Matching artists names in iTunes

itunes

I've noticed that after I put music into iTunes that is downloaded from an outside source, the songs sometimes have the artist names written slightly differently

e.g:

  • "James Blunt"
  • "james Blunt"
  • "jamesblunt"
  • "james blunt " (space after word)
  • etc.

This did not bother me until I realized that when looking at my music sorted by artist on my iPhone, it shows 5 different artists! Because of this, I can't just choose an artist and put their songs on shuffle.

Now, I could go through and manually change the names of every artist to match but that may take hours.

Is there a simple way to fix this problem?

Best Answer

The easiest way i can think of :

  • Quit iTunes
  • Get a Tagger (MusicBrainz Picard, Tagger, Metadatics,...)
  • Go To your ~/Musik/iTunes/iTunes Media/Music folder
  • Drop all the "James Blunt" Folders onto the Tagger
  • Set the Artist to "James Blunt"
  • Save the Files

After you have done that, reopen iTunes.

Now you have 2 Options : You can either go through the Tracks by yourself and start listening so iTunes sees, that you changed the Artist.

Or, you can use an AppleScript to refresh your tags.

Your Music should now be cleaned.

And yes, that is in my opinion the easiest, you can go easier, but that requires more scripting which therefore would not be easy.

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