Hello, I’ve historically been using itunes for music and use the “Grouping” tag for a lot of different things (marking cover songs, show tunes, etc.); I’m trying Picard out, and I’ve set the “Grouping” tag as “Add to ‘Preserved Tags’ List” and when I try scanning my small batch of copied songs it looks like the stuff in that tag is staying put UNTIL I dump those files back in itunes to compare with the previous versions. The new files have empty Grouping tags. It seems to be doing everything I want it to do with the other tags (e.g. Comments is fine). Any idea what’s going on? Thanks!
You don’t say what format of music files they are, so I am going to assume that they are mp3s which means they are tagged with ID3v2.3 or ID3v2.4 - but if that guess is wrong, then everything that follows will be wrong.
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Check whether iTunes uses ID3v2.3 or v2.4, and set Picard accordingly. If this is set correctly, then…
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I suspect that this is a tag case issue i.e. iTunes uses and expects “Grouping” but Picard saves “grouping” - but I may be completely wrong and don’t have time to check the code.
Have a look at the options Tags → ID3 → “Save iTunes compatible grouping and work” and turn this on, or if it is turned on already, try to disable it.
Historically iTunes expected the grouping to be stored in a non-standard ID3 frame GRP1, and the work saved to TIT1. A lot of other tools (e.g. MediaMonkey or MusicBee) however use TIT1 for grouping.
The setting changes how Picard saves both grouping and work. By default the option is off, which causes grouping to be saved to TIT1 and work to be saved to a custom text frame TXXX:WORK. Turning the option on will save grouping to GRP1 and the work to TIT1 instead.
Please let us know whether this fixes your issue and which setting worked for you.
Neither nor. See the tag mapping at Appendix A: Tag Mapping — MusicBrainz Picard v3.0 documentation , which also documents the special case for grouping and work explained above.
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OK, so: my example track is artist “8 1/2 Souvenirs”, album “Happy Feet”, track 1 “Happy Feet” – and I have “Cover (Paolo Conte)” in Grouping for that track. I restored settings to default in case I messed something up poking around Picard initially.
Without turning that setting on, it says what I have in Grouping is in Grouping, promises it’s going to stay the same, and then when I copy the new file back to iTunes there’s nothing in Grouping.
When I turn the setting on, it says what I have in Grouping is in Work actually, promises it’s going to stay the same in Work, and then when I copy the new file back to iTunes there’s nothing in Grouping.
Throwing up my hands, I straight-up copied the file, renamed the original album slightly to help keep them straight, and dropped the copy back into iTunes — and there’s nothing in Grouping. Does this mean it’s just an iTunes issue? I would have said oh this means that the Grouping tag is like ratings on iTunes where it’s not saved as part of the actual file (if I’m even right about that), except that Picard does see that stuff in either the Grouping or the Work tag depending on the setting above.
So unfortunately, neither seems to work and now I have an extra problem. Any thoughts?
This is interesting, because it means iTunes switched to using TIT1 for grouping as well. I already suspected this, but wasn’t sure. It means the label of the option is a bit misleading, it should say that it is for older iTunes.
But generally your observation is correct. No matter if you get the grouping loaded as grouping or work in Picard, if you save back that value it will end up in the same tag it was loaded from and should show in iTunes.
Good experiment, that tells something. But yes, it sounds like an iTunes issue. If you move a file from iTunes and copy it back unchanged it should not loose the grouping tag value. And if you load it into Picard and see the grouping value it clearly shows the data is in the tags.
I unfortunately currently don’t have the ability to test with iTunes, or on a mac in general. I’m also not sure if there is a way to force iTunes to read back the tags. It has been several years since I tested this with iTunes, and I know that loading files with grouping used to work.
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Looking through decade-old posts of people complaining about iTunes I think I figured out this issue? The album I’m looking at has been in my library for years and supposedly they changed the tag ContentGroup to Grouping at some point, so I’m guessing older stuff in my library is actually tagged in ContentGroup, not Grouping, but is showing in iTunes as Grouping due to being grandfathered in or something? So when I try to add as a new file, iTunes says “ah, grouping is empty.” Picard though is reading that tag as either Grouping or Work depending on the setting; when I check the same file in mp3tag, I see that my info IS INDEED in ContentGroup; I tried copying that tag into Grouping for all the album’s tracks (is there a way to do that in Picard?) with mp3tag, then sending the tracks through Picard to get matched with MBIDs and less-pixelated cover art, then dropping them back in iTunes, and the tag now appears! So I guess that’s my new task to do before I get back to the reason I looked into MusicBrainz/Picard in the first place. Computers: a mistake? perhaps!
@magik.aarp we did a bit of digging in the history. iTunes originally used the TIT1 ID3 frame for grouping, later changed to the non-standard GRP1. The change happened around iTunes 12.5.4 (from 2016).
Now the odd part: Your files had the grouping in TIT1, as shown by the grouping showing up in “grouping” with Picard’s standard settings. But iTunes couldn’t read that back.
So what I suspect happens here: Your iTunes is newer (as expected) and uses the new way with GRP1. But your file tags originated from a time where iTunes used the old TIT1. When iTunes tries to read the tags back it expects GRP1. So you need to update the tags to use GRP1. You found a way to do so with MP3Tag.
With Picard it is a bit more complicated, but I think one of the two methods should work:
- Load the files with the iTunes compatibility option turned off. The grouping value should show up as “grouping” in Picard (not “work”). Now toggle the iTunes compatibility on. This should save the grouping as GRP1.
- More manual: Leave the iTunes compatibility on already when files get loaded. For files in the old format your grouping would now show up as “work” in Picard. Copy the work tag over to “grouping”, then remove the work tag and save again.
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