Existing users, 
 TuneTags - 0.89add keywords or 'tunetags' to iTunes |
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Product Description:
TuneTags is an application that works with iTunes to let you add keywords, or "tunetags" to your music.
Have you ever realized that many songs do not fit into just ONE Genre? Or, you want to note which songs are good for Driving, are Romantic, or just about anything else useful to know? You can make playlists for these things, but it would be better if the song itself could be marked with many different keywords, or "tunetags" that let you know more about each song. Then, smart playlists could be made that show you all your good 80's Driving music, or Romantic Folk music, or Defiant Rock music or even music good for getting psyched before a competition.
TuneTags lets you mark each song using many tags from a list, or Library, of tags. It comes with a starting Library of tags, but you can add your your own to the Library as you think of new tunetags that describe your music.
See Developer Note below for an explanation of how TuneTags saves the tags to a song.
What's new in this version:
Operating System Requirements:
This product is designed to run on the following operating systems:
- Mac OS X 10.4 PPC
- Mac OS X 10.3.9
- Mac OS X 10.3
Additional Requirements:
- Mac OS X 10.3
- iTunes
Screenshots:
Download Links:
Download TuneTags Version 0.89 (File Size: 260k)
Download Links:
Download TuneTags Current Version (File Size: 169k)
Your Installed Versions:
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| Ease of Use: | Not rated (0.0) | Quality / Stability: | Not rated (0.0) | Price: | Not rated (0.0) |
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Featured Reviews
Re: interesting but limited tagging approach - Version: 0.90, 6/1/2005 07:11AM PST
Krioni
Most Recent Replies: View All 3 Replies
- Re: interesting but limited tagging approach
- Re: interesting but limited tagging approach (1 replies)
Comments field is for user data... - Version: 0.90, 6/1/2005 07:01AM PST
Krioni
I'd love to access the ability to add special new tags via the MP3 (or AAC) format specs and put TuneTags data there, but then you couldn't use them in Smart Playlists in iTunes, since iTunes wouldn't know about those fields. I am considering a way to make the tag-format I used more compact, perhaps <T>Tag1<T>Tag2</T> for example, leaving off the <TuneTags... etc parts. No ideal solution - I'm trying my best to handle a situation where I don't control the programming of the application TuneTags has to work with.
I also hope to add bulk-edit and other capabilities to TuneTags, but I may wait on that until I switch to Objective-C development instead of AppleScript Studio.
Also, regarding auto-classifying - I've considered adding abilities to look at some of the online classification databases (any you think would be particularly useful?). It would be an interesting thing to do, and could make semi-automatic tagging possible. I've even considered building some kind of community-based tagging web database myself, but that would involve a lot of time (and expensive bandwidth, if it became popular). I wouldn't know how to keep it from costing me without making some kind of ads/registration/donation. Anyone have any ideas about that? Post here or send me an email by visiting my site.
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interesting but limited tagging approach - Version: 0.90, 5/31/2005 03:42PM PST
sporobolus
the major problem i see here is that multiple levels of info have to be stuffed into a single tag "word"; if you are already delimiting with <T>, why not allow spaces and add multi-level tags? well, the obvious reason is that iTunes is lousy at searching, so you're stuck ... or are you?
allow me to present an alternative tagging approach -- i define more sophisticated groupings, based on an open-ended set of categories, each of which may have zero or more pieces of text associated:
<category1 info a, info b><category2 info c>
categories are single words or abbreviations usually 4 characters or fewer, examples: <kind (genre), <mood, <sim (for similar to), <lang (for languages used), <loc (for locale of origin), <list (for lists to which a track belongs), <qual (text quality notes), <note (commentary), <stat (status of a track), <tech (technical data), <glitch (encoding glitches), <has (special aspects or sounds found on the track)
the info items are free text, only comma and angle brackets are reserved (vertical bar would have been a better choice than comma)
so where TuneTags might have:
<TuneTags v1.1><T>BadEncoding03_Minor<T>BadEncoding08_Severe<T>Cheerful</TuneTags>
i'd have:
<glitch minor long 2:31, bad short 3:55><mood cheerful>
this shows how i capture richer info; the glitch info items are free text, allowing me to represent the severity, location and length of two glitches
i use simple AppleScripts on a DragThing palette to add and delete tags, etc.; i also preserve any unbracketed comments; the whole thing can be expanded to true XML pretty easily and from there imported into a data handling tool (SQLite? Python? Spotlight?) that can do much more sophisticated searches than iTunes, and tie back to a iTunes via a simple controller
The problem with using a longer tag format is that the Comments field in iTunes is limited to 255 characters (some of which may already be in use by custom user comments). I'm actually considering limiting my tag format length.
Your alternative is something I've considered - putting the tunetags into a separate database external to iTunes, since iTunes does not allow for extensible tags (you're stuck in iTunes with the tags it knows about already), even though the MP3 format and AAC format do allow for custom tags (including new fields much longer than 255 characters).
The problem with an external database is that the tags would not travel with the song file itself, which would normally be annoying for a user. Also, iTunes Smart Playlists cannot access external information. I wrote TuneTags to make it easier to build more intricate Smart Playlists.
I am considering extending TuneTags to be able to build and refresh "semi-smart" playlists that could then be updated by TuneTags. That would allow for custom data fields or an external database, but would be a lot of work.
The ideal solution would be for Apple to make iTunes extensible - you can add your own data fields to the MP3/AAC/other field and iTunes would know about them. In lieu of that, I'll probably stick with the Comments field, and actually switch to an even shorter tag format: you get the most bang for your (and my) buck, since it allows you to work in the most compatible-with-iTunes and portable (travels with the file) way. Oh, and because it is a hell of a lot less programming time for me. This is not my full-time job, just a side hobby. :-)