Multiple Artists and Genres per Song

where do I start ed? First, this is a post about how rediculous it is that iTunes can't seem to give credit to multiple artists by allowing them equal standing on songs they have collaborated equally on, and how iTunes only allows for one genre per song, when if you know anything about music you will realize that a lot of it has multiple genres and artists. Second ed, you have done nothing but argue against this, and more specifically against all the users on this thread. No one wants to listen to you because you have nothing to bring to this thread but things like "iTunes is not designed for a professional DJ. Its a consumer-grade freeware," "Using a variable number of new tags does not strike me as any more elegant than putting a bunch of text in a single field," and "I can assure you that most iTunes users will find that annoying," which no one cares about. This isn't for your oppinion of "im against anything that doesn't love iTunes," this is for everyone agreeing and putting forward new ways to improve the thing known as iTunes. So if you can't say anything to improve the system and are just responding to everyone the negative way that you are, then get off this site cause no one will want you on their thread. Im sorry for doing exactly what you're doing, but someone has gotta call you out on it. Oh yeah, and don't bother responding to me like I know you will try, because this is the first time I have been on this site, and after seeing the way a "level 6" conducts himself on threads, this is my last.

I understand your frustration with this. iTunes ***** for anybody who collects more then a few albums. I am an ameture DJ and I can't stand iTunes for music management. Before I recently began to use OSX, I used Mediamonkey 4 on Windows 7. This program does everything you are asking for and more. Just this week I found that someone had ported it to OSX using Wine. You can find it here. http://www.mediamonkey.com/addons/browse/item/mac-osx-mediamonkey/

It's not the prettiest of interfaces, but it's functionality is amazing. I've been using it to build playlists for DJ sets for years. It is constantly being improved. You will not be dissapointed. Just take the time to tag your music correctly then learn the power of autoplaylists and seperate libraries. I have s seperate library for my albums and one for my singles. I can create auto-playlists like "Genre: House; Tech;/ Year; 2007 - 2011/ Mood: Upbeat/ Occasion: Warm-up; Driving; Peak/ Rating: >3.5 Stars" or "Genre: Rock; New Wave/ Year: 1978-1986/ Rating: >4 Stars" etc. The options are limitless.

Now they just have to mac a Mac OS version and all my prayers will be answered.

basically, if you delimit the artists names by a common symbol like ';' then all sorts of options open up. 1. the list could be setup to show multiple instances of the same song (not the most important thing). or more importantly 2. If I browse by artist, it wont list 3 separate artists as one artist or "various". In the artist browser, I could look up the song by any of the contributing artists without using the search function.

The same principe for genre is true. This technique has already established by J-Rivers media center for windows and it is a much more advanced system than itunes and is perfectly intuitive.

Download j-rivers media center and check it out... it leaves nothing to be desired except that it is not on the mac.

Felipead, As you know, iTunes is not designed for a "professional DJ." It is consumer-grade freeware.

iTunes only allows one genre, but you can make it as complicated as you like, depending on what information you wish to include. I have genres in my library that look like "Funky/vocal/disco/club house," "Uplifting/progressive trance," and "Shoegaze/noise pop/pop/rock," and of course they will match on any of the words.

The multiple artists thing is a problem, and is in fact a subset of a bigger problem. Hip-hop fans would like the featured artist, classical fans would like the conductor, orchestra, and soloists, and so on. I cannot speculate why iTunes has not done more about this. But I would observe that iTunes is optimized for syncing iPods, most of which are real-estate limited to only display 3 fields (Artist, Title, Album) no matter how complicated you make the metadata for the tracks.

If you'd like to take one more kick at the can of feedback to Apple, you can do so here.

Ed

Keith, Using a variable number of new tags does not strike me as any more elegant than putting a bunch of text in a single field. However, if you would like to make a suggestion to Apple, you can use theiTunes Feedback page.

Kishore,

So the implication is that if you sort the list by artist, it will suddenly get longer, as additional instances of any multi-artist song will appear. I can assure you that most iTunes users will find that annoying.

However, if you wish to make a suggestion to Apple, you can use the offical iTunes feedback page: http://www.apple.com/feedback/itunesapp.html

Felipead, your post made me decide to send a suggestion to Apple and I decided to leave what I sent them here as well. I have made this template as a quick copy-paste deal so you guys can quickly submit this issue to Apple via their feedback page: http://www.apple.com/feedback/itunesapp.html

Feel free to edit this as needed, this was just a quick ten minute write up to get the point across to Apple. Please let Apple know that we demand these features in iTunes, wether you decide to use my template or your own.

---------------------------------------------------------

"The problem with iTunes is that it supports one single genre, and one single artist per song." - A concerned user nicknamed felipead addressed this issue on your forums.

It's true, going through any iPod that hosts music under the Genres; Classical, Rap, Techno, House, Dubstep, and similar genres, is a nightmare. Having to deal with making playlists to accommodate listening to all songs featuring a certain artist without fiddling with iTunes or iPod controls.

It's unsettling seeing two or more artists listed for an artists when it could be solved by simply allowing users to tag featuring artists so it shows the song under multiple artists and genres. This would keep the fluid feel of your already great product. I find it more upsetting that Windows media player has had this feature for years already.

Without a doubt you have been sent requests for better support for songs with multiple genres and artists, and I feel it's self destruction to make devices that hold up to 40,000 songs, but have no support for better grouping of songs. It's really just too infuriating searching for this music, and having to have duplicate songs to accommodate this issue.

I enjoy carrying my music library in it's entirety with me everywhere I go, but as an other non-DJ audiophile I demand these features for all the other audiophiles out there.

Looking forward to your support,

*YOUR NAME*

Felipead's issue in this thread:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3091571?start=0&tstart=0

the o\'some leo wrote:

I totally agreen, as I am also a big fan of electro music and there is this new song where there are four singers and I really quite like it but can't put all the artists names on this song on itunes and I think that it should be maybe a small improvement to make before innovating any further in products

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

Chris CA wrote:

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

What's the point of posting this over and over again? You are basically saying "Well, Apple is not going to do anything about this issue (which they don't seem to consider an issue) so just stop talking about it here, where everyone can read it, and send them feedback by clicking on this link. It's about the same as writing your feedback on a piece of paper and throwing it away, but please do that anyway".

Can anyone suggest a player that can handle metadata better than iTunes does?

muzito wrote:

Chris CA wrote:

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

What's the point of posting this over and over again?

Because people seem to not be able to read/understand the first post about it.

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?

Not sure what you mean by "associate." If a track has artist "X;Y;Z" and you sort the list by Artist, do you want the track to appear 3 times?

Anyway, if you want to make a suggestion to Apple, you can use this link:

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

Not sure what you mean by "associate."

If you choose to sort your library by artist, then this song should appear listed under each one of those artists, like so:

Artist A

-

-...

Artist X

-

song1

-

Artist Y

-

song1

-

Artist Z

-

song1

-

do you want the track to appear 3 times?

of course not -simultaneoulsy-, only you sort your library by "Artists" (other options being "recents", "albums", "songs", etc.) so that Itunes displays song1 if one selects either artist X, Y or Z.

Anyway, if you want to make a suggestion to Apple, you can use this link:

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

I already did, but there is a limit in the ammount of text you can place in the suggestion.

Ed, here is an example of exactly what everybody is talking about:

1. What do i Tag Gwen Stefani as, compared to No Doubt? One is POP, one is Alternative or Ska. Both have the same artiest's.
2. What do I tag Thug story featuring Taylor Swift and T-Pain as? Rap or Country?
3. What do I tag Over and Over featuring Tim McGraw and Nelly?
4. What do I catalog Queen as? Rock, Retro, 70's? Depending on my age, it's different.

My point is, there are _several_ songs that are considered crossover by nature, taste and diversity therefore, they appear in multiple genera's. (This may be why the Genre section is no longer in iTunes.)

But those genres don't share anything in common. For instance, tracks included in the "Techno/House" genre cannot be searched within the "Techno" or "House" genres.

Felipead,

If you type "techno" in the search bar, iTunes will match on tracks for both "techno" and "techno/house." In the column browser, however, they will appear as two independent genres.

As mentioned, you can make suggestions to Apple at the link provided.