"Get Info" changes album name and relocates file to that folder

When Music accesses the Song Info data it will read any embedded metadata and update the library with the new information it finds and, if the Keep media folder organized option is enabled, it will also move the file to reflect this new information. At a guess there has been a moment when more tracks have been selected than intended while an edit was made. Perhaps the library has been restored to an older version with the right details, but discovers the wrong ones when tracks are accessed.

Do you have backups? Is it only the album name that is changed? Do you have a sense of how many files could be affected? Turn off the option to keep the media folder organized. It may be possible to read data from the file path to repair damaged files.

tt2

As I said before I think the damage is already done and captured in the tags of individual files. Music is just catching up when it has cause to check the tag, as it would during playback or when you call up Song Info. Inspect the file properties in Finder rather than Music and see if I'm right.

Anyway, if you turn off Keep organized then accessing the tag shouldn't cause the path name to change. I'm just working on an AppleScript right now that will parse the file path of the form <Some Path>/<Album Artist>/<Album>/[D-]## <Name>.<Ext> and update Album Artist, Album, Disc Number, Track Number, and song Name, if the implied value from the path is different from the value known by Music. I'm still developing it but it seems to work as intended so far. Music/iTunes will replace certain invalid characters with _ so I'm thinking there is the potential there to "fix" things that aren't really wrong. If I was using this to add tag details to tracks in .wav format I'd probably update Artist as well as Album Artist, but perhaps that is a refinement for another day. The path uses Album Artist, or Artist if Album Artist is blank, or Compilations if part of a compilation is true. And right there is another edge case to worry about. Compilations in path implies Album Artist is Various Artists.

What is this new album title that everything is being set to with your library? I could make it so the script only makes a correction when it finds that value, and doesn't try to correct anything but the album title. That might make it a little more efficient and less of a risk to run.

tt2

So I've made some progress with my script, which shouldn't now accidentally copy in substituted underscores for example, or set the artist to Compilations, but it would still be useful to get a clearer picture of exactly what the details of your case are before I finalise and post it somewhere you could download. My Windows versions of such scripts typically offer a track-by-track confirmation mode for testing that the script does what you want with some sample data, after which you run it again in automatic mode without confirmations so it can do the job quickly. Do you want something similar or is it enough that you can test with a small sample first and review the effects in Music and Finder? A more refined version of the script might include something that controls which fields are allowed to be updated.

tt2

And is it only the album that changes? I.e. a track might move from:

../This Band/That Album/01 First Track.mp3

to:

../This Band/NOW That's What I Call Music! 110/01 First Track.mp3

Or does the first folder also become Compilations?

And did you check to see if you can see the wrong album details in Finder?

tt2

OK. I'll try to tidy up the dialogs a little bit and will post it later tonight (UK time) or sometime tomorrow. In the meantime turn off Keep organized... if you haven't already done so, and ideally backup the entire library to another drive for security.

tt2

I've posted the script to https://samsoft.org.uk/iTunes/tagfromfilename.asp, and tested that I can download it and run the downloaded script on my M1 MacBook Air. Please test with a small sample of tracks you know to be affected first to make sure it works as intended. There is no feedback while it is running which might be an issue when running big batches so you might want to work in the songs view with groups of a few hundred at a time. Please keep an eye out for any unwanted and unexpected changes to other fields. I've made the script generic for now, but I can go in and limit it so that only the album title could be updated, or explain how you might do that for yourself.

tt2

Download TagFromFilename.zip, open that to unpack TagFromFilename.scpt, double-click the script to open it with Script Editor. Select some tracks to work with in Music. Click the Play button in Script Editor to run the script. Follow the prompts.

tt2

You're welcome. 🙂

tt2