Bulk change of iTunes media type from music to audiobook.

I use audiobooks heavily, many of them originally purchased on CD and then copied to disk and iTunes. iTunes routinely categorizes them as "music," which leads to various problems, including having them intrude when music library is set to shuffle. This problem is described by others atCan't change media kind of multiple items.


It was possible to re-categorize a single track as audiobook - highlight track / Get Info / Options / change "media kind" from music to audiobook. But if you highlighted multiple items and attempted a bulk edit, the media kind would be stuck at music with no alternative.


Since it was easily fixable track by track, but I had hundreds if not thousands of affected tracks, so it would have taken the rest of my life to fix one by one, it seemed like the kind of thing that should be addressed with what I think of as a "Macro." A little searching led me to Applescripts and more specifically Doug's AppleScripts for iTunes at dougscripts.com. When I saw a change video kind script but not precisely what I needed, I emailed Doug and he sent me a test version for change media type to audiobook, and asked me to test it. I used it to change hundreds, if not thousands, of tracks from music to audiobooks. I assume he will post it at his site, and I recommend it. I have no affiliation with Doug - never heard of the site before today.

iPhone 7 Plus, iOS 10.2.1

Posted on May 21, 2018 1:34 PM

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7 replies

May 21, 2018 5:09 PM in response to turingtest2

I'm in iTunes 12.7.4.80 and High Sierra 10.13.4 and I can't change multiple iTunes items' media kind from music to Audiobook without using the Doug script. I don't know if this could have anything to do with the fact that my iTunes library used to be in iTunes for Windows and the iTunes media files were dragged over to my MacBook Pro from my PC. Doug said he also had at first thought that the problem had previously been solved, but I can testify that it is not solved (within iTunes itself) presently on my MacBook Pro.

May 29, 2018 12:59 PM in response to NaplesSteve

It seems I've neglected an observation in another thread in which the limitation you describe only occurred in a specific view. I ran into it the other day but couldn't find this thread at the time. Now I cannot find that one. Search has been broken. 😟


12.7.5.9 is out today. It might work better for you. Multi-track audiobook organization is still a mess without my sort name tweak.


tt2

May 21, 2018 1:45 PM in response to NaplesSteve

I have never knowingly seen "Doug" post here. In fact I have seen several iTunes scripting discussions that were only resolved on a different forum by non-iTunes helpers. I had one myself regarding an issue with an older script that was eventually only resolved through multiple posts by different people (and kind of more by hit and miss) and I strongly suspect if "Doug" had been around it would have been resolved in a single post.


Why can't you use the script you have?

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Bulk change of iTunes media type from music to audiobook.

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