Comments on: Tagging individual musicians

Question: Tagging individual musicians

Silky Slim — Sun, 19 Aug 2007 08:20:24 -0800

Can I use iTunes to tag the specific musicians playing on a track?

For instance, I'd like to be able to type "Herbie Hancock" in the iTunes search field and find all the tracks on which he played the keyboard, even if the Artist and Composer were other people. Is this possible?
Adding the musicians' names into the Comments field doesn't help. The names still don't show up in a search.
I tried an app called MP3 Rage, and its ID3 editor has a field called "People". Is this what I'm looking for?
Unfortunately, iTunes apparently ignores this field.

By: box

box — Sun, 19 Aug 2007 08:51:14 -0800

To piggyback onto this question: I'd like to do something like this as well. If possible, I'd prefer not to manually input all the data. Is there a FreeDB/CDDB/GraceNote kinda thing with this information?

By: colecovizion

colecovizion — Sun, 19 Aug 2007 09:00:55 -0800

What search are you using? The search in iTunes searches through my comments instantly.

By: Dee Xtrovert

Dee Xtrovert — Sun, 19 Aug 2007 09:05:09 -0800

Ditto me; maybe your search is set for something specific like "song" or "artist." Change your search field to "all" - that should work.

By: mpls2

mpls2 — Sun, 19 Aug 2007 09:06:48 -0800

I've used tools that use GraceNote to automatically tag MP3s, but they do make mistakes, so don't blindly rely on them. But I'd say they're about 80% reliable, which isn't too bad if you have tons of music to tag.

By: Silky Slim

Silky Slim — Sun, 19 Aug 2007 09:11:51 -0800

colecovizion, dee xtrovert... how weird! mine doesn't do that.
it's set to "all". i just tested it and it most certainly doesn't look through my comments!
i'm using itunes 7.3.2 on an up to date mac... what are you using?

By: Silky Slim

Silky Slim — Sun, 19 Aug 2007 09:22:35 -0800

it does search the "composer" field but not the "comments" field.

By: colecovizion

colecovizion — Sun, 19 Aug 2007 09:41:23 -0800

7.3.2 Mac. I just did a test and it worked like a charm.

By: amcewen

amcewen — Sun, 19 Aug 2007 09:50:02 -0800

The guys at Music Brainz are starting to capture such extended information (for example, see the relationships page for Herbie Hancock).

They've got a good program for tagging your mp3s which is pretty accurate IME, but I don't think they pull down any of this extended relationship info and embed it in the mp3s just yet.

By: chrismear

chrismear — Sun, 19 Aug 2007 10:17:09 -0800

7.3.2 Mac. I just did a test and it worked like a charm.

7.3.2 Mac. I just did a test and it didn't work at all. So, what field are you using?

By: chrismear

chrismear — Sun, 19 Aug 2007 10:23:30 -0800

Oh, I've got it. Go to View -> View Options..., make it display the Comments column, and then the search box will search the comments as well.

Nifty! Unintuitive (kinda!)!

By: booth

booth — Sun, 19 Aug 2007 11:01:32 -0800

This is a cool tip. (Thanks, chrismear for figuring out how to make it work for the rest of us.)

I thought I'd use it to keep track of the songs I've already used on mix discs. I selected all the tracks I put on a recent mix, hit cmd-I, and set the comment to the title and date of the mix. Unfortunately I now realize that I overwrote the existing comments on those tracks. I guess I've got to do this track by track.

By: Silky Slim

Silky Slim — Sun, 19 Aug 2007 13:33:31 -0800

great solution, chrismear. hooda thunkit?
it's plenty unintuitive, seeing as itunes *does* search the "composer" field, even though it isn't displayed in the list.
thanks!!!