Importing Songs in iTunes
Is there a way to change the names of songs I have downloaded to my iPhone iPod from CDs? Often they will only list something like “track 5″.
When you import a CD in iTunes, it attempts to download information like the Song Name, Artist Name, Album Name, etc from an Internet database called CDDB (Compact Disc DataBase). Make sure your preferences are setup correctly for iTunes to make this attempt by going into iTunes Preferences, then choosing the “Advanced” tab. Check the box that says “Automatically retrieve CD track names from Internet”.
If it can’t locate that information from CDDB, then your imported songs will be named “Track 1″, “Track 2″, etc. In order to have your iPod display the name of the song, you’ll want to change the name of the song in iTunes. Here’s how to change the name:
After the import process is complete, right click on each song and choose “Get Info”. Under the “Info” tab, change the”Name” and “Artist”, and any other information you know.
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Do it a little easier. Use SHIFT (on Windows anyway) to mark all the songs and do the above steps (right click…. get info) and you will be able to edit the information for multiple items.
This is good if the CD is from one artists, same year (or other info) and/or if you want to give all the music pieces the same album art.
When you have done the above, you are able to change the name of the songs quickly by selecting the song, wait a second and then click on the song name and you are ready to type in the name. You can also press F2 (instead of waiting a second and clicking on the name).
(I’m sure Cali knew all this ;-)
lol! I reminded myself to put that information in the post, and then..totally forgot. :) Thanks for commenting!
Might be that you just never had internet access when you added the tracks too, try making sure your connection is ative then highlighting all the tracks and selecting Advanced | Get CD Track Names. This will try the CDB database again to try and get the details again.
I recommend mp3tag for editing this information. It has lots of really neat utilities to automate the process. I rarely find that the cddb info is to my liking anyway.
I used FixTunes… worked on about 95% of my song library…
From their website -
“Organize and Fix Your Music
FixTunes is an easy and powerful program that will fix any missing or misspelled song details, add album artwork, remove duplicates songs and organize your music.
Smarter Than Other Programs
Works even if you have misspelled or missing song data (unlike iTunes and others).
It’s Automatic - Typing Not Necessary
Look up and fix all your songs with just a few clicks.
Add Album Art to Songs
Enjoy your music the way it was meant to be seen. A must have for iPods, iPhones, etc.
Edit and Fix MP3 Tags and Names
Corrects and updates Artist, Album, Title, Track, Year and Genre tags.”
I believe iTunes use Apple Store to lookup the album information. This works for purchased tracks only.
FixTunes works only if you already know about the album. It useless if you have no album\artist information in the tags, file or folder names.
mp3tag is good freeware tool. but I have a better time saver to recommend: http://www.tagtuner.com