iPod Explicit labels on purchases

[greese]

Many of the songs I have purchased show up with a red "explicit" box next to the song title. These seem to have been appearing since iTunes 7. Maybe they were always there and I just never noticed.

I only notice it on purchased explicit tracks. Is the any way to mark other songs with this? I have some other stuff that could use this and it would be great to add it.

 

[islandman]

I think that only songs purchased from the iTunes store that are marked this way have this ability. It would definitely be nice if we could do it ourselves!

 

[bartelby]

I'm curious as to why people want to do this?

 

[TimDaddy]

I'm curious as to why people want to do this?

Maybe for putting music onto a child's iPod. I personally look up the lyrics before loading a song I'm not sure about onto my son's iPod. Just because it isn't labled as explicit doesn't mean it's fit for my 7 year old to hear. Also, I believe if the album is labled explicit, all songs will show that label, though some of the songs may be decent.

 

[bartelby]

Ah.

Of course, that begs the question why a 7 year old needs an iPod, but that's a different argument.

My parents never censored what I listened to. They (mainly my Mum) may have disapproved but they wouldn't stop me listening to anything.

 

[TimDaddy]

Ah.

Of course, that begs the question why a 7 year old needs an iPod, but that's a different argument.

My seven year old needs an ipod about as much as my nine year old needs a Nintendo DS. He doesn't. But why put him in front of a video game when he prefers to skateboard and listen to music?
As far as censoring goes, like I said, he's 7.

 

[balamw]

FWIW Lostify (or any other Atomic Parsley front end) can do this for all M4A (AAC) files. I'm not sure if the tage can be applied for MP3s.

B

 

[Sayer]

My daughters both have iPods now so that *I* don't have to listen to the same High School Musical songs over and over and over and over...

I honestly don't think it is any different than having a tape/CD player or radio when I was younger. Except that you can pick and choose what to put in an iPod, and have more than 10 songs at once without extra tapes/CDs or endless commercials (and the same 10 songs over and over) on broadcast radio.

 

[greese]

I'm curious as to why people want to do this?

I want to do this because my wife and I share a single music library and we each have our own iPod. I prefer listening to the original versions of songs in my car and that is mostly what is on my iPod.

While my wife isn't offended by the language and prefers the original version herself, her iPod often gets plugged into the stereo while we're making dinner or hanging out. We try to make sure our five year old and our three year don't hear stuff we don't want them too. They like to sing along and dance. That's cool with the radio edit of "without me" but not the album version. We have the radio edit of several songs just for this reason.

Those red labels are easy to spot when scanning a playlist before putting it on the iPod. It also makes it easy when scanning songs to build a new playlist for a party or gathering where there will be kids around. I'm talking about little kids. 3 and 4 year olds. Older kids and teenagers i am not so worried about. They know the difference between hearing foul language and using foul language.

 

[balamw]

Since I didn't provide a link above here it is.

Start here: http://atomicparsley.sourceforge.net/ and looks for the front end of your choice.

B

 

[mkrishnan]

I was thinking about this too, because I need to keep track of which playlists / songs are clean so that I can use them for music at camp.... but I think one big limitation with the clean/explicit tags is that there is no support for searching or making smart playlists based on this tag in iTunes. The tags are only good for seeing that it's there when you look at the song in list view. Which to me seems like it isn't worth it to go through and manually mark songs as clean....

Other alternatives people sometimes use:

1) Use the rating stars -- if you don't use these now, you could specify a certain star rating as indicating a clean or an explicit song, and then tag them all this way

2) Put in some kind of code in the comments field that wouldn't naturally appear in song titles etc, so that when you keyword search for the code, all songs that you've flagged come up.

Both of these should be amenable to automated playlists / syncing / etc.

 

[balamw]

FWIW the tags are tied to the Parental Controls in iTunes' preferences. If you check the "Restrict Explicit Content" box it won't play/sync explicit tagged tracks.

B

 

[islandman]

Since I didn't provide a link above here it is.

Start here: http://atomicparsley.sourceforge.net/ and looks for the front end of your choice.

B

Thanks for the link! This should be perfect.