Can't change artist name in iTunes 11

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 :)

Thanks iCcucify, this worked. Why the heck does iTunes 11 make these files read-only? I hope these can be globally changed, instead of one song at a time.

go to get info, then sorting, then make sure that album artist and sort album artist are the same.

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.

this worked. thanks!

That did the trick. TY.

This certainly helped me, but Apple needs to get someone with a brain to work on this!

What I found was a field called "Album Artist" that was causing the problems. The actual "Artist" field was correct. The idea that you have to do a Get Info to make these changes when you can still click and edit the name in the display as you used to in the previous release is absurd... It seems they could put some help text out there also... I have no idea how you guys found this, but thank you... This a huge find!

Apple is certainly not the same company it used to be... Quality is heading for the sewer!

Thank YOU!

This works well

I don't have windows explorer as I'm on a Mac. How do I fix this problem using a mac?

That was the ticket. TY.

This didn't help me at all. And when I checked later, all the folders, files, etc. had the read only square filled again. This never seems to work in Windows.