iTunes metadata

Hey folks,

is there anybody, maybe Florian, who can list all possible iTunes tags including its possible values (if necessary)?

I already know:

  • ITUNESCOMPILATION: 1 = enable, 0 or empty = disable
  • ITUNESMEDIATYPE: Movie, Normal, Audiobook, Music Video, Short Film, TV Show, Ringtone
  • ARTISTSORTORDER, ALBUMSORTORDER
Cheers :slight_smile:

These are the fields available in Mp3tag that are also supported by iTunes:

Standard fields

  • ALBUM
  • ALBUMARTIST
  • ARTIST
  • BPM: numeric
  • COMMENT
  • COMPILATION: 1 = enable, 0 or empty = disable
  • COMPOSER
  • CONTENTGROUP
  • COPYRIGHT
  • DISC n/nn
  • GENRE
  • TITLE
  • TRACK: n/nn
  • UNSYNCEDLYRICS
  • YEAR
Sorting fields
  • ALBUMSORT
  • ALBUMARTISTSORT
  • ARTISTSORT
  • COMPOSERSORT
  • TITLESORT
Podcast fields
  • PODCAST: 1 = enable, 0 or empty = disable
  • PODCASTCATEGORY
  • PODCASTDESC
  • PODCASTID
  • PODCASTURL
TV Show/Video fields
  • TVEPISODE: numeric
  • TVEPISODEID
  • TVNETWORK
  • TVSEASON: numeric
  • TVSHOW
  • TVSHOWSORT
  • ITUNESHDVIDEO: 1 = enable, 0 or empty = disable
Other fields
  • ITUNESADVISORY: 0 = none, 2 = clean, 4 = explicit
  • ITUNESCATALOGID: iTunes Catalog ID
  • ITUNESCOMPILATION: 1 = enable, 0 or empty = disable
  • ITUNESGAPLESS: 1 = yes, 0 or empty = no
  • ITUNESMEDIATYPE: Normal, Audiobook, Music Video, Movie, TV Show, Booklet, Ringtone

Edit 2011-11-21: Updated list to reflect latest changes.

This is a really old post, but it's a top Google result so I wanted to say that in my experience, "explicit" is indicated by a "1", not a "4".

A little bit offtopic, but maybe still worth your while to read this article
"Don't Rely on the iTunes Advisory Ratings for Children"

Source: http://www.ivillage.com/dont-rely-itunes-a...dren/1-a-125377

Is your observation based on files that are downloaded from the iTunes Store? I did some tests and it seems that iTunes treats everything as "Explicit" except 0 (which is no rating) and 2 (which is rated as "Clean").

Has the ITUNESADVISORY Tag been removed? :astonished:
I can't find it anymore :frowning:

Where did you look?
Did you reset the fields list?
Also: search for a file that has such a tag and pretend to edit it, then you will get it back into the list of fields.

I was really excited when I found this information and added the "itunesadvisory" to several tracks and it seemed to work like a champ. Later I found it seems iTunes wipes this tag out, is there a way to make it "stick"?

How did you find that out?
What do you do to get iTunes to update its information in the database after you have modified the tracks?
(My hypothesis is that as iTunes is very reluctant to read updated information, you either do not see the edits in iTunes or other actions in iTunes write the attributes as stored in the database. So if you apply an update script (or open the Information dialogue in iTunes for a single file) then the information gets updated and so becomes "sticky").

Open iTunes
Filter so I only see the album I'm tagging
Open Mp3tag 2.5
Select all songs
Right click
Extended tags
Click add field
Add the tag 13 songs
Click OK
Get saved tag 13 of 13 files confirmation
Click OK
Switch back to iTunes
Right click and get info on track 1 of 13
Click next so tags refresh and EXPLICIT icon appears
Wait a few minutes
Return to the album I just edited and the EXPLICIT icon is gone
Look at the M4A files in mp3tag and the field is gone

I guess I could try and make the files read only and see what that does.

I cannot find out, how to correctly enter the total number of tracks and the total number of disks in MP3tag.

In Itunes (and fre:ac) there are separate entry fields for these tags, and changes in these fields are reflected by both programs vice versa.

However, in MP3 I habe only one field. According to the MP3TAG documentation, I have to use the format n/nn to enter both values in this single field, however this does not work out.

In addition, MP3TAG will not display the values entered and displayed by Itunes / fre:ac (e.g. track 9 of 20 (Itunes) will display in MP3TAG as track 9, not 9/20).

Am I missing something?

Where doesn't work out? In Mp3tag? Could you then check the definition of the value for the column that displays TRACK?
The value and field should only bei %track% and nothing fancy like $num(%track%,2).

Then: if you enter modifications in iTunes - how do you know that iTunes actually writes these values into the file and not only stores the modifications in its database (which I suspect).
What have you done to make iTunes update its information?

You must be referring to AAC files. It's different in Mp3tag to mp3 files.
The total amount of tracks gets split to separate fields (see View > Extended Tags)
TOTALTRACKS and TOTALDISCS

The definition for the column track was %track%.
I have included some screenshots to demonstrate the process.
First, the track 19 was entered as 19/19 in MP3TAG. -->



However. in FREA:AC the information on the number of tracks is already lost. -->

The FLAC file is converted by FRE:AC into m4a and read into Itunes. As you can see, Itunes will display 65535 as number of tracks -->

The number of tracks is manually edited into 19 -->

Itunes will reflect this for all all items
.. continued ...





Itunes will reflect this for all all items -->


FRE:AC is able to read and display the edited value from the m4a file -->



This proves that the information is not merely stored in the Itunes DB.
MP3TAG, however, does not display the number of tracks. -->




Vielen Dank, der Post war sehr hilfreich.

Speichern dieser Tags mit MP3TAG in FLAC-Dateien funktioniert ja auch.

Jetzt muĂź ich nur noch FRE:AC davon ĂĽberzeugen, auch die fĂĽr ihn unbekannten Tags von FLAC nach AAC zu ĂĽbernehmen.

Oder gibt es hier einen besser geeigneten Encoder?