Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Metadata - Would like to tag music this way. Help!

P

pgamboa

macrumors newbie
Original poster
May 9, 2012
5
0
Hello All,

I am a new member here but have been a reader for a long time. I have finally decided to try iTunes Match. I have about 18K songs. A good majority of my library consists of Billboard Top 100. It goes from 1959 - 2014. I would like to properly tag all my music so they contain album artwork, and any other proper tags. However, I would like to keep each year as an "Album" or "Compilation" and in the same order as they are listed in the Billboard Top 100. So...Song #1 in that year would be listed first in my "Compilation" or "Album". Trying to figure out if I need to retain track # to match this rather than using track # from their respective albums.

I have been messing with Music Brainz Picard and still trying to figure if I need to keep the track # to correspond with the 100 list. For example, track #1 would be the #1 song for that year, track #100 would be the #100 song for that year. Make sense?

I would like to keep album cover for that specific album, but still tied to the Billboard list for that year.

Can anyone shed some light, ideas, thoughts, or suggestions please?

Thanks in advance!
 
pgamboa said:
Hello All,

I am a new member here but have been a reader for a long time. I have finally decided to try iTunes Match. I have about 18K songs. A good majority of my library consists of Billboard Top 100. It goes from 1959 - 2014. I would like to properly tag all my music so they contain album artwork, and any other proper tags. However, I would like to keep each year as an "Album" or "Compilation" and in the same order as they are listed in the Billboard Top 100. So...Song #1 in that year would be listed first in my "Compilation" or "Album". Trying to figure out if I need to retain track # to match this rather than using track # from their respective albums.

I have been messing with Music Brainz Picard and still trying to figure if I need to keep the track # to correspond with the 100 list. For example, track #1 would be the #1 song for that year, track #100 would be the #100 song for that year. Make sense?

I would like to keep album cover for that specific album, but still tied to the Billboard list for that year.

Can anyone shed some light, ideas, thoughts, or suggestions please?

Thanks in advance!
Click to expand...
For something like this, I'd use the Grouping field in iTunes (or the Comments field) to store this extra information about Billboard 100 order. The reason is that applications that auto-tag your music will complain that tags are wrong if you use the track number - MusicBrainz being one of them.
 
Thanks for this. So, does that mean that I should keep whatever Tag that Music Brainz finds, assign, then use iTunes to group them by Billboard year? What about the track # order? Any way to see the order of songs in the compilation? Maybe after I get Brainz data, I can go back and rename songs like 001, 002, etc.? This is really bugging me :) LOL.
 
pgamboa said:
Thanks for this. So, does that mean that I should keep whatever Tag that Music Brainz finds, assign, then use iTunes to group them by Billboard year? What about the track # order? Any way to see the order of songs in the compilation? Maybe after I get Brainz data, I can go back and rename songs like 001, 002, etc.? This is really bugging me :) LOL.
Click to expand...
Yes. The track order issue is solved easily enough - iTunes can sort by Grouping. :)
 
wrldwzrd89 said:
Yes. The track order issue is solved easily enough - iTunes can sort by Grouping. :)
Click to expand...

One last question, once this is all done, add to iTunes, group them by Billboard/Year/Order, does this information save on the files itself so that if I move to another computer, it will retain this?
 
I suspect the answer to this is NO, unfortunately, if you use the Grouping field. The Comments field may be different but I don't know for sure.
 
OK:

So....I deleted all 18K from iTunes Match and iCloud in hopes of getting everything organized first. I started with the recent Billboard Top 100 of 2014. I used Music Brainz to capture all Metadata as accurately as possible. There were about 4-5 songs that needed fixing. After it was all fixed, I moved this to iTunes. iTM then matched and uploaded to iCloud. Once in iCloud, I deleted my original file so that I could download the iTM version. I then created a Playlist called Billboard Top 100 of 2014 and added all songs there. I then sorted all songs by their # spot on the Billboard list.

Phew...That took about 1 1/2 hours. I realized that iTM does not update Metadata and instead retains all Metadata I originally had. So I wanted to make sure it was right before sending them to iTM.

It is all clean looking now... at least for me, for now.

Next question...Would it make sense for me to backup my songs (in the event I don't continue with iTM) to copy all the songs from my iTunes Library exactly they way that iTunes organizes them? By artist/folder?

Let's say, I get a new computer...I would need to add my music again from scratch right? Does iTunes back up my playlist so I am not having to reorder my songs within that playlist?
 
Phew! Sounds like that was quite an ordeal. iTunes expects you to use Time Machine (or some other backup system) for backups.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back