I’m on a roll with iTunes-related tips lately. To better myself and others, I have made scripts that can edit music file tags, create technical playlists not possible even with Smart Playlists, and other workarounds for missing features and requests. Some work out-of-the-box, and the rest just need you to enter your desired customizations in the javascript code. These free scripts work on Windows only, but Mac users can use Applescripts. I’m no whiz at programming, but I managed to come up with some rudimentary plugins that achieve crucial functions that should be helpful for many people on many occasions (like processing in batches). This saves time and makes things more convenient.
Has Lyrics
All songs that have lyrics (anything but blank) in the lyrics ID3 tags are put in a playlist.
download
Adjust Play Count
Change the “Played Count” number of selected songs that you can set to whatever number you want.
download
Undo Play Count
If a song played that you didn’t really listen to, or you just want to subtract the number of plays of selected tracks, use this. This does not edit the time stamp listed as “Last Played,” but it will undo the number of play counts. This might come in handy if you are using a auto-rating plugin or other play dependent software that works with iTunes. This would come in handy if you fall asleep with music and still want to keep track of how many actual listens you have made (like in a smart playlist).
download
Relative Batch Rating
This script is set to add an extra star to selected songs. Depending on how you set it up, it will shift all the ratings by whatever amount of stars you want. Adjust Ratings at increments of 20 (20=1 star, 40=2*, 60=3*, etc). You can even do half-stars by making half-rating quantities (10, 30, 50, 70, and 90). A good tip is if you want to add just a half a star, change the 20 in the text file to 10 and choose the track and execute.
download
Lyrics Search
This one takes pretty long to search through the lyrics of selected songs. Find a word, string, or more than one input at a time. Matches go into a playlist. I searched the word love after highlighting 600+ songs and it took at least five minutes to complete. Otherwise, extremely useful.
download
Append To Comment
With tracks that are highlighted (selected), it adds user-defined text to a comment without erasing and overwriting previous comment text. It will not add the same text that is already in the comment field (so if you have “live” already written in the comments and are adding “live” with this script it will only have one occurrence of the word).
download
Append To Grouping Field
Same as above, except it attaches text to the end of Grouping tags without destroying the current data.
download
Before you can use the javascript, you need to rename the *.txt file to *.js then double-click to run them. Be sure to read the top of the script for special instructions before renaming and executing the plugin.
If you want me to configure any plugins so all you have to do is double click (no editing the code), I may create a custom script or help troubleshoot and give you support, especially if you send a tip via PayPal.
Otto also has other javascripts that actually helped me make my own. I had to search for official iTunes class namings to figure out how to control iTunes specifically, but glancing over his code was enough to guide me to create these.
Changelog:
2007.06.30 – Added an undo script for playcount, basically an offshoot of my “Adjust Play Count” script except it changes relative to the current number.
2007.07.26 – Made a rating script that changes relative to the existing number of “My Rating” and also can handle half-star.
45 comments
iHope: iTunes Gripes and Wishlist- liquid parallax's Blog says:
Jun 9, 2007
[…] Otto’s iTunes javascript. -sort by whether lyric tag is present (contains lyrics) or not. Fix: Playlist script -integrated lame encoding -native ogg vorbis support -delete / sort by dead tracks (!) with the […]
Fixed and Smart Playlist Ideas- liquid parallax's Blog says:
Jul 21, 2007
[…] while back, I made some iTunes Javascripts for Windows, some that generate playlists for […]
Jean-Louis says:
Sep 3, 2007
Hi! great scripts! I’m especially interested in the “append to comment or to grouping” . I have an idea similar to that and I’d like to find out if it is doable. I have exported my itunes library to an excel spreadsheet. I have updated in the spreadsheet the comment and grouping columns with moods, type and other stuff. The idea was to update Itunes back with that info so I can create smart playlist based on that info. Do you think it would be possible to create a batch script to read through that spreadsheet and match the songs and update the comment and grouping info in Itunes. I would greatfully make a donation for any help.
Thanks
JL
liquid parallax says:
Sep 3, 2007
Offhand, I don’t know how to do that. Did you actually just import a copy of your library (.xml or .itl) into Excel, or did you make a .txt file using “Export Song List” in the iTunes Library? I’m not too familiar with Excel (I’m using OpenOffice and haven’t needed to use spreadsheets lately). If Excel can maintain the correct formatting of the original file, you could overwrite your library (but create a copy and backup in case). If it’s a .txt then it might be possible to import it (File>Import), but I have not tested that option. In any case, make sure you have a copy of the iTunes folder files in a safe directory: iTunes Library.itl iTunes Music Library.xml
Bis says:
Sep 24, 2007
Excellent work with these scripts! Thank you and keep it coming!
PS: Didn’t you have a script that would save star ratings to an xml file way back in the day? Just curious.
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Oct 7, 2007
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kevin says:
Nov 17, 2007
Awesome scripts, thanks a lot. I’m curious, how does the half-star rating thing work? Does that mean iTunes has built-in capability for half-star ratings but just hasn’t added a feature to rating that way yet? Can SmartLists use songs with half-ratings? What about on iPods, does the 1/2 show up there?
liquid parallax says:
Nov 18, 2007
@kevin:
Good questions. iTunes can read half stars, but the playlist functionality is lacking. I think if your rate a song 3.5 and your SmartList is for ratings greater than 3, it won’t work. I haven’t tried myself, but I believe halves are not read or any # and a half is read as zero stars for playlists. I’m not sure half stars can be plugged into SmartPlaylists. You might want to try making a playlist of random full star and half star songs, then sort by rating to see what happens. It’d be nice if iTunes could go all out on half stars or else I’d probably use them. Maybe they’ll add it as an option you can toggle someday. I’m too lazy to see if the iPod sees half-stars. It probably can’t hurt anything though. Maybe I’ll report back here if nobody comes up with answers.
kevin says:
Nov 19, 2007
The only thing I could think to try was making a SmartList whose parameters was “Not 5 stars,” “Not 4 stars” etc and even “not 0 Stars” and see if my 3.5 star song shows up… but didn’t work. Still cool, I like seeing the little 1/2 star show up. 🙂 I’m particularly pumped about the edit Play Count stuff since that enables a wide range of function. Cheers
liquid parallax says:
Nov 19, 2007
glad you like ’em. If you have any more ideas, I might be able to take a stab at it.
I was contemplating but not coming up with a playlist that would populate songs with the same title, so different version would be added like “I Can’t Get No Satisfaction” by the Rolling Stones and Devo, “Act Nice and Gentle” by the Kinks and the Black Keys, etc. I’m up for some suggestions for new scripts.
ovy_joe says:
Feb 17, 2008
Excellent stuff here. But I do have a question. Seeing as how it’s possible (and rather easy with your scripts) to edit playcounts, is it also possible to edit the Last Played date for the certain songs in Itunes? Any help would be as appreciated as the play count script.
geo says:
Mar 18, 2008
I need a script that will sync my ipod ratings with my itunes library…
any thoughts?
helga says:
Jun 15, 2008
ps- should’ve thrown in some mega props in my other post. your’s is the only site i’ve found w/ the add comments script for windows. never would’ve got my files back in order w/o it. THANKS!
Michael says:
Dec 11, 2008
This is a great script, works good. And I tested it, itunes does sort with the half stars, so it’s good for that.
I just had a quick question, anyone that is good at javascript and windows app development , could you write a small app that would automate this? It’s a little hard for computer novices…
If I hadn’t been spending so long in unix world, I would do it, but it would take me too long to re-learn…
Thanks.
Scott says:
Dec 14, 2008
Thanks so much! This just un-farked the play counts on 155 songs after my iPod was left running. And you taught me some scripty tricks, too.
liquid parallax says:
Dec 17, 2008
Scott, yes I have fallen victim to that many times, including just listening to music and suddenly falling asleep.
The undo playcount also doubles as a Redo Playcount if you listened to a CD in the car or somehow “scrobbled” on a device that iTunes has no access to.
David’s Blog » Counting, 1, 2, 3 says:
Jan 23, 2009
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Violet says:
Mar 7, 2009
I was using the lyrics search and was wondering, I highlighted items from a playlist but it did not seem to work…is this normal and I just have to live with it?
liquid parallax says:
Mar 21, 2009
I admit that the lyric search is a bit buggy. Although it handles selected items, it seems like it somehow browses through the entire library. It just takes a real long time, but it should work and only match selected items in the end. I’m not sure why it uses so much resources, but if you try an overnight search if you have a large library, let me know if that is the issue.
Michael S says:
Apr 13, 2009
I really like your script for adding comments, is it possible to have it add comments in particular order. For example I have a spreadsheet with a list of what a shortcut means to me and I add them to each particular comments field. Some aply to the whol album and Some to the whole band.
One song’s comments might look like this
(B) (D) (G) (J) (K) (L) (O) (P) (B1) (G1) (P1) (DD1) (B2) (C2) (G2) (A3) (B3) (C3) (K3) (U3) (EE3) (C4) (P4) (AA4) (SS4) TT4)
If I sort with the comments colum the order only varies slightly with added or removed codes. Each code has a playlist that searches for it (D) is for Driving music and (E) is for Easy listening, right through to (C4) has bass guitar and (SS4) has vocals.
Amy says:
Jun 26, 2009
I tried the adjust play count one, but it didn’t work. I saved the file and changed it from a *.txt to *.js but when I try to open it(double-click) after highlighting the songs in my itunes it just opens the script in Dreamweaver. Can you please help?
liquid parallax says:
Jul 5, 2009
Amy,
I think your settings are set in your Operating System (Windows?) to automatically open Javascripts in Dreamweaver. See if you can open with itunes. I switched to a mac, so I can’t test out directly what is happening in your case. Sorry to come short why your computer does that…
Sammy says:
Aug 3, 2009
thanks for this! I have been searching for a long, long time for a script that would allow me to append the comments and grouping fields ( I have several codes for acoustic versions, language etc…) As obvious as this may seem, I think it is worth puting the idea out there that if you edit several copies of the script in a folder with appropriate file names and content it will make your life easier on repetitive tasks. i for example have several simmilar copies to add , , and so on to identify the language of different groups of songs, all saved in an easy to access folder. Again, thanks for making this available – the world needs more nice people like you!
Sammy says:
Aug 21, 2009
hey there! I am thinking of something that would be very helpful… I use smart playlists heavily and having songs in the right GENRE is critical, but through apple’s rigidity, the ipod does not display Genre of the title while playing. A work around would be to copy basic fields to the fitst line of the Lyrics section… I am not good with scripting but this seems doable to me. I think they key element would be to insert it at the begining of the lyrics with a line break after to ensure that those songs with lyrics do not get overwritten and the user does not need to scroll to the end to get the genre – do you think this is possible?
Alvin B. says:
Mar 14, 2010
Excellent scripts. Would love to see scripts that let you set the rating for the currently playing track… that way I could map it to my F-Keys and simply hit the F-Key I want on my programmable keyboard to launch a script to rate the current track 1-5 stars. Might manage to write it myself, dunno.
straylight says:
May 5, 2010
sorry, im completely new to scripts, and dont have a clue what im doing wrong here.
when i click ‘download’ for the ‘has lyrics’ script, there is just text, which i save in a text document, which i then save as a .js file. when i try to open that, it gives me an error saying:
line: 17
char: 1
error: expected ‘catch’
code: 800a0409
source: microsoft jscript compilation error
should i post what text im saving? again, i dont know how to write scripts, so i have no idea what an error on line 17 character 1 would look like… or if thats even whats wrong…
Mark says:
Sep 23, 2010
Thanks for the “Half-Star Rating” script.
I’ve been looking for something like that for a while.
I have it working with SONG ratings, but can I get it to work with ALBUM ratings?
spuddy says:
Oct 10, 2010
i’m exactly like straylight. i want to use scripting to make itunes make a playlist of songs that don’t contain lyrics, instead of going “get info” and pressing the next button a million times to check manually. i know where to find the script, but i after downloading it i dont know which programs to open it with, or how to get it do anything with itunes. PLEASE TELL ME how to make it work as i am an amatuer.
Carl says:
Oct 22, 2010
LOVE your script “Adjust Play Count”. I have a smart playlist named “Virgin Blood” that populates the playlist with unplayed songs (PlayCount = 0). I recently moved my iTunes library around and – long story, short – lost my play count on about 1/10th of my library. Your script saved the day. I changed it from “64” to “1”, and now my Virgin Blood playlist is back to serving its purpose!
I use my Virgin Blood playlist all the time to help remind me to listen to music that I have downloaded but have never played. I like it more than “Recently Added” because if you don’t listen to a song within the specified time duration (days, weeks, etc.) then it is removed from the list.
Thanks again!
Thank you SO much!
Update Play Count in iTunes for Windows | ZagZ.com :: Deep end of the alphabet with Paul Zagoridis says:
Nov 25, 2010
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Paul Zagoridis says:
Nov 25, 2010
I’ve extended your Adjust Play Count script with a VBScript input box method and packaged it as a Windows Script File (.wsf). Feel free to grab the code and/or update your script with the same method if you want.
Thanks for sharing your scripts. I just wanted to type a different number in every time I ran it.
Carly says:
Apr 20, 2011
Tcoudhown! That’s a really cool way of putting it!
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Apr 23, 2011
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Shweta says:
Jun 20, 2011
Can you please tell me if it is possible to create a smart playlist in the script?
Or does iTunesApp.CreatePlaylist() function create only normal playlists?
Thanks in advance.
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Jun 30, 2011
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John says:
Mar 31, 2012
I’m a beginner here. When I download the script and rename it .js and then run it, I get the message that “Javascripts must be embedded in HTML files” and nothing happens. I’m running Windows 7. Any ideas? Thanks
Joey says:
Apr 23, 2012
I have since switched to Mac (which uses applescript instead of JS), and don’t know why Windows 7 would choke on the javascript files. It looks like you have a default application that is trying to open the javascript instead of iTunes. For Apple users, scripts are an menu option on the application bar (with all the other command menus such as “File”, “Edit”, etc). Maybe you can open a script there via “Tools” or some other item?
David P. says:
May 30, 2012
There is an additional useful JavaScript for Windows on the Apple support website:
Automatically Number Tracks in iTunes
https://discussions.apple.com/message/18523462#18523462
Cheers!
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