| In the previous chapter, you saw how you can browse your iTunes music collected by genre, artist, and album. This makes finding music fast and easy, even if you have thousands of songs in your Library. This functionality is enabled because each song in your Library has informationalso called tagsthat categorizes and identifies those songs for you. Genre, artist, and album are just three of the possible tags for each song in iTunes. There are many more items of information that iTunes manages. Note  | Not all songs have all the data fields listed. You will only see data that is applicable to a specific song. For example, only music purchased from the iTunes Music Store has information about the purchase. |
These types of data fall into two groups: data that iTunes assigns for you and that you can't change, and data that you or iTunes assigns and that you can change. Data that iTunes assigns and that you can view but can't change include the following: KindThe type of file the song is, such as AAC, MP3, and so on. SizeThe amount of disk space required to store the song. Bit RateThe quality level at which the song was encoded. Larger numbers, such as 128Kbps, are better. Sample RateThe rate at which the music was sampled when it was captured. Date ModifiedThe date on which the song file was last changed. Play CountThe number of times the song has been played. Last PlayedThe last time the song was played. ProfileA categorization of the song's complexity. FormatThe format in which the song was encoded, such as MPEG-1, Layer 3, and so on. ChannelsWhether the track is stereo or mono. Encoded WithThe tools used to encode the song, such as iTunes, QuickTime, and so on. ID3 TagData formatted according to a set of specifications. If a song's data has been formatted with this specification, the ID3 version number will be shown. Purchase By and Account NameInformation that identifies who purchased the music from the iTunes Music Store and what account was used. FairPlay VersionFor music purchased from the iTunes Music Store, this identifies the version of protection software that was used to encode it. WhereA path to the song's file on your computer along with the file's name. (Actually, you can change this by changing the location of the song. The reason it is on this list is because you don't manipulate the data itself using the iTunes information tools.)
Data collected for songs that you can change includes the following: NameThe name of the song. ArtistThe person who performs the song. AlbumThe name of the album from which the song comes. GroupingA label you can assign to group songs together in some fashion. ComposerThe person who is credited with writing the song. CommentsA free-form text field in which you can make comments about a song. Note | When you insert a CD, iTunes attempts to get that CD's information from the CDDB (the online CD database), which is why it connects to the Internet. If iTunes finds the CD in this database, the information for that CD is applied to the CD and carried into the Library if you import the songs from that CD into iTunes. If you purchase music from the iTunes Music Store, it also contains many of these tags. |
GenreA song's musical genre, such as jazz or classical. YearThe year the song was created. Track NumberThe song's position on the CD from which it came, such as "2 of 12." Disc numberThe number of the CD. This is meaningful only for multiple CD sets. BPMThe song's beats per minute. CompilationAn indicator of whether the song is part of a compilation CD; that being one with music from a variety of artists, such as a theme CD (perhaps something like the best love songs used in action movies).
When you add a song to your Library, iTunes will add as much of this data as it can find for each song. However, you can add or change the data in the previous list. So, why should you care about all this data? There are a couple of reasons. The first is that, as you already know because you learned how to browse and search your Library in the previous chapter, this data can be used to find music in which you are interested. That reason alone should be enough to convince you that these types of data are important to you. The second reason is, when it comes time to create playlists (which you will learn about in Chapter 16, "Creating, Configuring, and Using Playlists"), you can use song tags to determine which songs are included in your playlists. For example, you can configure a playlist to include the last 25 songs you have played from the Jazz genre. This is just a basic exampleyou can get much more sophisticated than that. In fact, you can include lots of different combinations of these types of data as criteria in playlists to create very interesting sets of music to listen to. |
