Best way to remove non-modifiable data/tags from iTunes store files

I broke down and bought some OOP stuff from the iTunes store to tide me over until I can afford the real deal on CD. The iTunes store files are 256 kbps AAC (m4a).

The problem I'm having is with seemingly non-modifiable sorting tags that are embedded in the files. I changed the "year" field from the pre-programmed reissue year (2007) to the original release year (1972), and it reflects that in my iTunes library. But then when scrolling through files on my iPhone, the album comes up chronologically as 2007. I notice that on the iTunes "summary" tab in iTunes it says "(C) 2007..." on an unchangeable field. It's driving me nuts - I'm meticulous about keeping a large library under control.

In an effort to get rid of the deeply embedded sorting tags, I threw copies of the files in Max (I'm using a Mac) and converted them to 256 kbps AAC and successfully lost the tags, only to find that the volume was considerably louder. I tried a few tweaks to the encoder settings but all of them resulted in some degree of loudness/distortion issues.

Opening the files with Audacity and simply saving them again retains the sorting tags. Is there a way to strip iTunes store files of these sorting tags without modifying the sound quality?

 

Maybe try another tag editor? Are you on Windows or Mac? Let us know and we could recommend something...

 

There's an app for OSX called Metadatics that can do this. They have a free demo:

http://markvapps.com/metadatics/

It's $9.99 to purchase though. I bought it because it's the only thing I found that can tag FLAC files on a Mac.

 

You may want to try removing all the music from your phone and resyncing it. Some tag changes don't get seen by iTunes as significant enough to recopy the song file over to the phone or it may have some cached album info used for that sorting.

I am 99.9% sure that it is not using the copyright year for sorting, just has some stale info from previous syncing. Give that a try and let us know, before you go nuts trying to edit those tags.

 

That's weird. I edit that data field all the time with the original album release date rather than the particular issue date and never experienced that problem.

 

I think you might be right that a fresh synch may do it.

 

See this thread in which I had a similar problem:

http://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threads/itunes-ios-changing-my-meticulously-edited-tags.343850/

This ended up working for me:

1. Sign out of iTunes on iPhone.
2. Put the iPhone in airplane mode
3. Delete the incorrectly named albums from the iPhone
4. Edit your album names in your iTunes library to what you want
5. Move the songs & albums from your iTunes library back to your iPhone
6. Disconnect
7. Turn off airplane mode

 

Thanks, everyone, for the advice. Yeah Pericles, I read your thread but thought it wouldn't apply in this case since I was convinced it was due to tags that are not user-modifiable. But maybe I'm wrong about that. Like you and Steve and mwheelerk said, perhaps I'll have to wipe out the iPhone and iPod and do a fresh synch on both. Due to the amount of files this will take a couple of days, but I guess that's the price I'll have to pay to get this off my mind.

 

Actually, I bet you'll find that even if you have 160GB of files, it only takes about 3-4 hours, last time I had to do it.

I'm bummed that they only give you access to about 20 or so ID3 tags. I use lots and lots and lots of tags accessible with Tag & Rename, which is a far better program... but only works under Windows.

 

I use a little, free program called Tag, for OS X. It's very basic, but it does flac tags just fine.

 

I tag flac files with xACT on a Mac.

 

I've tried both Tag and xACT. Metadatics handles cover art better than either of them, and that's specifically what I was looking for.

 

The last time it took substantially longer, but I think it's mostly because I convert down to 256 kbps to fit it all on the 160 GB iPod and down to 192 kbps for the 64 GB iPhone. Boy, everything seems to really slow down when converting those 24-bit files.

 

Doh! I never convert anything. I have the actual lossy files sitting on a drive and just copy them straight over -- no waiting. If you're converting, then you don't really have a workable backup -- you have a source, which is not the same thing. Drive space is cheap, and 160GB is absolutely trivial. Just convert them in advance and use those. It's far faster.