Multiple Artists and Genres per Song

I was going to reply but the original question was asked FOUR YEARS (and several iTunes versions) Ago.

But I will add that I run an online radio station for a hobby with automation software that uses iTunes for the library. I can do all sorts of categorizing of my music for the automation to use. Why should the automation software "reinvent the wheel" when iTunes does what it does for free?

I have no trouble labeling songs with multiple artists and I have made up my own genres. I have no problems doing what the original poster wants to do. But I'm still using iTunes 10 because I can't do some things in 11 and 12 that I can in 10.

Ty Lastrapes wrote:

Here's a well written article on why Apple REALLY needs to fix this.

Hello Ty,

Funny that this thread still has steam after almost 5 years!

I agree that Kirk's article that you linked is well-written, but it leaves the same puzzlement as did the earlier commentary in this thread: yes, we understand what you want in the database, but what do you want iTunes to do with it?

Take an example of a playlist where one track has three tokenized Artist tags. In iTunes Songs view, is there one Artist column or three? (Are there sub-columns?) If you sort the list by Artist does that track show once or three times? If you then play down the list does it play once or three times? Does the playlist total time and size count it once or three times? If you switch to Artist view, does the track appear under all three artists? If you now sync that playlist to a device that only has a single Artist field, what behavior would you like to see?

"I agree that Kirk's article that you linked is well-written"

Really? Just in first two lines ...

"iTunes – at least the part that manages media files – is simply a database."

seems to misconstrue what a database is, and even though iTunes' database may be relatively simple in structure its content and usage is not. You might as well say that Beethoven's 5th symphony is "simply a collection of notes".

"It reads information embedded in media files, and then presents that information in its windows."

which is at best misleading and in many senses plain wrong. iTunes reads information embedded in media files only when media is added to the library or when a song is played; otherwise it relies solely on the metadata held in the database. Updating the latter will cause some of these metadata elements to be updated within the media files, but the reverse is not true. The information presented in iTunes' user interface is always that contained within the database, not that contained in the media files (if different).

Although I'm sure that there are multiple areas in which iTunes' metadata management capabilities could be improved I'm not convinced that this would be of any help to the vast majority of iTunes users (and would probably reinforce the common suggestion that iTunes is already too complex for many users' needs). The kind of changes that I would like would probably be meaningless to others.

One of the early comments in this thread states that "The need for multiple genres and artists categorization is a necessity from anyone who has a diverse music collection". I'm not convinced by this: I have a reasonably large and diverse music collection yet have no issues in managing artist information using the existing Artist and Album Artist tags, and across two music libraries (one containing 5,000+ albums, the other 2000+ concert recordings), I have exactly two genres: "Popular" and "Classical" 😉. My third (spoken word) library is, by contrast, positively profligate in its usage of genres, having three different values - "Audiobook", "Radio Drama" and "Documentary".

Chris CA wrote:

So you expect Apple to research who wrote, produced, sang, played background piano, etc. and edit the metadata to add this info that the music labels did not include?

Apple cannot add this info as it is copyright protected.

I agree with you that it should up to the labels/producers to submit any relevant info when submitting an album, and it would make little sense for Apple to do the research themselves.

However, you seem to misunderstand what copyright is and how it works. Owning copyright for a song doesn't mean others can't provide info about the song or who worked on it. Unless the label had a special contract with Apple specifically stating that metadata couldn't be altered, it would be perfectly within Apple's rights to alter the metadata. They just shouldn't have to for practical reasons.

It sounds to me like billyzero is frustrated that iTunes doesn't have dedicated metadata tags for all the people involved in making an album. It sounds like he wants a drummer tag, a lead vocalist tag, etc. I would argue against that since that would require a near limitless number of tag fields, and that info can (and should) be added to the comment field when submitting metadata for an album.

Or maybe billyzero is saying something else? Maybe he is complaining that when labels do submit that info in the comments field, Apple is deleting it? I don't know since I don't have experience working with Apple, and billyzero was never clear about it.

It sounds to me like billyzero is frustrated that iTunes doesn't have dedicated metadata tags for all the people involved in making an album. It sounds like he wants a drummer tag, a lead vocalist tag, etc.

Yes, I believe that is a correct interpretation of his posts, which, by the way, are more than two years old.

Craig Volpe wrote:

....Apple still hasn't changed it.

Craig,

Content in this forum is primarily generated by your fellow users. Except for housekeeping purposes (to edit out ***********, abusive language, inadvertently posted personal info, and the like), Apple does not change anything.

ed2345 wrote:

Craig Volpe wrote:

....Apple still hasn't changed it.

Craig,

Content in this forum is primarily generated by your fellow users. Except for housekeeping purposes (to edit out ***********, abusive language, inadvertently posted personal info, and the like), Apple does not change anything.

Methinks Craig meant Apple has not yet changed iTunes to add all these tags/info.

Methinks Craig meant Apple has not yet changed iTunes to add all these tags/info.

Chris,

Re-reading Craig's post, I am sure you are correct.

I missed it the first time, since I mentally excluded the possibility that Apple would change this aspect of iTunes. 😀

Sorry for not being more clear. I meant Apple still hasn't changed the way they handle multiple artists and genres from how it was implemented when Felipead first posted about it in 2011.

Personally, I think adding a bunch of tags like billyzero suggested would be a bad idea. I don't expect them to, but I wouldn't if Apple added support for multiple artists using something like the semicolons people suggested earlier.

Although I do not know for how long, Itunes is close to behaving as expected. The "Artists" field in Itunes (and in many other media players, if not all) filters the "Album Artist" in your collection, not the song "Artist" metadata of the songs. If no "Album Artist" is present in the song's metadata, then Itunes correctly assigns the song to an artist, if and only if there is only one artist in the song's "Artist" metadata.

For example, let's say you have ripped a CD (-album1-) that is a compilation of "Various Artists", with one of the songs -song1- being a collaboration between two artists: artist X and Y. The song "Artist" metadata in -song1- can then be "X; Y" and the "Album Artist" is "Various Artists". Let's suppose you have another song: -song2- of the same artist X (of another album -album2-) so that the metadata of this second song is "X" for both the song "Artist" and the "Album Artist" metadata.

Naturally, the album ripped from the CD would be shown in the "Various Artists" category of Itunes. If you manually erase the metadata field "Album Artist" in this album, then it will not longer be viewed in the "Various Artists" category but rather on the "Compilations" category. In each of these two cases, only -song2- of -album2- would show up as a song pertaining to artist X in the "Artists" field in Itunes.

If you then manually change the "Artist" (yes, "Artist", not "Album Artist") metadata in -song1- to show only artist X (e.g. by erasing artist Y), then artist X would have associated with it two songs: -song1- and -song2-. This is the desired behaviour. The converse is also true: if you erase artist X from the metadata of -song1-, leaving only artist Y, then this song would show up in the artist's Y list of songs.

As you can see, the problem is that if the song has more than one artist in the "artist" metadata of the song, e.g. "X; Y; Z" then Itunes DOES NOT associate this song with either artist. Instead it either:
1) uses the information on the "Album Artist" metadata or
2) if not present, it shows in the "compilations" category.

Changing Itunes to associate to each artist X, Y and Z one song (independent of the "album artist" metadata) is, I assume, not a titanic endeavour. It is also not as simple as treating the semicolon like an "OR" but it can be managed like this. Why oh why does Apple does not implement this?

Bydisgn,

If you would like to suggest enhancements to Apple, you can use the iTunes Feedback page:

http://www.apple.com/feedback/itunesapp.html

You may submit your polite feedback to Apple here: http://www.apple.com/feedback/itunesapp.html

Has everyone here sent Apple a message about this sorely lacking feature? https://www.apple.com/feedback/

Suggestions here -> http://www.apple.com/feedback/

Hi Craig,

As you noticed in this thread, there are divergent opinions on that. 😮

You can make suggestions to Apple at the iTunes Feedback page:

http://www.apple.com/feedback/itunesapp.html