Close

Q: How do I overwrite metadata for my iCloud Apple Music?

  • All replies
  • Helpful answers

  • by Limnos,

    Limnos Limnos Feb 18, 2016 1:52 PM in response to GPaas
    Level 9 (54,292 points)
    Mac OS X
    Feb 18, 2016 1:52 PM in response to GPaas

    Hah, by the time it went through the publishing process Apple would come out with a new version of iTunes. 

     

    I suspect with iCloud you are fighting the system, particularly if it is something matched with what is there.  Maybe for your CDs you stand a chance as long as there isn't a corresponding version in iCloud.

     

    I still live with the blissful simplicity of iTunes 7.5 on Mavericks.

  • by turingtest2,

    turingtest2 turingtest2 Feb 19, 2016 1:12 PM in response to GPaas
    Level 10 (86,986 points)
    Apple TV
    Feb 19, 2016 1:12 PM in response to GPaas

    I recently purchased iTunes Match to release my pre-2009 purchases of their DRM and upgrade to higher quality versions. I used a separate library for this have played with the trial of Apple Music, also in a separate library. I did a reasonable job of downloading all of the old purchases and then integrating these into my real library, correcting metadata where I think the store has it wrong (I'm picky) and then deduping in a way that has maintained ratings, play counts, playlist membership etc. Sadly the tool I wrote for that particular task only works in Windows. I've now started trying to integrate some of my other content into the iTunes Match library. I've paid for a year so I may as well explore it while I've got it. Connecting the ATV4 to the full library also takes way too long so again, worth seeing what I can do with iTunes Match.

     

    I don't think there are any blanket solutions, but patience and persistence can help. I'm pretty good at fixing metadata issues as a rule, such as those that make an album show up as two items for example, but only today it took me about 15 minutes to get one particular album named and sorted the way I wanted it. I could have it as two or three albums, one album named wrongly, or the composer would show up four times in the column browser, or having made an edit four tracks out of 50 would remain unchanged. Often I will add a trailing X to fields that I want to merge to force them to update and group together, then remove the excess characters. The trick today was to make an additional dummy edit before trying to restore the fields as I really wanted them. 

     

    As for a book I agree with Limnos, it would always be out of date. Getting to grips with iTunes is like painting the Forth Bridge, it is never done.

     

    tt2

  • by ed2345,

    ed2345 ed2345 Feb 19, 2016 3:12 PM in response to GPaas
    Level 7 (24,933 points)
    Feb 19, 2016 3:12 PM in response to GPaas

    is there a master-level iTunes class or book someone can direct me to? I am familiar with all basic iTunes skills (I think), and need an in-depth tutorial.

     

    Yes.  It is online.  It is updated hundreds of times per day.  It is called the Apple Support Communities iTunes Forum.  You are reading it now.

  • by turingtest2,

    turingtest2 turingtest2 Feb 19, 2016 3:18 PM in response to ed2345
    Level 10 (86,986 points)
    Apple TV
    Feb 19, 2016 3:18 PM in response to ed2345

     

     

    tt2

  • by Keerayuth,

    Keerayuth Keerayuth Sep 23, 2016 3:09 AM in response to GPaas
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Sep 23, 2016 3:09 AM in response to GPaas

    What I do is not to remove the original defaulted artwork but add the artwork via get info --> artwork --> add artwork.  Your added artwork will become a primary artwork.  Please try!