Editing Song Info...

[ACE]

One of the biggest gripes of the new software is the apparent inability to edit meta data of songs. This is not true, however, as I'll show you. There's a feature many have overlooked that helps greatly to manage your personal collection. Look to the upper right above your music when viewing the main songs menu. There's an option to 'browse' or 'list'. This list feature is the one I'm talking about.



The list menu allows you to select, sort, and edit your music in multiple ways. To edit, simply right click the songs and select 'edit' in the drop down window. Why so many people have missed this is beyond me, but it's another wrinkle in this software that really makes me applaud MS for their attention to detail. After reading many reviews already, a lot of people are surprised saying, "Microsoft made this?" Yes they did and they did it very well.... Hope this helped!



EDIT: If your collection has its album art messed up, this is not the tip you're looking for. There's an issue with the program files that is easily fixable and found in the forums....

CameleonMK's way

To get to song properties:

1. Find the song you want to edit on the computer (not in the software)
2. Right click
3. Click "properties"
4. Switch the tab over to summary
5. Edit the song and hit apply
6. Click ok

Alternate method:

1. Find the song you want to edit in the software
2. Right click
3. Click "properties"
4. Click the orange text
5. Right click on the song file
6. Click "properties"
7. Switch the tab over to summary
8. Edit the song and hit apply
9. Click ok

[Super Person]

Whoa, never even saw that!

This'll make it MUCH easier to edit song info

[guitarfreak846]

THANK U ACE!

[GarciaM25]

great, for those of us who did see that, how does that help edit metadata of MULTILPLE songs? how does that edit genre of multiple downloaded songs many people refer to as "albums"? while that's all nice and good you think M$ did a good job on this software, it has made it even more difficult than the first iteration and even more of a hastle to put music properly sorted on my computer into some type of organization on my 1st gen Zune with 2.2 firmware........

[Archetype]

It is still limited. You can't edit year, track number, or multiple tracks at a time. Probably more but I haven't checked everything. It's also still a headache to work with album art. Sometimes it works, sometimes it feels like I'm running in circles. I really wonder why they couldn't just go with true ID3 tag editing. It would have made a huge difference in usability of this new software. Instead it feels sloppy.

[frank garcia]

Originally Posted by GarciaM25

great, for those of us who did see that, how does that help edit metadata of MULTILPLE songs? how does that edit genre of multiple downloaded songs many people refer to as "albums"? while that's all nice and good you think M$ did a good job on this software, it has made it even more difficult than the first iteration and even more of a hastle to put music properly sorted on my computer into some type of organization on my 1st gen Zune with 2.2 firmware........

Im having the same troubles. Its been a nightmare last couple of days, with this.

[GarciaM25]

i have the American Gangster soundtrack (2007) on my computer, properly labeled and imaged using folder.jpg of the actual album art.... but alas, this wonderful (read: brainless, worthless, boring, numb) software has put the cover art to "A Tribute to Grand Funk Railroad... an American Band" on it permanently, and the "Update album art" button works just about as good as clicking with the left mouse button hoping to get a right clicked menu to appear....

are we the only three people who CAN'T get this to work, or is this software really a piece of crap like i think it is???

[frank garcia]

Your must be right garcia and i thought i was getting pretty good with this till i upgraded, damn, why? lol, its laughable.

[elderstsman]

I went to list instead of browse, spent a lot of time changing artist's name from unknown to the real name, for two different albums by the same artist.
The List shows what I edited. When I go back to browse, it not only hasn't changed, but it's made up something I never put in!
It's as if it consulted some other database and decided I was wrong!
It went back to unknown for one, and for the other, put in Mozart, who is of course the composer and not the perfomer/artist!
Now what, please? I'm tearing my hair out here!!!

Thanks.
Peter

[Machiventa]

you guys should uncheck "automatically update album art and media information" in Settings then use the Zune media collection reset tool here to delete the stored data so the zune software can rescan your media. should fix those issues

[elderstsman]

This software is screwed up. The changes show up in List, but when I go to browse, they've disappeared. I did uncheck that box, too, before trying again. And changes made to one album name don't show up on the device, but the change to the other one does. Crazy, no?
I'm about to just give up, and chalk it up to the folks at Microsoft, who appear to have done it yet again -- issued a terribly buggy piece of work with no fixes.
Goofy way to run a business, and right now, I'm wishing I'd gone the iPod route. This is maddening.

Peter

[swiper]

thanks!
if it doesn't work...
just use
zmeta

[sackz23]

I had all the exact same problems with the zune software not keeping my changes. So, I decided to start using WMP11 to edit artists, song titles, etc. and by golly it also changes my music on the zune.

Since then I've been using WMP11 to change all my metadata and it transfers over to the zune.

The best part is that WMP11 keeps the same layout as the old zune software where you can search their database for song update, album art, etc.

Much better now!

[bassman22291]

Soo much trouble..I read all the complaints bout this new software that I just sticked with the old one...Good enough for me.

[elderstsman]

I tried that with wmp11. Made the change in the collection, but didn't get to the Zune itself at all. Not only that, but now, when I put a CD in to save it, it isn't recognized, and just comes up Artist Unknown, Album Unknown, for any CD, not just one here or there.
I don't know what's going on here at all, obviously. Sure would appreciate any help I can get. Don't know what to do next to have this stuff work the way it's supposed to work.
Very frustrating.

Thanks.

Peter

OK. Sheesh.
Shoulda known.
I delete the thing from the device, and then re-sync, and the changed track titles show up.
Whew.
So it won't overwrite what's there, but there's no need to do so, anyhow, since resyncing is so simple.
Problem solved.

[elduquex26x]

Hi, I was having the same issue with changing the Artist and Album tags. I went into 'List' and changed them in there however, the Artist still showed up as 'Unknown Artist'. So I ran the erase tools and all that, I changed it in WMP11 and still had same issue. I fixed it though by going back into 'browse' mode in the Zune software and then in the leftmost column where it list all the Artist names - right click on the one you want to edit and change it there as well. Mine still shown up there as 'Unknown Artist' regardless of what it said in 'List' mode. This fixed it for me. Hope it helps everyone.

[joel08]

I went into "list" and go 2 change the artist name but as soon as i changed the artist name it changes right back 2 what it said before how do i make it stay what i lable it?

[CameleonMK]

Try editing it in the song properties first.

Added methods to first post.

[joel08]

Thank you so much thats what i needed...now what about pics i asked around about pics and people have told me many ways to get the pics to sync but i tried all their ways and it never syncs... syncing pics?

[CameleonMK]

Is the folder in the software?