I use Amarok to listen to music in my iTunes library on Linux. I noticed that some artists are listed as "Unknown", but I made sure that the ID3 tags were written correctly. I used the latest ID3 version that iTunes supports to write the tags, ID3v2.4.

What's the latest ID3 version that Amarok can read? If I know this, I can convert the ID3 tags in my library to a version that Amarok supports.

Amarok, or more specifically Taglib, which is the library Amarok uses for tag reading, definitely supports ID3v2.4 (just checked some mp3s in my own music library).
a) What Amarok version are you using?
b) If you open the files in question with an external tag editor, such as kid3, are the tags present and correct?

if you use kid3 (or Amarok or whatever) to view the tags on one of these tracks what is in the "artist" tag?

Also, what version of Amarok are you running?

Version info
KDE 4.5.x
Amarok 2.3.2-3.4
Taglib 1.6.2-1.9
kid3 1.5-2.7

I did another test with an MP3 file that uses ID3v2.3 tags. Here's the interesting part: although Amarok can't read the tag, kid3 can. Screenshots below (click to enlarge).



If these apps use the same library, how is it possible that I got two different results? Has this been fixed in later versions of Amarok?

Why are all the tags duplicated? Try removing the duplicate tags in kid3 and see if Amarok reads correctly then.

I've got some stuff ripped by iTunes and Amarok has no problems with them, nor are the album, artist and title tags duplicated. I ripped using iTunes version 8.1.x., what version did you use? Do all the problematic tracks have tag duplications?

could you open the track in Amarok using right click -> "edit track details", the tag tab and display the results.

google01103 wrote:II ripped using iTunes version 8.1.x., what version did you use?

The most recent version of iTunes 10.

google01103 wrote:Do all the problematic tracks have tag duplications?

Even the ones that do work, have a "Tag 1" (empty) and a "Tag 2" section in kid3. So I guess that means yes. This MP3 works in Amarok:

Sentynel wrote:Why are all the tags duplicated? Try removing the duplicate tags in kid3 and see if Amarok reads correctly then.

I tried it on a copy of the original test MP3. I clicked the "Remove" button under "Tag 1", saved, then loaded the MP3 into Amarok. I'm still getting the same info...



Here's another MP3 that doesn't work (viewed in kid3):


I don't see any discernible differences between working MP3s and broken MP3s in kid3.

That wasn't what I meant by duplicated - if you look at the first file you screenshotted, each tag is listed twice. Multiple tag sections is not unusual, but the tag duplication within one is.

However, that doesn't appear to be the problem.

Amarok 2.4 beta is available; testing with that would be helpful if you can.

"I don't see any discernible differences between working MP3s and broken MP3s in kid3." But there is - in Tag 2 artist, album and title are all duplicated. And this is consistent with all tracks that are problematic, correct? That there is a Tag 1 with the Tag 2 shouldn't matter as they are just different versions of the id3 tag (id3v1 id3v2) and I assume Amarok would user the newer if both available.

Did the problem exist before you started using iTunes 10.0 or 10.1? Are the problematic tracks all newly ripped or dl'ed?

google01103 wrote:But there is - in Tag 2 artist, album and title are all duplicated.

Ooh, right... now I see what you mean.

google01103 wrote:And this is consistent with all tracks that are problematic, correct?

Yup, that's probably the issue. Can I remove those duplicate entries in batch?

google01103 wrote:Did the problem exist before you started using iTunes 10.0 or 10.1? Are the problematic tracks all newly ripped or dl'ed?

I haven't used my iTunes library with Amarok before. (I'm a part-time Windows user and a part-time openSUSE user.) Some of the broken MP3s were ripped, some downloaded, but I also have ripped/downloaded MP3s that do work.

not sure, how'd you remove them if the duplicate tags have the same tag id's nor that there isn't something else keeping Amarok from reading them properly. You could copy some tracks or albums into a temp file and try. Have you tried playing the tracks with a diff Linux player? A Windows player (not iTunes)? I assume there's no issue playing them in iTunes.

Maybe you could post on a iTunes forum asking about the duplicate tags if they are generated in iTunes

In your first post you said "... I used the latest ID3 version that iTunes supports to write the tags, ID3v2.4." so you used the command line tool id3v2 to write/rewrite your tags? If so could you have added the dup tagss instead of replacing them?

Could you rip a new track in iTunes 10.1 to see if that's where the duplicates are created?

google01103 wrote:not sure, how'd you remove them if the duplicate tags have the same tag id's nor that there isn't something else keeping Amarok from reading them properly. You could copy some tracks or albums into a temp file and try.

I'll try removing the double entries from an MP3 file later this week to see if it solves the issue.

google01103 wrote:Have you tried playing the tracks with a diff Linux player? A Windows player (not iTunes)? I assume there's no issue playing them in iTunes.

I'm getting mixed results on Windows.

Windows Explorer: works
VLC Media Player: doesn't work
Media Player Classic: works

google01103 wrote:Maybe you could post on a iTunes forum asking about the duplicate tags if they are generated in iTunes

I'll look into that later this week.

google01103 wrote:In your first post you said "... I used the latest ID3 version that iTunes supports to write the tags, ID3v2.4." so you used the command line tool id3v2 to write/rewrite your tags? If so could you have added the dup tagss instead of replacing them?

No, I used an internal iTunes tool.

google01103 wrote:Could you rip a new track in iTunes 10.1 to see if that's where the duplicates are created?

I'll try that later this week.

google01103 wrote:You could copy some tracks or albums into a temp file and try.

I checked all duplicate fields with kid3 and clicked Remove. The fields didn't disappear, so I don't think that kid3 is able to just outright destroy fields.

I dug up an old MP3 from Jonathan Coulton in my library that is both broken and released under a license that makes it okay for me to share the MP3. Maybe you can see what's wrong with the file and give some pointers on how I might be able to fix the issue.

Download: http://www.box.net/shared/shnjjrndgj

google01103 wrote:Could you rip a new track in iTunes 10.1 to see if that's where the duplicates are created?

I had no issues ripping the MP3. No fields were duplicated.

to delete tags/fields in Kid3 use the "delete button, the "remove" button clears all the fields - I was able to remove the duplicate tags using Kid3.

There are lots of duplicate tags in that one track

I can play the track in Amarok 2.4beta fine but the "edit track details" shows empty fields, after deleting the dups "edit track details" shows the fields fine

puddletag displays the tags
pinkytagger does not, easytag does not

can you check and see if all the bad tracks were ripped by iTunes 7.1.1

if you process the track with "id3v2 -l" to list all the frames (aka tags) you'll see dups about 1/2 down http://pastebin.com/pRtdgze3 id3v2 is a command line editor for id3v2 tags (it's in the openSuse ropositories)

google01103 wrote:can you check and see if all the bad tracks were ripped by iTunes 7.1.1

Here are a couple of 'em.

TENC (Encoded by): iTunes 8.2.1
TENC (Encoded by): iTunes 8.2.0.23
TENC (Encoded by): iTunes v7.0.2
TENC (Encoded by): iTunes 9.0.2.25

In summary, the "encoded" values are pretty much all over the map. There's only one pattern: every broken MP3 seems to have been encoded by iTunes.

google01103 wrote:if you process the track with "id3v2 -l" to list all the frames (aka tags) you'll see dups about 1/2 down http://pastebin.com/pRtdgze3 id3v2 is a command line editor for id3v2 tags (it's in the openSuse ropositories)

Awesome tool. Does it have the ability to remove duplicate tags? I can now use kid3 to clean up MP3s like you instructed, but given the amount of broken MP3s I would win a lot of time by writing a shell script to automate it. I have looked through id3v2's manpage, but haven't found anything helpful.