iTunes Match Metadata Fix

[texaskd5]

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I want to be sure when I active iTunes match that as much of the metadata in my music library is correct, so I have fewer songs that have to be uploaded. Does anyone know of a good Mac application that can autocorrect my music library's metadata, preferably using iTunes Store data?

 

[Mal]

I wouldn't trust anything completely automatic, but I've been using Tagalicious (App Store, $9.99), and it's worked pretty well. A few misses, but overall pretty good. I've used several others in the past, and none really worked very well at all. This has been far better than anything else I've seen.

jW

 

[endless17]

If Apple's still using Lala's technology, then they're not emphasizing id3 or other metatags at all. They're scanning each song file and analyzing it based on its audio fingerprint. This avoids a situation where someone can fake an album by playing around with an id3 editor.

 

[texaskd5]

If Apple's still using Lala's technology, then they're not emphasizing id3 or other metatags at all. They're scanning each song file and analyzing it based on its audio fingerprint. This avoids a situation where someone can fake an album by playing around with an id3 editor.

Ah thats a good point, I figured they would preform that step for confirmation of a songs identity, but I suppose they could just be preforming that single step instead of even looking at the Metadata. Not that I can try it out or anything, sadly they are still not accepting new subscriptions, hope that ends soon.

 

[joos]

If Apple is comparing my music library to the iTunes music database, even if just on audio fingerprint, it should definitely be possible for the service to correct my songs' id3 tags. This was something I was really hoping for...c'mon Apple!

 

[maclook]

If Apple is comparing my music library to the iTunes music database, even if just on audio fingerprint, it should definitely be possible for the service to correct my songs' id3 tags. This was something I was really hoping for...c'mon Apple!

Same. There just needs to be a quick easy option to use iTunes metadata for matched music. OP, please update if you find a solution.

 

[willieb1172]

Same. There just needs to be a quick easy option to use iTunes metadata for matched music. OP, please update if you find a solution.

I have an idea. I have an mp3 collection that I started in '95 and I didn't start using tags until about 2009 when I got my first touch/iphone. I have about 10k files and only half are correctly tagged. So I feel your pain, have for years.

Anyho, here's the idea. It only corrects artist, album, track# and title but hey that's better than nothing, and mainly what I wanted.

The idea is to (given that iTunes match will match on audio sample and not existing tags, and that it matches correctly), delete all matched music from your iTunes library then re-download from the Matched Cloud. When you remove the files from your library, it shouldn't delete files off disk (didn't for me) but backup your music files just in case. This doesn't fix the tags yet but it does give you correct (hopefully) tag information based on the saved file in your music folder= ./artist/album/track#-title or something like that. You can then use a program like TagScanner (free) to retag all files based on folders/file name. This will retag all new 256bit rate files with main tag info. You can then embed album art, set genre, etc.

Not sure if it will work but it's worth a shot for me. I just dumped all my crappy tagged mp3s in and match is processing them now. Stay tuned and I'll report back!

 

[Heebeejeebies]

Same. There just needs to be a quick easy option to use iTunes metadata for matched music. OP, please update if you find a solution.

I've heard that TuneUp is pretty good. I tried to use it but I don't think it has been updated for Lion.

I used MusicBrainz Picard which involves a lot of manual work, but it will retag your songs pretty well, especially if you have full albums. It uses audio fingerprints, as well as your existing metadata and gives you control over whether you want to retag. If you play around with some advanced settings, you can even retag and then reorganize your iTunes library in one step... But it will take time... Took me 10 hours over 3 days to do my library of 6300 songs.

 

[CollierPress]

I went with Song Genie

As far as I can tell, Song Genie works really well. It finds all the metadata and even lyrics for 95% of my library. If it can't find it, it will help you search and copy paste stuff in. A bit hefty on the price tag at 29.99 though, but I bought mine through MacHeist for a dollar. Worth it for me with a huge library of random stuff.

If you have just a few things here and there you can always Shazam it

 

[High on Life]

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Use TuneUp. Works like a charm and it has some cool features you can use after you're done organizing like the Tuniverse.

 

[milo]

I can't recommend Tagalicious. Extremely slow, results are inconsistent and hard to manage, and they've removed features with updates.

Look for other options.

 

[willieb1172]

I have an idea. I have an mp3 collection that I started in '95 and I didn't start using tags until about 2009 when I got my first touch/iphone. I have about 10k files and only half are correctly tagged. So I feel your pain, have for years.

Anyho, here's the idea. It only corrects artist, album, track# and title but hey that's better than nothing, and mainly what I wanted.

The idea is to (given that iTunes match will match on audio sample and not existing tags, and that it matches correctly), delete all matched music from your iTunes library then re-download from the Matched Cloud. When you remove the files from your library, it shouldn't delete files off disk (didn't for me) but backup your music files just in case. This doesn't fix the tags yet but it does give you correct (hopefully) tag information based on the saved file in your music folder= ./artist/album/track#-title or something like that. You can then use a program like TagScanner (free) to retag all files based on folders/file name. This will retag all new 256bit rate files with main tag info. You can then embed album art, set genre, etc.

Not sure if it will work but it's worth a shot for me. I just dumped all my crappy tagged mp3s in and match is processing them now. Stay tuned and I'll report back!

Didn't work as I thought. Although iTunes successfully matched like 90%, when I selected to download from the cloud it named the files based on my saved tag info.

With that in mind, I would love to be able to fix iTunes songs based on audio sample/signature. Preferably using the same db as iTunes. In theory since all files I am retagging was matched, it should be able to fix all tags. I'm looking at the "TuneUP" plugin... Will let you know how it goes.

 

[Mal]

I've heard that TuneUp is pretty good. I tried to use it but I don't think it has been updated for Lion.

I used MusicBrainz Picard which involves a lot of manual work, but it will retag your songs pretty well, especially if you have full albums. It uses audio fingerprints, as well as your existing metadata and gives you control over whether you want to retag. If you play around with some advanced settings, you can even retag and then reorganize your iTunes library in one step... But it will take time... Took me 10 hours over 3 days to do my library of 6300 songs.

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_0_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9A405 Safari/7534.48.3)

Use TuneUp. Works like a charm and it has some cool features you can use after you're done organizing like the Tuniverse.

I had serious mismatch issues (probably 60% or greater) with TuneUp, and generally found it a pain in the *** to use. YMMV, but I wouldn't recommend it myself.

As for Tagalicious, they removed the lyrics feature due to licensing issues, but the actual tagging has been far more reliable for me than TuneUp on it's best days.

jW

 

[High on Life]

TuneUp

I've had about 95% accuracy with TuneUp. The software crashes frequently with Lion whenever you minimize or hide iTunes, but other than that it's one of my favorite programs.

For those with OCD, this feature alone makes it worth buying:

By the way, has anyone been able to successfully edit a song's metadata in iTunes and have it updated on your phone without creating a duplicate?

 

[Yuusharo]

By the way, has anyone been able to successfully edit a song's metadata in iTunes and have it updated on your phone without creating a duplicate?

I can confirm that this is the case - when you update metadata information in iTunes, the changes are propagated throughout all your devices without duplicates. If you already downloaded a song or an album, the metadata is updated and you don't need to redownload the file.

In fact, if you download your matched song from iCloud it actually retains the existing metadata from the matched song. iTunes will *not* replace the metadata with the commercial data when you download the song to another device.

 

[Tinmania]

Didn't work as I thought. Although iTunes successfully matched like 90%, when I selected to download from the cloud it named the files based on my saved tag info.

With that in mind, I would love to be able to fix iTunes songs based on audio sample/signature. Preferably using the same db as iTunes. In theory since all files I am retagging was matched, it should be able to fix all tags. I'm looking at the "TuneUP" plugin... Will let you know how it goes.

TuneUp supposedly uses the same wave analysis technology as iTunes Match. So results "should" be similar.

You cannot ever get metatada from iTunes Match: it only uses what you gave it.

I even completely edited a track with phony, but otherwise legit, metadata. Match did not care one bit about the metadata and matched the song to what it truly was. And it is in iCloud right now as The Beatles, Yesterday when is some old Blondie song.

But I too was hoping we could use iTunes store metadata for matched tracks but no go. Keep in mind this is probably a good thing for many folks who have painfully managed their music collection over the years and do not want the metadata touched. I wish there was at least an option to overwrite with metadata from iTunes store but I suspect we will not see that.




Michael

 

[Goodfella3.2]

I've had about 95% accuracy with TuneUp. The software crashes frequently with Lion whenever you minimize or hide iTunes, but other than that it's one of my favorite programs.

For those with OCD, this feature alone makes it worth buying:

Image

By the way, has anyone been able to successfully edit a song's metadata in iTunes and have it updated on your phone without creating a duplicate?

This royally screwed up my collection - this service is horrible.

 

[willieb1172]

TuneUp supposedly uses the same wave analysis technology as iTunes Match. So results "should" be similar.

You cannot ever get metatada from iTunes Match: it only uses what you gave it.

I even completely edited a track with phony, but otherwise legit, metadata. Match did not care one bit about the metadata and matched the song to what it truly was. And it is in iCloud right now as The Beatles, Yesterday when is some old Blondie song.

But I too was hoping we could use iTunes store metadata for matched tracks but no go. Keep in mind this is probably a good thing for many folks who have painfully managed their music collection over the years and do not want the metadata touched. I wish there was at least an option to overwrite with metadata from iTunes store but I suspect we will not see that.




Michael

Thanks for the info. I tested Pecard, Tagalicious, TuneUp, TagScanner. Out of those TuneUp did hands-down the best job for my crappy tagged songs. I even picked the worst ones I could find. I was looking for a coupon, found one and went to test it out and accidently purchased it lol. I was planning to purchase it anyway but trying to get it at the best price.

Anywho, only thing I don't like about it is it locks you to the life of one PC. But on a positive note I won't need it for very long I hope, that is once I fix all my tags.

That's good to hear that it uses the same technology as Apple for identification.

I do wonder what happens when you strip a song of all tag info and insert it into iTunes match. I'll try that and let you know what happens.

 

[Tinmania]

Thanks for the info. I tested Pecard, Tagalicious, TuneUp, TagScanner. Out of those TuneUp did hands-down the best job for my crappy tagged songs. I even picked the worst ones I could find. I was looking for a coupon, found one and went to test it out and accidently purchased it lol. I was planning to purchase it anyway but trying to get it at the best price.

Anywho, only thing I don't like about it is it locks you to the life of one PC. But on a positive note I won't need it for very long I hope, that is once I fix all my tags.

That's good to hear that it uses the same technology as Apple for identification.

I do wonder what happens when you strip a song of all tag info and insert it into iTunes match. I'll try that and let you know what happens.

Thanks... I believe it will propagate the updated metadata to iCloud and then to any other devices.

If that coupon worked what was it? I want to try TuneUp again. I tried it as a trial right before Match was announced (I thought Match would negate the need for TuneUp). I only had it on my Windows box and was not quite fond of it marrying itself to iTunes but other than that it seemed to work on the limited number of tracks I tried it on. This time would prefer it on my mac.




Michael

 

[willieb1172]

Thanks... I believe it will propagate the updated metadata to iCloud and then to any other devices.

If that coupon worked what was it? I want to try TuneUp again. I tried it as a trial right before Match was announced (I thought Match would negate the need for TuneUp). I only had it on my Windows box and was not quite fond of it marrying itself to iTunes but other than that it seemed to work on the limited number of tracks I tried it on. This time would prefer it on my mac.




Michael

Unfortunately it didn't work, or at least I didn't get a chance to even try it. There was no place to enter a coupon. It said something about reviewing payment info on the next screen before I submit payment so I clicked next. Then it said thanks for your purchase lol. I don't even know where I found it now. Prob not real since there's no place to even enter one.

For iTunes Match I see no way to pull meta tags from the cloud. I totally removed all tags and renamed the file. It matched but when I downloaded it, it just said unknown artist, unknown title crap. Oh well.

For TuneUp, it's currently scanning half my Library (~5200 songs) so I'll let you know the results sometime tomorrow I hope lol.

 

[Heebeejeebies]

Thanks... I believe it will propagate the updated metadata to iCloud and then to any other devices.

If that coupon worked what was it? I want to try TuneUp again. I tried it as a trial right before Match was announced (I thought Match would negate the need for TuneUp). I only had it on my Windows box and was not quite fond of it marrying itself to iTunes but other than that it seemed to work on the limited number of tracks I tried it on. This time would prefer it on my mac.
Michael

The code that worked for me was "hello20" and it goes up in the top right corner...

 

[Tinmania]

Unfortunately it didn't work, or at least I didn't get a chance to even try it. There was no place to enter a coupon. It said something about reviewing payment info on the next screen before I submit payment so I clicked next. Then it said thanks for your purchase lol. I don't even know where I found it now. Prob not real since there's no place to even enter one.

For iTunes Match I see no way to pull meta tags from the cloud. I totally removed all tags and renamed the file. It matched but when I downloaded it, it just said unknown artist, unknown title crap. Oh well.

For TuneUp, it's currently scanning half my Library (~5200 songs) so I'll let you know the results sometime tomorrow I hope lol.

Yea it is not even looking at the metadata or file name.

But when you to do get TuneUp to work it will update your local library which should then update the iCloud library. It will sync that to any devices but not if it is already downloaded. Once re-downloaded everything should show the new metadata though. Well, hopefully!



Michael

----------

The code that worked for me was "hello20" and it goes up in the top right corner...

Excellent! Thanks.




Michael

 

[willieb1172]

Glad you got the coupon working.

TuneUp is a God send for me. I'm sure it depends a lot on what type of music you have but I absolutely love it for my collection!

In like 2 days with very little hand holding I've cleaned 5,000+ songs. In a couple more days I will have my entire 10,000+ song collection 100% clean.

I've already cleaned my untagged albums. It worked so well I'm actually going through all the ones I manually tagged over the years and redoing them. It's simply an amazing program. I don't buy many programs but this one was well worth it. Your mileage may vary.

 

[vouder17]

How is TuneUp working for everyone who has purchased it? I just purchased it and it was horrendous! Taking forever to "clean" my songs. I am just curious as to other peoples experiences.

 

[maclook]

How is TuneUp working for everyone who has purchased it? I just purchased it and it was horrendous! Taking forever to "clean" my songs. I am just curious as to other peoples experiences.

I tried the demo and it screwed up the second or third album it tagged, labeling the popular normal album as some "chopped and screwed" remix edition that I never heard of. I decided to not drop $30-40 for that.
I would LOVE a free method to grabbing iTunes' metadata.