How to make use of the "mood" tag?

1

Just discovered that mood tags exist. I find that fascinating to add such tags to my music library and then have automated playlists created for each mood tag.

So far, so good - but what I don’t get is, how mood tags are utilized in audio players. Using iTunes, Plex and Kodi. I don’t understand how I can work with the mood tag in any of them. iTunes doesn’t even seem to be showing the mood tag anywhere in the file, neither does plex (didn’t check kodi). So I guess my chances of using that tag to then create playlists are zero?

This might be a very stupid question, but currently I am stuck and would be thankful for any further insight into this topic / question.

If this turns out to be usefule, I guess the follow up question would be, can I effectively tag my entire music library with mood tags from last.fm (or musicbrainz if it supports “mood”) without touching any other metadata or changing any album art. Every other setting should stay untouched. I would hate to loose a few years of work.

2

With MediaMonkey and the GenreFinder plugin (and a list of moods rather than genres) you can add mood tags from last.fm to your library. With auto-playlists you can then produce playlists from your mood tags.

3

Thanks for the reply. Since I am on OS X MediaMonkey is not an option since it is windows only, if I understand their somewhat confusing homepage correctly.

I am still not sure how mood tags and iTunes / Plex / Kodi would work together.

4

Yes, it can be a rather confusing program /website and you’re right it’s not on OS X. If mood tags don’t work natively in iTunes/Plex/Kodi a workaround would be to create playlists in other programs where they do, which you may then be able to open in the programs you mention (don’t know but I wouldn’t hold out hope for iTunes).

5

iTunes can read .m3u files.

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6

So maybe I should be posting this question no the Apple Communities pages?

I am still unsure how to

  • add mood tags to my files (ideally automatically for my entire library, since doing this manually will likely take several years)
  • make use of the added mood tags in UI music players like iTunes, Plex and Kodi

If anybody can share insight, that would be highly appreciated. If this is the wrong forum, also feel free to let me know.

7

I have a Mac and I use iTunes for my music. At this time I don’t believe there’s any way to use mood tags with iTunes.

At best, what you could do is use a Picard script that combines genres with moods and then make a smart playlist in iTunes that looks for the mood tag. That would make your genre field look something like this:

Synthpop; Pop; Easy Listening; Chillout; Smooth; Female Vocals; Melancholy: Rainy Days

Unfortunately, iTunes will read this as one big long tag, so the Genres view ends up being useless. I only use smart playlists though, not the genre view, so that doesn’t matter to me.

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