iTunes 12 - old style Get Info using not working

Access to the "old style" metadata editors has been dropped from iTunes 12.1 - I suspect that it was left in 12.0, with the shift right-click option, only because the new style editors were somewhat unstable/unfinished. In most cases all the fields that were available pre iTunes 12 are available in 12.1. Admittedly, the layout is a little counter-intuitive as you may have to scroll up/down, or expand the window by dragging one of its corners, to see everything. One issue that some have noted is that the available metadata elements are now more constrained based on media kind - for example, track and disc number fields that used to be universally available are no longer displayed or editable for TV Shows and Movies. There are also some strange inconsistencies - for example, that the Description element for audiobooks is only available for single items but not for groupings of two or more items, including albums.

For Music it looks like 12.1 has all the same fields available as were in iTunes 11. For a single song you get this (Details and Sorting tab):

and for an album (or any selection of two or more songs) the corresponding tabs are:

Depending on the fields you use for your smart playlists you may find that the editors in iTunes 12.1 will work fine, though it may take a while to get used to the new layout. If there still is a "back door" to the old style editors in 12.1 I've not seen any reports of what it is!

Those other fields are still editable in songs view as long as the column is displayed - you can double click in the relevant "cell" and start typing. Obviously, though, this doesn't fully emulate pre-iTunes 12 behavior as you can only edit this metadata one item at a time.

This feature - or lack thereof - has been driving me a little nuts. I was absolutely positive that I had found the ability to use the classic menu for the "get info" feature by using the "shift-click" combination as well. However, like you, at some point it was no longer working for me and I was unsuccessful in my search for information on the Web. I thought I had merely forgotten the "key combination". So it is with considerable disappointment that it seems the feature is no longer available in the 12.1 update! :-(

Had I not stumbled across your post - I would have had no way of knowing - so thanks for posting your question.

Mitch

OK, I still cannot get to two fields: "Year" and "Grouping" to add them to a new song (or audiobook in my case). I can show the columns in list view and can edit the values of old records, but cannot enter new data for my new records. I use the year field for the year the book was written (i.e. The Count of Monte Cristo was written in 1844 which is important, but I do not care that the Audiobook has a "Release Date" of 2008). The Grouping field is used to categorize my audiobooks (i.e. Classics, Tarzan Adventures, NUMA Files, etc.).

Since I have several thousand entries in my iTunes library, I am not really interested in going through and changing my data to the fields that Apple in all their wisdom (or stupidity) have decided that I should use.

Does anybody have any ideas how to access the fields that are still in the database when adding new entries to my iTunes Library?