deleted metadata reappearing?

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deleted metadata reappearing?

This is a problem I have been experiencing for a while now, with the last few versions of iTunes. It's minor, but very annoying.

I have a system for organising my music:
when I just want a song or two from off an album, I delete all the unnecessary metadata on the track: the album, genre, album artist, etc.

This just helps reduce clutter, and sort everything more efficiently.

This has always worked fine, and I continue to 'clean up' the data for songs I don't want grouped in an album as they add them.

But for some reason over the last few months, the old metadata has started to show up again on a large number of old songs, and even on some I've added quite recently. iTunes is somehow forgetting the manual changes I've made, and going back to the original data on the songs.

This isn't happening for everything, probably like 1 in 10 of my ungrouped songs. But with a large music library, that's a lot to go through and clean up again, and the problem seems to be only getting worse - every time I look at my iTunes, I see more and more songs with the old metadata returned.

Can anyone help?

PC, Windows 7

Posted on Aug 1, 2010 2:32 AM

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Answer 1

wikedguy Author

Level 1

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Aug 17, 2010 12:23 PM in response to wikedguy

This is still a problem, even with songs I've just added. I've also found album artwork disappearing from some albums in my collection for no apparent reason.

As no-one has offered anything, I may as well put up my own ideas (unsubstantiated).
It seems to me the problem is that iTunes doesn't actually edit the real metadata of the mp3 tracks, and stores them according to the metadata given when added.
So if I add a track which has the album given, it will be stored in a folder under that album. Then for some reason, even though I've edited the track on iTunes and deleted the album, iTunes goes back and checks the original metadata, and reverses the change.

I suppose I should mention I have 'Keep iTunes Media Folder Organised' and 'Copy Files to iTunes Media Folder when adding' checked.

Can anyone give me any suggestions for what to do, because if the problem keeps up I'll have to consider abandoning iTunes for good.

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Answer 2

Chris CA

Level 10

82,440 points

Aug 17, 2010 12:34 PM in response to wikedguy

I delete all the unnecessary metadata on the track: the album, genre, album artist, etc.

Really? Unnecessary?
Why not just name eveything *Track 1*?

This just helps reduce clutter, and sort everything more efficiently

Actually, it does just the opposite.

But whatever.
It's most likely *Windows Media Player* kindly adding everything back for you.
In WMP, Tools -> Library and uncheck everything.

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Answer 3

Chris CA

Level 10

82,440 points

Aug 17, 2010 12:38 PM in response to wikedguy

It seems to me the problem is that iTunes doesn't actually edit the real metadata of the mp3 tracks, and stores them according to the metadata given when added.

When you first add a sing, the metadata is read and added to teh iTunes database file.
If you make changes to songs in iTunes, the database and the metadata is updated.
iTunes displays the databose info. When a song is played (or get info) iTunes rereads the tags and updates the databse if any changes were made to the metadata in the files outside of iTunes (like with WMP), iTunes will update and display this new info.

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Answer 4

wikedguy Author

Level 1

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Aug 17, 2010 12:55 PM in response to Chris CA

Hi Chris, thanks very much for getting back to me.
Sounds like a good suggestion - I don't generally use WMP, but it seems likely this could be the problem, having looked at it... for some reason it seems to also have a very up-to-date library of my music.
So I unchecked 'Retrieve additional information from the internet', which looks like the culprit. I'll see what happens, and check back.

Chris CA wrote:

I delete all the unnecessary metadata on the track: the album, genre, album artist, etc.

Really? Unnecessary?
Why not just name eveything *Track 1*?

This just helps reduce clutter, and sort everything more efficiently

Actually, it does just the opposite.

But whatever.

Maybe I didn't really explain myself properly. True, it reduces information for sorting.
But, it means when I go on to my iPod, rather than seeing a load of single tracks grouped under 'Greatest Hits', random albums I don't own in full, or compilations, I can see all the separate tracks for an artist grouped together. Which I'm sure you'll agree is simpler.

Thanks again for the help, I'll report soon.

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Answer 5

Katrina S.

Level 7

24,131 points

Aug 17, 2010 1:10 PM in response to wikedguy

+I don't generally use WMP, but it seems likely this could be the problem, having looked at it... for some reason it seems to also have a very up-to-date library of my music.+

Exactly, on Win 7 it automatically puts any music folders into its library. You need to go to WMP menu > file > Manage libraries and remove the itunes folder from it.
Also go to the Privacy, Library, and Security tabs in Options and make sure anything having to do with getting info from the internet is turned off. There are some checkmarks there that will let web pages launch WMP without you knowing - and that's when it randomly updates stuff without you knowing.

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