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Gobbledygeek Author

Level 1

6 points

How to effectively rename songs and albums in iTunes (PC)?

Good day, everyone!

I'm sure this topic has already been broached, but I need a quick answer: on both my iPhone 4 and my iPhone 6, I have songs that aren't quite organized the way I'd like them to be, because for some reason, when I transferred them from the CD's they were on, in some cases, the album title wasn't recognized.

I now find myself with "Unknown albums" or "Unknown artists", and, in some cases, with "Track 01", "Track 02", etc... instead of the proper information.

I have tried to right-click on tracks in iTunes, to edit the information, but, a) it didn't work, and b), you can only select one track at a time anyway...

Just to give you one example, in the picture below, the album "Sounds From Nowhereville" was released by The Ting Tings, a band I love, of whom I have three other albums on the same device; by adding the proper Artist information, I'd manage to regroup all albums under the same Artist name, and, hopefully, listen to them in sequence.

I've had issues with syncing my Music library before, when all the music on my devices was wiped out and I had to manually put it back on, so I don't want to go down that route again, especially considering that I don't have any actual backup (I do have a library backup, the XML file, but not the actual songs) handy.

iPhone 6, iOS 11.0.1

Posted on Oct 1, 2017 11:24 AM

25 replies

the fiend

Level 7

22,554 points

Oct 6, 2017 12:28 PM in response to Gobbledygeek

Martin has neatly summarised what I've already told you, in my third post. If you choose to ignore good advice, it's up to you.

I will just try to emphasise the following in response to your comments:

if, say, you've got two albums by the same band, with one bearing the "Unknown Album" label, that album will be ignored when you want to listen to all songs by the same artist; you'll have to play the "Unknown Album" manually,

I have never known iTunes to be able to play everything by one artist if half of that artist's music is listed as unknown. Just how did iTunes (or your phone) work out that a particular unknown song, by an an unknown artist, belonged to one particular artist rather than another? It defies logic.

As for iTunes, I've always considered it to be needlessly complicated and counterintuitive to use. I may be wrong, but I really can't wrap my head around it.

Then re-read what both Martin and myself have written already.

For example, how come the offer to sync a library in iTunes with the actual content of the phone can result in the music on said phone being deleted.

Why not the other way around? After all, if that's what I wanted, I would simply delete the music.

Because that is how iTunes was designed.

Why can't iTunes offer to mirror the content on the phone with that in the Library?

Well, strictly speaking (the way you have written that), it is what iTunes is doing. (I realise that English is not your first language. That's all the more reason why you should carefully read what Martin and I have written, rather than being quick to dismiss us with your own pre-conceived ideas and interpretations.)

A Sync is making the content of the phone look like the Library. And that's why - if the songs are not in your Library, it deletes them from the phone.

Just accept that and ensure that the songs purchased from the iTunes Store directly on your phone are set to be added to your iTunes library (so sign into the store from your iTunes Library).

I suggested at the beginning that you need to ensure that music imported into your library from CD is not allowed to import as an unknown album. Rather than go on about unknown albums, take steps to prevent them being listed that way.

Gobbledygeek Author

Level 1

6 points

Oct 7, 2017 12:03 AM in response to martin1662

Hi,

I have found a couple software that will do that. None is free, though, so I've settled for Anytrans, because apparently the trial version doesn't have the limitations the others seem to have.

I'll tell you how it went... Thanks for the tip!

Gobbledygeek Author

Level 1

6 points

Oct 7, 2017 12:23 AM in response to the fiend

Hi,

Aside from the slightly condescending tone in your reply, which I'm not sure I like very much, I think we are not talking about the same thing: you seem to think iTunes is the answer to all syncing issues, whereas I think its built-in limitations are the very reasons why I started this discussion in the first place.

No, iTunes doesn't mirror the content of the phone in its Library, it does the exact opposite: it enforces the content of said Library, however outdated or incomplete, onto the phone, without asking the user if he/she would like to keep some of the content on the phone at all.

Picture this: you are in an actual library, where they lend books, and because the index hasn't been updated in years, you would find yourself restricted to borrowing only the books that were added to the library years, if not decades, ago, even though new books have been added to the collection, but not yet properly indexed?

You see those books on the shelves, but when you try to borrow them, the librarian would then tell you, "Sorry, those are not in my index, you can't have them. Why don't you take those older, well thumbed-through books instead?"

Again, it makes no sense to me not to take into account what's actually already residing on the phone. What you call a feature, I call a limitation, and in this case, it's not mere semantics.

As for the Unknown album issue, well, when I placed the CDs in the SuperDrive of my MacBook Pro all those years ago, I never thought iTunes would botch the job of importing them with the proper info.

A quick example: back then, I also imported the content of a double Iron Maiden live album (Rock in Rio, if you're interested), and iTunes managed to label one of the songs "The Tooper" instead of "The Trooper". I checked, and the song is referenced on the album and in the jacket as "The Trooper" (even Windows Media Player and VLC say so), but apparently, iTunes didn't have its glasses on when it imported the album.

So, I do appreciate all the suggestions you and others have made in this discussion, but most of them fell short when it came to solving my specific problem.

For what it's worth, yesterday night, I let iTunes sync the content of my phone with the Library (i.e. remove all songs from the phone), then proceeded to manually put all the music back on again, after renaming the Unknown albums by their rightful names (two of them, in all) and pointing iTunes at the backup folder they were in on my PC.

Guess what? One of the albums is still considered Unknown by iTunes, and the other has altogether disappeared from the phone.

I transferred 498 songs yesterday, 10 of which are just nowhere to be found on the phone...

Features, you said...?

Gobbledygeek Author

Level 1

6 points

Oct 7, 2017 11:33 AM in response to Gobbledygeek

Well, I said I'd keep you posted...

It didn't go well. Actually, it didn't go at all...! 😁

Anytrans installed alright, but it keeps crashing on me every time I try to use it, no matter how. I'll uninstall it and try again (I'm posting this reply from Windows 8.1, on a separate partition on the Windows 10 PC) tomorrow, but I'm not hopeful...

I've already tried iExplorer (not freeware, with a limitation to 10 songs before you have to buy a license), but I'd really like to find a free way to solve this issue, if I can.

Gobbledygeek Author

Level 1

6 points

Oct 9, 2017 12:26 AM in response to the fiend

Sorry, you're right, I should have added a precision here: "A free THIRD-PARTY way..."

Obviously, I'm not smart enough to use iTunes properly, so I was looking for something more simple to use.

Neither AnyTrans nor iExplorer will do, so I'm still searching.

If you're interested, I managed to add the missing 10 songs to the iPhone, but it involved so many manipulations that I think I should receive a Nobel Prize for my accomplishments.

I still have a mislabeled Iron Maiden song, though, one that iTunes says couldn't be synced because it's not recognized, but is still sitting in the iPhone.

I don't mind, I can still listen to it, and I seldom look at the screen when I do, so it could be called anything iTunes cares to call it, so long as it's there for me to listen to if I want to...

Wawak23

Level 1

4 points

Dec 21, 2017 10:25 AM in response to Gobbledygeek

I had a similar issue. I write and record my own music and when importing them into iTunes and editing the song info it would leave them in the Unknown Artist folder. I went to preferences and changed the box to automatically keep iTunes music organized. When I added the song it was an unknown artist, after editing it, iTunes didn't move the file. After clicking the box it's now organized.