Can't change artist name in iTunes 11

Ah... another brilliant "feature" of iTunes 11! There are too many stupidities in this new version to even attempt to itemize here, but this one is truly amazing. I ran into this problem after buying some classical music from the iTunes Store. The tracks had the composer's name in the "artist" field and nothing in the "composer" field. Changing the contents of "artist" seems to work, as icsbicr noted, but then if you play the track, or do Cmd-I, or various other things, the artist changes back to the original (and, in this case, incorrect) content. If someone at Apple thinks we ought not to be allowed to change "artist" for purchased content, then at least they ought to prevent us from doing it right away instead of seeming to change it and then later changing it back.

So here's how to fix it. You don't want to mess with Mickey Mouse circumventions like "various artists" and "part of a compilation" (as suggested in https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4607365?start=0&tstart=0), because those tags are INCORRECT. If you want the information to be correct, you've got to change the tags in the music file itself. I realize this is a huge pain, but Apple doesn't seem to care too much about causing their customers big pains. I used a product called Fission from Rogue Amoeba, though there are probably plenty of other products which will do the same thing.

You need to be careful so you don't get the iTunes data base out of sync with the file system structure. What I did was copy (not move) the files from the iTunes folders (use "Show in Finder" from the context menu if you're not sure where they are) to another folder somewhere and then deleted them from iTunes. Then I used Fission to edit the tags in the file to show the correct information and saved the files to another folder (keeping the original files as they were, just in case of trouble). Then I added the files with the edited tags to iTunes. The only small problem I can see is that the tracks no longer show up in the "Purchased" list, but I can live with that.

Good luck.

I'll repost this at the top so people will see this right away instead of trolling and trying a 100 different ways that don't work. From above poster:

alasdairw

I fixed it:

Right click on the song/movie, show in windows explorer, select all songs from album, right click, properties, untick read only in attributes.

THIS WORKS

Message was edited by: PoppaWoody

I've figured out a solution to your problem which I also had this problem to begin with.

• Go to the song that you want to edit.
• Right-click the song and click on "Show in Windows Explorer."
• Now right-click on the song file that you want to change the song information that's linked to the song you want to change to begin with.
• Click on "Properties."
• At the bottom of the list where you see Attributes, uncheck the bow where you see "Read-only."

Now you should be able to change your song information on iTunes 11.

Cheers!

OK. This is the solution to your problems. To change the information of a song on iTunes 11, you need to (mostly like iCrucify said):

• go to the song you want to edit the information of.
• right-click the song and click "Show in Windows Explorer".
• right-click the song title in the new window that should have popped up. click "properties.
• at the bottom of the newest window, uncheck the "read-only" box in the attributes section.
• (now what's different)...change the information of the song at the top of the page where it says the artist and the title of the song (ex:David Guetta - Titanium) to what you want
• click "OK" at the bottom
• when you doubble-click the song to play it, it will now show an exclamation point; it will ask you if you want to locat the song. click "Locate"
• then find the song on a window that pops up simmilar to the window that popped up when you clicked "Show on Windows Explorer". doubble left-click the song.
• this song's information can now be changed directly on iTunes 11 by clicking on the song you want to edit once, waiting a second, then left-clicking it again (to prevent from just playing the song)
• Type in the desired info, click "enter", and you're set!

Hope this helps. It may seem (and be) kind of a roundabout route to the solution, but I know it works.

Same here!! It bugs the crap out of me! I listen to foreign music and prefer that the name of the artist be in that language. Im picky that way. lol So when I buy albums from the US itunes, of course the name is converted into English and it bugs me so bad! lol Hey Apple! Change it back!

Anyone else have this issue as well? Any fixes?

Thanks!

Emma

the easiest way I found to fix this is to view my music by artist, find the artist you wish to edit on the left hand side of the screen, right click on said artist and click "get info" here you can edit the info.

I think you misunderstood the point of the problem. Yes, we can change the artist, but if it's a purchased track from the iTunes Store it doesn't stay changed. At some later point it changes back to the original (often incorrect) value. (I'm not absolutely sure that being purchased from the Store is what characterizes the problem, but so far that's when I've experienced it.)

I have this problem. If you go to Music/iTunes/iTunes Media/Music, it will show all of your artists. If you go into one of these you find the albums by this artists, them songs inside the albums folders. What is happening is that when you edit the sonf info, even if it says it's changed in iTunes, it won't change in the files and therefore it doesn't sync to your device.

Took me a while to find the correct resolution and thanks to the other poster who put this here:

Right click on the song/movie, show in windows explorer, select all songs from album, right click, properties, untick read only in attributes.

THIS WORKS🙂

ok this worked for me. i created an aac copy of the tracks that needed to be fixed and you can edit those to your liking! but having 2 copies of the same song annoyed me so the down side is that i did have to go back and delete the originals

Ok I had the same problem. I changed the artist but it never could sync properly to my iPHONE.

so here's the fix . Select the songs press command-i (get info).

MAKE SURE IT IS NOT PART OF A COMPILATION!!!!!. THIS WILL OVERRIDE THE ARTIST'S NAME.

After I unchecked part of a compilation it just worked... The 85th time was the charm!!

HTH

I've been having the problem forever where edited tags eventually revert back to their previous values. I've looked at the "uncheck read-only box" fix above, but this box was never checked to begin with. Anyone come up with anything else?

My problem was:

1) The artist name for one album was shown twice, i.e. instead of "John Doe" it showed "John Doe John Doe"

2) The artist name for another album was in capital letters

When I selected the songs and CMD-i and changed in case 1) to just "John Doe" or in case 2) changed the capitalization, in both cases it reverted immediately to the previous, incorrect state. When I changed to something random, it worked, but when after that, I tried to change to the correct spelling, it again reverted back to the incorrect variant.

I tried to change the tags with VLC, but the "Save metadata" button was grayed out. So I used an app called Tagger, http://bilalh.github.com/projects/tagger/.

1. I went to the songs in Finder (right click -> Show in Finder)

2. I copied the mp3 files to a backup folder

3. I deleted the songs from iTunes (incl Move files to Thrash)

4. I edited the tags in Tagger

5. I added the songs to iTunes library

6. The artist names were now correct (and also synced to iPhone)

I'm running Itunes 11.0.4 on Mac OS 10.6.8.'

Hello everybody!

I had the same problem and it wasn't about read only.

There is another solution to that and you might prefer it to the tagging one. If you simply convert the original files of the disc you've bought / want to change to mp3 files and change the folder where you save it, iTunes won't recognize it anymore as the original album.

Detailed explanation:

1. I copy (better cut, or you'll have it double later) the original m4a files from the bought album into a new folder

2. I convert them into mp3 (free programs, easy to find, like free m4a to mp3 converter), takes about one minute for a whole album

3. I add the converted mp3 files to iTunes (you might want to delete the original files first from iTunes which won't work anymore anyhow, if you did the cut in the beginning)

4. I sync my iPhone. Make sure that, when sync starts and iTunes asks you if you want to transmit new files from your phone (which indeed aren't new, just the ones that are still on your phone from before) to say no, or you'll have everything twice again.

P.s.: if the new folder (where the final mp3 files will be) is organized into artist and album (just create different folders), mine was recognized immediately and sorted correctly. But anyhow, now you can change whatever pleases u in iTunes and it won't change back with synchronization :)

Rudybeet has it right. In most cases it is a 2 second fix just look for the file in windows go to properties and uncheck read only.

The solution to the bigger problem is go to the folder that contains all of your music and go to properties and then uncheck read only. It will apply the settings to every file in every sub folder.