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iTunes song tagging redux

by David Chartier Sep 30th 2006 at 6:00PM

We reported a method for tagging iTunes tracks and creating on-the-fly playlists way back in January. However, it involved using Quicksilver and a couple of home-grown scripts, but we can dig it if some of y'all aren't down with a tool as broad-reaching as Quicksilver. Fortunately for the rest of you, a web designer and developer named Steven Campbell has written up a basic method for tagging iTunes tracks and creating playlists based on those tags. It more or less involves revealing the comments column in the song list for easy access, and using a simple system of comma-separated words to get your iTunes tagging on. This can work wonders for Smart Playlists, and Steven offers a few examples in his post.

For those still interested in the aforementioned Quicksilver scripts and tools, the author has issued a bit of an upgrade and a new script since we first reported them. First of all, the scripts now live at their own domain name, TuneTag.com. The scripts still allow you to tag the song you're listening to on the fly and create on-the-fly playlists from those tags, but the author also added a new script that lets you select any number of tracks in iTunes and tag them all in one fell swoop. As a Quicksilver fan I'm already in love with the power of these scripts, but either method should work well for bringing the web 2.0 tagging craze to iTunes.

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bughouse

i use the grouping field for this. no need for scripts. have a 3 letter code for each "tag" i want. apply as many as needed to a track. smart playlists from there.

October 02 2006 at 3:35 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Hart

Great Idea, i tag my new tracks now too. It working fine, damn great feature.

October 02 2006 at 9:37 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Mark Scrimshire

I have been using semi-colon delimited comments in iPhoto and iTunes for two years now. It requires a bit of discipline and a need to remember your tags but adding these to the comments section makes the creation of smart playlists and smart albums really easy.

The only downside is that you can't use the comments in a photo book in iPhoto. the delimited tags tend to look ugly and out of place.

I even use a derivative of tags in Address Book. I have written a script to format date and time consistently and use this to paste in to the address book comments. I then create a smart group in Address Book for recent contacts by selecting the entries with comments that include

October 01 2006 at 12:53 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
David

yeah, tags built into iTunes would be great for smart playlists. I can't stand using genres, which is why none of my songs have the genre in the id3 tag

October 01 2006 at 11:13 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
t

I wish Apple would add true tagging support to iTunes and iPods so we don't have to reply on these scripts and doings things like kidnapping the comment field. A propler interface for adding and looking up by tags. Genre is just way too broad and it forces you to pigeon-hole songs into one and only one category.

What if you want to tag a song 'english', 'jazz' and 'instrumental' because you want to listen to only English songs sometimes, jazz yestrday and non-vocals right now? You could browse by tag just like browsing by genre, except that songs are exclusive to only a certain group.

October 01 2006 at 12:08 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Eli

I want rig of the day back :(

September 30 2006 at 11:44 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Thomas

I've been using tunetag for a little over a year now. It really makes creating smart playlists with tagged tunes simple.

September 30 2006 at 9:29 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
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