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How do I stop i-tunes from changing the genres for my songs without my consent?

Lately, itunes has been taking the genres I've set for my songs and changing them without my consent or say so. I change them back to what I want, i-tunes changes it back to what it wants, etc..

For example, I might list something as "Rock", but i-tunes decides it's "Pop" or "Alternate Rock" and edits my file's meta-data unilaterally. I might decide I want a category called "Christmas Music", but i-tunes decides the genre is "Holiday Music". I even have a few songs labeled "Urban", and i-tunes tries to change them to "Hip-Hop/Rap" or "Rap/Hip-hope". I took a lot of time with my large music collection to get this stuff exactly the way I wanted it- simplified. I-tunes is screwing it up.

This is *my* music. I even bought it all legally on a limited budget. I get to decide what genre I want it listed as.

Is there a setting or something I can change to get i-tunes to stop messing my music genre data? Or do I have to find a new music player?

I've got a long suffering ipod classic I was thinking of replacing at some point, but I may leave the i-tunes ecosystem entirely over this instead. To make things worse, my ipod with it's troubled syncing and broken buttons now has to deal with constantly recopying files with new genres every time I sync and itunes or I have changed something in our constant man versus machine battle- just try have hundreds of songs recopied each time without an error on something that barely can handle normal syncing after reconnecting 10 times or so every sync because it doesn't take the first 9 times.

I don't want to fight my music player. I just want the thing to work and do what I instruct it to do. Either that or I'm going to have to rename it "HAL" and start calling myself "Dave" ala 2001: A Space Odessy. Because this thing seems to be turning on me. 😉

Windows Vista

Posted on Dec 6, 2012 1:27 PM

70 replies

Dec 13, 2012 10:18 AM in response to turingtest2

I spent about two hours on the phone with Apple, and apparently this is the new normal.

Any song that is purchased from iTunes, will default back to the original genre that it was listed as when purchased. If you do change it in your library, it WILL default back the next time you log in to the iTunes store.

If enough people complain, maybe they will revert back to the old way.

Dec 13, 2012 10:28 AM in response to Tooltomus

Well that really stinks... good thing that the vast majority of my music is CD imports, and what I have purchased digitally has been mainly from Amazon! I would kill somebody if the last 7 years of buiding this library exactly the way I wanted it was screwed up without warning (or even WITH warning) by some knucklehead decision by Apple.

turingtest2

Level 10

272,795 points

Dec 13, 2012 10:31 AM in response to Tooltomus

I can see why the genre would revert if you redownloaded the track but I can't see the point of "updating" data a user has edited. I've tried signing in and out of the store, opening and closing iTunes and renabling the listing of Cloud purchases. Hasn't changed yet... If it does I'll certainly file a bug report as well as submitting feedback.

tt2

Dec 13, 2012 2:37 PM in response to CharmCityCrab

It's getting worse. Now itunes is changing ALBUM NAMES and clearing PLAY COUNTS. The example I found is a purchased compilation of the first four Styx albums, which I spent hours separating out into the the original albums and track orders because the albums were not separately available for purchase. Now it's taken one of the tracks, reverted it back to the compilation name, and cleared it's play count. The others are just a matter of time.

I saw it syncing over 50 tracks to my ipod that it'd make some modification to- at this point, I don't trust that I can even keep track of what it's doing and repair it anymore. I notice the genre stuff immediately because of the genre screen, but who knows what else it is doing. Now that I've seen the change album name and cleared play count on one track, how do I know what else is being changed that I'll only notice later? I have over 12,000 tracks. I can visually scan them all 12 times a day to see what itunes is doing and reverse it. And even if I could, I'm not going to fight a daily battle where we keep reversing each other's changes.

I've had enough. How do I triage this? Can I separate itunes and prevent it from contacting Apple's servers somehow so I can still listen to my collection and sync to my ipod while I wait to either determine which music player I'm switching to or for Apple to reverse their position on this?

Itunes 11 is literally destroying hours upon hours I've spent organizing my stuff, and clearing playcounts I can never recover.

Dec 13, 2012 2:40 PM in response to CharmCityCrab

Itunes has cleared playcounts on approximately 400 songs.

I hate Apple with a burning passion at this moment.

Even Microsoft wouldn't pull something like this.

turingtest2

Level 10

272,795 points

Dec 13, 2012 2:55 PM in response to CharmCityCrab

MIght not be too late to restore some of the information. First thing to do is turn off Keep Organized. That way iTunes won't rename tracks when it gets different data. You can restore your last library file from the previous iTunes Libraries folder which would recover play counts but if metadata has been changed in the files then iTunes will reveal over time. If iTunes has moved files around some may no longer be where the old library expects to find them. I have a script called FindTracks at http://samsoft.org.uk/iTunes/scripts.asp that can often repair broken links, but then that will bring back the corrupt metadata. 😕

tt2

Dec 13, 2012 3:01 PM in response to CharmCityCrab

Apple censored a thread about them changing album titles and clearing playcounts. They're trying to cover this up. If any of you write for tech sites or know anyone who does- get the information out there.

Chris CA

Level 10

82,434 points

Dec 13, 2012 3:12 PM in response to CharmCityCrab

CharmCityCrab wrote:

Apple censored a thread about them changing album titles and clearing playcounts. They're trying to cover this up.

Wait, let me get my tin foil hat on...

Okay.

More than likely the thread ended up a big rant.

Any chance you have fired up Windows Media player lately?

In the past, it has changed ID3 tags/music info.

iTunes does not update song info until the song is actually played (or get info) so it looks like iTunes is doing it when WMP had already changed the data.

This is what used to cause the problem.

In WMP 12, Windows 7

Ogganize > Options > Library.

Uncheck everything.

If it has already changed the info, you will have to change it back.,

Dec 13, 2012 3:55 PM in response to Chris CA

No, I had not used Windows Media Player prior to experiencing this problem. When told it might be doing it, I fired it up only to verify that all options to check for data were turned off (Which they were), basically exactly the procedure ChrisCA just outlined. This is not WMP doing this, it's itunes.

I've heard references to old itunes library files being archieved. Does anyone know what I'm looking for and how to revert to one of the old ones? What are the file names and where are they stores in the Windows file system? I'm going to try to restore my play counts that way.

In the meantime, I've turned off and deleted genius, blocked the itunes store using parental controls, unchecked options relating to sharing library info with Apple, etc.. Anything else I can or need to do there? Is there a way to block Apple's servers in my host file?

Dec 13, 2012 4:11 PM in response to CharmCityCrab

Also, I would like to note that I've never had the "let itunes organize my music" option checked- ever. Not in five years. I double checked just now, it's not checked. They are doing even though I explicitly had the option turned off. They've really violated my trust here.

turingtest2

Level 10

272,795 points

Dec 13, 2012 4:27 PM in response to CharmCityCrab

This is my standard approach to restoring an earlier database...

Empty/corrupt library after upgrade/crash

In the Previous iTunes Libraries folder should be a number of dated iTunes Library files. Take the most recent of these and copy it into the iTunes folder. Rename iTunes Library.itl as iTunes Library (Corrupt).itl and then rename the restored file as iTunes Library.itl. Start iTunes. Should all be good, bar any recent additions to or deletions from your library.

See iTunes Folder Watch for a tool to catch up with any change in the media folder since the backup file was created.

When you get it all working make a backup!

Windows Media Player has been known to start up in the background triggered by a control on a web page. Unlike iTunes, WMP comes with features that attempt to identify your songs and amend the metadata based the All Music Group database. Those features are turned on by default, you have to actively turn them off. WMP is looking more & more like the culprit. Back in XP it wouldn't ever touch AAC files, but assuming you have Windows 7 there is no reason they would neccessarily be immune.

That fact that you don't let iTunes organize the files gives some more hope. If the files are in a standard <Artist>/<Album>/## <Name> format my script TagFromFilename might be of some use.

tt2

Dec 13, 2012 8:02 PM in response to turingtest2

Thank you for the information. Unfortunately, my last old itunes library file is from weeks ago, which is almost an eternity when you listen to hours upon hours of music a day. Falling back to that would be a hard decision to make. I wish there was a way to simply fall to it for certain files and not all of them.

I understand on an Apple forum, the tendency is going always be to blame a Microsoft product. But I confirmed that the settings on Windows Media Player are all as they're supposed to be and prohibitted the behavior you're discussing after noticing the problem, and the problem continued after that. Moreover, Apple has apparently confirmed this issue on the phone to someone who posted here, and said it is a new feature. Several people have noticed this issue, and none of them were having it before "upgrading" to itunes 11. Also, I'm still back on Vista, if that makes a difference- as far as I know Vista's version of media player doesn't even recognize AAC files- that codec was only included in WMP by default beginning with Windows 7.

We were sold on the idea that music downloads were the replacement to CDs- a product that people bought and owned, and that pirating would be stealing. But Apple is treating our music libraries as if they own them and not us- the equivalent of breaking in and rearranging people's CD collections, maybe leaving a few scratches, changing cases, whatever they want to do. I almost feel violated, to be honest. I'm pretty upset with this.

Music is probably my primary forum of entertainment and I was very happy with itunes and my ipod (Apart from the fact that the ipod is failing and needs to be replaced- understandable given that it's been a constant companion for five years and suffered numerous falls and the like). But this has really changed my perspective in a major way. I was pretty angry about it, and now I'm mainly just sad. I feel betrayed. Maybe a little over melodramatic, but this is something I put a lot of time into over the years, and I didn't ask for this to happen. They could have at least warned us and give us an opt-out, or given us a chance not to upgrade or switch to something else before our data was wiped.

I mean, I can get the genres back the way they are supposed to be eventually. But how do you get the playcounts back to where they need to be for hundreds of files when you don't know what they were to begin with, can't manually set playcounts (I know about the play the last second of a song repeatedly trick, but I don't know if I want to do that for 500 files to get to the right numbers that I can't even ascertain), and so on and so forth. Even if I could get all that right somehow, I'd still wind up resetting the "last played" date to the day of in doing so, which would throw off a bunch of stuff.

I've already had to disabled the itunes store, genius, and other features just to keep this from getting worse.

I just don't know where to go with this from here.

I have a hard time with stress and anxiety, and music is usually an escape from all that. Now it's the source of it. Apple takes pride in having stuff that just works and isn't a source of stress and frustration the way Windows or Linux or other products have often historiclaly been for people. Well, now they're more Microsoft than Microsoft in some ways. Why can't a tech company ever leave well enough alone, focus on stability and customer choice, and get out of the way? Why do they always try to force transitions that people don't want to make without giving people a choice?

turingtest2

Level 10

272,795 points

Dec 14, 2012 3:21 AM in response to CharmCityCrab

I'm not partisan, I don't own a Mac. When I first started having issues with iTunes organization I came here looking for answers. Not finding them I started working things out for myself and stuck around to share what I'd learned. It's not that I want to blame Microsoft in particular but I've been helping out here for around 5 years, Chris 7, and it would seem that we both agree on the basis of experience that it is the most likely culprit. If you are certain it can be ruled out then we can move on. I'm interested in trying to understand the issue and, if at all possible, help you and anyone else affected find a resolution.

It is unfortunate that you don't, I assume, have a complete backup of your library from a point before things went wrong that you could restore. I strongly urge you to make one now.

I would take the report that "Apple has apparently confirmed this issue on the phone to someone who posted here, and said it is a new feature." with a dose of skepticism. There is a huge user base for iTunes out there and while something is obviously going wrong for you I'm fairly sure that if were being repeated for all other users we'd be hearing much more about it. In contrast the missing display duplicates feature has been widely reported and smaller numbers of users have complained of not being able to change the media kind to podcast. Both issues were addressed in the recent update.

My admittedly small but concrete experiment has yet to yield a confirming result. If it does you'll be the second to know.

While I'm scratching my head trying to make sense of things I recall another potential issue regarding genres. The ID3 tagging scheme includes some predefined genres such as Rock, Pop, Blues etc. which are stored not as text but as a numeric value. When the tag is read the value is converted via a lookup table into the correct localized genre. A while back one build started listing the numbers instead of the text for certain genres. Some form of corruption of this mechanism could, perhaps, explain that part of your problem. If there is a pattern of genre A has become B, C has become D and E has been left alone that would lend weight to the idea.

It's possible to alter most values in iTunes via script. I recently wrote a script called SyncStats to help another user recover play stats from a manually managed iPod into her iTunes library. If the correct data still exists somewhere then we might be able to find a way to restore it into your library. If iTunes isn't managing the file & folder names then, on the basis on my experience, there shouldn't be any good reason why temporarily reverting to the pre-upgrade database (which will be upgraded again) to have a look around, then restoring today's, would cause any problems. If all is backed up you should have nothing to lose.

tt2

Dec 14, 2012 5:14 AM in response to turingtest2

First of all, I am the one who posted that comment about talking to an Apple representative who confirmed this.

In the upgrade to iTunes 11, Apple has added many new genres and sub-genres of music. This resulted in some existing previously purchased songs to be converted over to the new genre or sub-genre when connecting to the iTunes store.

Turingtest2 is correct by saying to turn off "Keep Organized" that seems to have stopped my genres and song names from changing now. Thank you.

But the playcounts HAVE reverted to zero on any song I have that had a name change or genre change.

That *****, but I can live with it.

turingtest2

Level 10

272,795 points

Dec 14, 2012 9:28 AM in response to Tooltomus

I've just compared the file Localizable.strings from the US English versions of iTunes 10.7 and 11.0.1. Both have exactly the same text entries for built-in genre descriptions.

However, this line is suggestive...

"522.009" = "Genres from the iTunes Store are being downloaded. Are you sure you want to quit?";

What I can't find is any feature that might start "genres" to start downloading, whatever that might mean.

tt2

How do I stop i-tunes from changing the genres for my songs without my consent?