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iTunes 12 Tagging Issues

Quite a few changes have been made concerning tagging options and accessibility in iTunes 12—for the worse. While all traditionally available fields were still available in iTunes 11—regardless the media kind—, the new iTunes update removes many of them. Most options have been adjusted to better fit the respective media. And even though I'd agree that Episode # doesn't make much sense for a record, I would still use most of the remainingvalues for most of my media.

Batch tagging your metadata has basically become impossible for most tasks. And that's not just a little annoying—it's a pain. In fact, iTunes has become somewhat useless over night. Here are just a few examples of what I'm missing:

Maybe unlike others, I've always used the Grouping field for Movies (I group film series, e.g. Planet of the Apes). It's not possible anymore. Grouping has become unavailable for Movies in iTunes 12 (apart from editing the field row by row in List View). Yes, there still is List View—the only good news so far. I also set Track # (1 of 1) and Disc # (1 of 1) for Movies. They're gone, too, meaning I would have to open each movie separately in Subler or iDentify and set those values manually—four times each item in this example. Have you ever tried doing that for a couple of hundred movies?

Maybe unlike others, I've always used the Description, Show, and Episode ID fields for Music (I fill in album release notes, dates and venues for live recordings, among other things). It's not possible anymore. Description, Show, Episode ID, and many other fields have become unavailable for Music in iTunes 12.

This list goes on and on . . .

Oddly enough, I haven't even been able to batch tag the fields that iTunes has left us to play around with. When trying to edit the genre for a bunch of movies today, the error message was "Your selection contains more than one kind of media." (see image), which is, of course, also not true.

I wonder how other iTunes power users—and I really don't like that phrase—are dealing with this, and I'm looking forward to reading about your first impressions, experiences so far, as well as sharing reasonable workarounds.

As I said earlier in this thread (Tagging working differently in iTunes 12 ?): It more and more looks like they're trying to get rid of power users in order to make us buy stuff from the iTunes store instead of managing our own media with their software.

PS: Ripping a CD has become painfully slow, taking almost 20 minutes per album. But I'm hoping this is an issue Apple is actuallygoing to fix soon, while I'm not so sure about the others.User uploaded file

Posted on Oct 20, 2014 8:11 PM

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39 replies

Mar 15, 2017 2:53 PM in response to janonymous

I didn't find another thread on the same topic so…


Assumtions: Apple has taken more control of tag fields in iTunes to leverage them (e.g. Description, Grouping, Kind, Category…) for various app features and online services. They were not intended as custom fields, even though for a long time freely editable. I don't think developers did any of this out of incompetence; it's been on purpose to try to keep the iTunes paradigm running as it grows and grows. But…


Suggestion: They might be willing to add some permanently extraneous database fields via a future update if enough users request it. That would be fairly simple code-wise and would not affect Apple's own methods and plans for their app. I don't know about the rest of you, but appending text to the Comments field is miserably inadequate for customizing library info! Easiest for Apple (aside from doing nothing) would be just adding Custom1, Custom2, etc… There are much more elegant ways that would involve a LOT more work for the development crew. Obviously custom fields of any kind would have to display in Get Info (a Custom tab?) and in Smart Playlist criteria lists for this to be of any use.


Use Case: There are as many ways to use Get Info fields as there are users, but here's a common one from other topics here and forums elsewhere: iTunes Music Match (not iTunes Music) is a great way to clean up old ripped CD files in the library, but (I assume) it will overwrite my Genre and Composer data, which I use for custom values. I've got almost 20k songs in there. So, I can't use Music Match. I lose that sweet function and Apple loses my $25/yr. With a few open fields that Apple will never use, a script to move my Genre and Composer data to the new fields, and 30 seconds to edit my Smart Playlists I could risk Apple's matching/locker service.


If you agree: please use the Feedback link in iTunes (on a Mac it's under the iTunes menu) and request custom iTunes database fields for managing your media library your own way. Maybe paste a link to this topic in case they want to ignore it some more:P

Oct 21, 2014 3:01 PM in response to pomme4moi

I made exactly the same sad experience. No batch editing, missing of several fields which will make several of my smart playlists useless. And I posted my disappointment about V12.

And besides; I still miss coverflows and larger covers than the very tiny size limited ones as this was the case some felt centuries ago...


I don't know yet, what else needs to go away, until I will have to switch to something yet unknown and forget about iTunes.


regs. Heinz

Oct 23, 2014 2:43 PM in response to heinz_w

I found a way (thanks to turingtest2), The "old style" infobox known before V12, which allows to modify all fields for a multiple selection of records can be accessed while pressing shift and right-click > Get Info (or File > Get Info). (It's alt on a Mac.).

I do hope, that this remains and hope this does the trick for some of you too.


Heinz


NB: pomme4moi: Unfortunately I use Windows. Similar tasks can there be done using MP3tag. A great utility that does everything I can imaging around maintaining tags. However not being integrated into iTunes, it also means additional work to jump back and forth and re-update libraries over and over again...

iTunes 12 Tagging Issues

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