I can't edit song info in itunes 7.5!

I was wondering if anyone could help.

I am running iTunes 7.5 on Leopard (recently upgraded). I have placed my iTunes Music folder in the MacintoshHD:Users:Shared so that the missus and I can use the same music etc. when we are on our different user accounts. I have got both iTunes setups pointing at the shared user music folder. No problem so far!!

However I have two problems - any music we put on iTunes, isn't showing up in the others library. And also, I can't edit anything about the artist titles, group songs into one album etc, but she can, which is a proper ball-ache for me organising my library.

I'd really appreciate any pointers in the right direction, cheers.

I-Tunes issue

I don't want to steal your thunder spinney but I thought I'd list my problem; here instead of creating a new thread.

I spent all of today 'editing info' of my music library, adding artis names and track titles. I download files that are never ID3 tagged and thus had to go through this long exercise. However after finishing I decided to clean out my library and re-add all my tracks. Now I see that among all the changes that I had made only a handful has been preserved. All the other tracks are back to normal.

I decided to test it again and picked out two tracks at random. The 'artist' field was empty, because wave files are never properly tagged. The artists name as well as the track name with a - separator is displayed in the 'name' field like this:

Artists - Trackname (Mix Name)

Thus I copied the name of the artist to the 'artist' field and the 'Name' field was left showing:

Trackname (Mix Name)

After restarting I-Tunes I removed these 2 tracks and added them again.

THE TAGS DISAPPEARED!!!

Fyi. I'm using Mac OSX's Leopard.

Anyone come across a similar situation? Remedies?

Regards

D:

Same here. D: I was in the middle of putting newly-sized album artwork during the Get Info/Edit info option. Now there's only around five of the songs that lets me edit their info, and the rest not.

spinney said:

I was wondering if anyone could help.

I am running iTunes 7.5 on Leopard (recently upgraded). I have placed my iTunes Music folder in the MacintoshHD:Users:Shared so that the missus and I can use the same music etc. when we are on our different user accounts. I have got both iTunes setups pointing at the shared user music folder. No problem so far!!

However I have two problems - any music we put on iTunes, isn't showing up in the others library. And also, I can't edit anything about the artist titles, group songs into one album etc, but she can, which is a proper ball-ache for me organising my library.

I'd really appreciate any pointers in the right direction, cheers.

Click to expand...

You will have to add the music to the individual libraries separately. Each local account wants it's library to be the master, and when yours sees the one tied to her account, it won't let you edit the files. This is by design.

Set each of your iTunes Libraries back to the default location, just tell iTunes not to copy the music to them. This way you should be able to manage the individual songs without the system requiring one of you to be the owner of the music. The .xml file will be kept in each library and will just reference the song files in the shared folder. The same can be done if you use an external drive as well.

dangerous007 said:

I don't want to steal your thunder spinney but I thought I'd list my problem; here instead of creating a new thread.

I spent all of today 'editing info' of my music library, adding artis names and track titles. I download files that are never ID3 tagged and thus had to go through this long exercise. However after finishing I decided to clean out my library and re-add all my tracks. Now I see that among all the changes that I had made only a handful has been preserved. All the other tracks are back to normal.

I decided to test it again and picked out two tracks at random. The 'artist' field was empty, because wave files are never properly tagged. The artists name as well as the track name with a - separator is displayed in the 'name' field like this:

Artists - Trackname (Mix Name)

Thus I copied the name of the artist to the 'artist' field and the 'Name' field was left showing:

Trackname (Mix Name)

After restarting I-Tunes I removed these 2 tracks and added them again.

THE TAGS DISAPPEARED!!!

Fyi. I'm using Mac OSX's Leopard.

Anyone come across a similar situation? Remedies?

Regards

Click to expand...

Yes. Sometimes iTunes, for whatever reason, fails to recognize (or write) some tag data. I would use a 3rd party app Like MediaRage to edit the tags. That way you know they are actually written to the files. You will also run across some files, depending on the source, that just won't take tag data.

It can be done, but since your wife owns the library at the moment, make sure she is set up correctly first, then add yourself: ie ignore the initial bit about consolidating the libabry, but look at the bits to this guide for sharing a library (it works for me and the misses)

The following assumes you want to keep all your iTunes music and movies on a shared folder and ensure new music is always stored on that folder, and that you want to share the iTunes library among multiple Users of your mac

First, you need to consolidate your iTunes Library to a folder you have chosen in the shared point.

Select the command consolidate library from the Advanced Menu. This will copy all your itunes media to the folder and link the itunes library file to it


So that you are both using the correct library.xml file, you need to point your copy of iTunes to the library in the shared folder, start itunes with the alt key pressed and you will have the option to select the library file in shared



Select the library file in shared now both your music and the library in shared

Press the alt key in the other account to get iTunes to see the library file, now both accounts are using the same index. Make sure both Users itunes have the same location for the music folder set in their advances preferences.



Also make sure that all users have read and write privileges for that folder folder and the library.xml file

You can now delete any old unused Itunes folder off your mac

Click to expand...

Let us know if that works. I've tried it before, with an older iTunes version, and it didn't.

I am using the latest iTunes and it works, although my itunes are on an external

As long as the permissions are set correctly, just tested it and the other account can see the tracks I put in there today, although you will get an error if two copies of itunes are both trying to use it at the same time

Solution

spinney said:

However I have two problems - any music we put on iTunes, isn't showing up in the others library. And also, I can't edit anything about the artist titles, group songs into one album etc, but she can...

Click to expand...

I hit the same problem today after adding a new user account to my mac at home to help me better separate work and personal stuff. Our music library is in the shared folder on the Mac and seemed to import into the new user's library just fine but I wasn't able to edit any ID3 info. Then I figured it out, it's just a basic permissions issue with the files. Even though they're in the "shared" folder they still are owned by a user (in your case, your wife). By default, OS X only gives read/write permission to the owner.

To fix this in Mac OS 10.4 or 10.5,

1) simply select your music library folder in the finder and right click and get info.

2) At the bottom of that window, under sharing and permissions, change all users to "read/write" access. (If it's greyed out, click the lock icon and enter your administrator password first).

3) Now click on the gear pull down at the bottom and select "apply to enclosed items." This is critical otherwise all the individual files inside will retain their read only settings.

That's it. Now you should be able to edit everything as normal, but keep in mind that your editing the library so your changes will apply to everyone and vice versa (with the exception of things like equalizer settings which are stored for each user in their individual iTunes file (not the one your library points to). To fix it in windows, the procedure is basically the same but as I don't have it in front of me at the moment I can't give step by step instructions to change the permissions. The key is to make sure you apply the read/write permission to all enclosed items.

As far as keeping things in sync, you can use the "add to library" function and select music the other adds (which can be problematic if one forgets to tell the other they added something). Or take a look at a program called Tune Ranger which is made specifically to keep things in sync (it might be a mac only program though, I'm not sure). If anybody knows another was to keep things in sync without adding another utility, please post it--I'd love to know how!

Hope this helps!

i searched quite a few threads like this and couldn't get anything to work, then i remembered unix is great. i opened terminal, did a ls -l on the file and could see permissions were all set to "r" whereas other files were "rw" and stuff. i don't know much about unix but i figured that meant the file i couldn't change needed to be changed to rw also

i googled how to change permissions on unix...

i did

chmod +rw [filename]

after that, i could edit the info in in itunes

this probably is better if you are having the problem on only one file, like i was

there may be a more graceful way to manipulate unix commands, but anyway, you get the idea