iTunes + Internet Archive
December 23, 2014 8:21 PM Subscribe
Is there an easy way to make concerts I nab from the Live Internet Archive play nicely with iTunes (esp. iTunes 12)?
I know, there wouldn't be so many damn questions about iTunes if it wasn't such a horridly bloated program. But it's what I use.
Regardless, tonight, I was happy to download this Minutemen concert from the Internet archive (in .mp3, not FLAC). The mp3s have been imported to iTunes, but with no information other than song titles. In the day, you could right click (or double-click) and change Artist/Album/etc. information in iTunes.
I'd like to download other concerts from the Internet Archive and put them in iTunes.
I use iTunes for scrobbling and easy access reasons.
Sorry if I'm missing something obvious here. I'm tired enough to not even be chagrined.
I know, there wouldn't be so many damn questions about iTunes if it wasn't such a horridly bloated program. But it's what I use.
Regardless, tonight, I was happy to download this Minutemen concert from the Internet archive (in .mp3, not FLAC). The mp3s have been imported to iTunes, but with no information other than song titles. In the day, you could right click (or double-click) and change Artist/Album/etc. information in iTunes.
I'd like to download other concerts from the Internet Archive and put them in iTunes.
I use iTunes for scrobbling and easy access reasons.
Sorry if I'm missing something obvious here. I'm tired enough to not even be chagrined.
Response by poster: Editing the ID3 tags gets me sorta there, so thank you, bcwinters (which, yes, used to be much easier to do, but I suppose iTunes had a reason to make it more difficult). That said, it'd be a hell of a lot easier if I didn't have to manually do that for each concert/file I download from the Live Music Archive.
But if I do, how do I sort the ID3 tags so the songs appear in the order they're played and not alphabetical?
posted by Ufez Jones at 8:51 PM on December 23, 2014
But if I do, how do I sort the ID3 tags so the songs appear in the order they're played and not alphabetical?
posted by Ufez Jones at 8:51 PM on December 23, 2014
It's not iTunes' fault if the songs don't include ID3 tags; they would show up in any application with blanks in those fields if that's the way the uploader made them. iTunes deservedly gets a lot of guff but...garbage in, garbage out in this case.
If you want the songs in track order instead of alphabetical order you'll have to add track number tags. At least adding the artist and concert name can be done en masse by selecting the whole set of files for the concert and doing Option-Get Info to edit 'em all in one go.
If you don't want to add track numbers by hand, you can use an applescript to pull the numbers from the filenames and create the tags automatically. I'm certain there used to be a pre-written script to do this on Doug's AppleScripts for iTunes site, but I can't seem to find it right now. Anyway, that site might point you to some useful scripts for housecleaning things like this.
You could also use a dedicated tag editor like MediaRage (which is almost certainly outdated since it references OS 10.5 in the description...but it's what I used to use when I had lots of music library cleaning to do and I haven't done that in a few years) that has a regular-expression editor for extracting tags from filenames. Maybe someone else can recommend another tag editor with that feature but the free/recently updated ones that I know of (like Tagger) unfortunately don't.
posted by bcwinters at 9:18 PM on December 23, 2014 [1 favorite]
If you want the songs in track order instead of alphabetical order you'll have to add track number tags. At least adding the artist and concert name can be done en masse by selecting the whole set of files for the concert and doing Option-Get Info to edit 'em all in one go.
If you don't want to add track numbers by hand, you can use an applescript to pull the numbers from the filenames and create the tags automatically. I'm certain there used to be a pre-written script to do this on Doug's AppleScripts for iTunes site, but I can't seem to find it right now. Anyway, that site might point you to some useful scripts for housecleaning things like this.
You could also use a dedicated tag editor like MediaRage (which is almost certainly outdated since it references OS 10.5 in the description...but it's what I used to use when I had lots of music library cleaning to do and I haven't done that in a few years) that has a regular-expression editor for extracting tags from filenames. Maybe someone else can recommend another tag editor with that feature but the free/recently updated ones that I know of (like Tagger) unfortunately don't.
posted by bcwinters at 9:18 PM on December 23, 2014 [1 favorite]
Mp3tag can pull tag info from filenames. It appears to be Windows-only.
posted by Rock Steady at 5:34 AM on December 24, 2014
posted by Rock Steady at 5:34 AM on December 24, 2014
...how do I sort the ID3 tags so the songs appear in the order they're played and not alphabetical?
After you do the Get Info on a song, under the Info tab, there should be a "Track Number" section where you can designate the order. So long as all the tracks have the same Artist and Album info, they should play in the order you want. I would also check "Part of a Compilation" just to make sure.
Caveat: I'm still in iTunes 11. This all assumes Apple haven't gotten rid of the aforementioned controls in iTunes 12.
posted by Thorzdad at 7:13 AM on December 24, 2014
After you do the Get Info on a song, under the Info tab, there should be a "Track Number" section where you can designate the order. So long as all the tracks have the same Artist and Album info, they should play in the order you want. I would also check "Part of a Compilation" just to make sure.
Caveat: I'm still in iTunes 11. This all assumes Apple haven't gotten rid of the aforementioned controls in iTunes 12.
posted by Thorzdad at 7:13 AM on December 24, 2014
This thread is closed to new comments.
On the Mac version you now have to hold down Option when you do Get Info on the tracks in order to get the window with all of the tags exposed for editing. You didn’t specify your platform but I imagine it’s a similar modifier like Alt in case you’re on a PC.
posted by bcwinters at 8:44 PM on December 23, 2014 [1 favorite]