Using a dedicated audio-file tag editor can address the issues identified in the previous section – and more! There are a variety of tag editors for OSX (see links below): in this section I will describe using just one – Kid3 – to perform a certain task which I couldn’t perform in iTunes. This can be useful (say) for podcasters wishing to include an expanded audio file description for their podcast episodes: iTunes limits the description field by default to 256 characters. Tag Addition: Dedicated tag-editors do much more than edit: they can also add and delete tag fields.
A dedicated tag editor can always access the full list of available tags and can therefore change and update any audio-file tag, even those not displayed by default via iTunes. Most of the time this works well to simplify the user-interface: but on occasion normally editable tags disappear. Tag Error correction: iTunes hides tags it decides users cannot (or should not) edit.What tagging can’t iTunes do?Īs I’ve recently discovered, iTunes can let users down in the following two areas: Which tags iTunes displays are pre-set by Apple and cannot be changed by the user. iTunes provides an intuitive user-interface to edit a standard subset of mp3 tags in a no-nonsense, straight-forward manner. ITunes is configured to perform standard audio file tagging tasks that meet the needs of 90% of iTunes users 90% of the time.
This begs the question: what on earth can a tag-editor do that iTunes can’t? Read on for the answer to this and other related, intriguing questions. In the latter case, I use a dedicated tag editor. Being a devout iTunes user, I routinely use iTunes to edit MP3 tags: except in certain circumstances when I require additional functionality not provided by iTunes.