claytron.featuring 1.0

A console script to clean an iTunes library

Introduction

Hip hop music is notorious for adding extra information into the artist and track names. This script helps you normalize and move those pesky (Feat. Some Artist) strings in your iTunes library. The script allows you to make a selection in iTunes, then run the script against those tracks from the command line.

Installation

This script can be installed with pip. I would also recommend installing it into a virtualenv:

$ pip install -U claytron.featuring

Usage

You can see the usage string from the -h option:

$ featuring_fix -h
Usage: featuring_fix [options]

This script will allow you to modify the tracks in your iTunes database.
Select the items that you want to modify in iTunes, then run this script from
the command line using the options below. The "featuring" strings will be
normalized and added to the comment tag as (Featuring Some Artist). The
previous contents of the comment will be left intact.

Options:
  --version             show program's version number and exit
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  -r, --real-run        Change the iTunes database (default: False)
  -c, --with-csv        Write change info into a CSV file
  -w, --featuring-with  Take care of 'with'
  -n, --no-parens       Process the tracks without parenthesis (be CAREFUL
                        with this option, since "featuring" is a common word)

By default the script does not modify the iTunes database since there is no real undo in iTunes. If you want to see what the result of the modification will be, you can run featuring_fix with the csv output option:

$ featuring_fix -c

If you want to modify the files in your library, you must use the -r option:

$ featuring_fix -r

WARNING: This can take a long time to process a large selection of tracks. If you want to run it against your whole library, make sure and have some music playing, then go grab a coffee.

Featuring Styles

There are many different ways in which a track can be tagged as “featuring” an artist. A few examples:

Featuring Mr. Lif
Feat. Mr. Lif
Ft. Mr. Lif
f. Mr. Lif
f/Mr. Lif
with Mr. Lif
w/Mr. lif

And I’m sure there are other incarnations of these EVIL strings. Currently the script can handle all but the w/ and f/ items from the list above.

Changelog

1.0 (2011-05-08)

• Initial release