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Managing comments

If you are like me, you like to use the comments tag to make some smart playlists, based on a variety of things-- I use mine to make playlists for working out, for relaxing, for happy songs, and so on.

However, if you have a large library, it can be a bit of a pain to get all of your songs commented. So what to do?

If you're running iTunes on a Mac, you can get an AppleScript that lets you append text to the comments tag. That's simple enough. But what I also do is keep regular playlists based on each keyword. If I don't want to go through and do each track individually, I just drag a song into an appropriate regular playlist. Then, when there is a goodly number, I head into the playlist and select all the tracks and use the Applescript to append whatever comment to the entire playlist.

I am not sure how much time it saves, but it is a good way to remember what I have tagged and what I have not.

by synecdoche on Mar 09 | 8:00 am

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What if you dont have a mac? Is there anything that can do something similar on a PC?

by gorbadiron on Mar 11 | 8:54 pm

gorbadiron,

I couldn't find anything. I have a Windows machine too and, since all my mp3s are on it, I used to use iTunes there. However, since I have an iBook, I just have all my mp3s on a shared drive and access them with the laptop specifically so i can use the AppleScripts.

by synecdoche on Mar 12 | 2:14 am

I don't know about windows solutions, I still haven't found an easy tagging method, but I just had another idea from this post. Rather than using the comment field, why not use static playlists. For example, if I want to tag instrumental, set up a static playlist called "Instrumental" and drag songs in as appropriate. Then, for my SPL's, just use "in playlist" instead of comment tags.

by Denrael on Mar 30 | 8:40 pm

Denrael, that would work, but the commenting has the added bonus that if you move your files you retain the organization.

by synecdoche on Mar 30 | 9:44 pm

You could do it like this, add them all to a playlist then select all the songs in that playlist (Ctrl-A) and change all their comments in one go. would not work if they had different comments to start with tho.

by webbunny on Apr 11 | 6:04 pm

Another problem with the method I described above, is there is nothing preventing a song from being in the playlist multiple times. Looks like I'm back to the (ugly) process of comment management. I'd love to see a utiliity that would update comments based on the tags at all-music, or else let me update them based on a choose list. Even having an append would be nice.

by Denrael on Apr 16 | 4:40 pm

"commenting has the added bonus that if you move your files you retain the organization"

Does anybody know of a good reference for where the meta data (genre, comments, ratings, last played, album art, etc) are stored? I know some of it is part of the music file itself, and some is in the iTunes XML file, and some is in the iTunes ITL file, but I'd like to know for sure what's where.

by davepmiller on Apr 17 | 5:42 pm

where can I get that applescript again? I love using comments as tags, really, really brilliant!

by Zacj on Jul 14 | 6:08 pm

zacj - There is a applescript that does this at Doug's AppleScripts for iTunes - see link in right hand bar on this site.

by Ms. Ryen on Jul 16 | 1:33 am

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