Comments on: What is iTunes “Grouping” column for?

By: The End

The End — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 22:34:45 +0000

I prefer to use Grouping for “super-genres” (id est, Electronic, Hip-Hop, Classical, Rock, Punk, Folk, R&B, Rap, Jazz). Genre, in turn, is used for sub-genres (e.g., Progressive Trance, Nerdcore, Baroque, etc). I then couple that with dynamic, smart playlists and my music stays wonderfully sorted. And Sort options help, too.

By: starpause

starpause — Wed, 28 Mar 2012 18:51:01 +0000

I’ve been turned on to using grouping as a tag based replacement for genre… thanks so much!

By: Niall

Niall — Tue, 30 Nov 2010 22:42:11 +0000

Nice to read familiar problems on here! I’d strongly considered the same aproach as Owen, but when I was testing it I hit the same problem Akara described – I need to be able to select a bunch of tracks and ADD a “category”,”subgenre” (or whatever you wish to call it) to whatever’s already in a field. Doesn’t seem like rocket science, and surely someone in Apple could provide this facility a darn sight easier than one of us scripting something to manipulate the XML file (even if that would work!). Grrrrrrr…..

By: Rainmanrey

Rainmanrey — Sat, 13 Nov 2010 16:13:44 +0000

I was thinking of using the grouping column to organize original release dates of songs. For instance if I have a greatest hits, soundtracks, and compilation albums that were released in 2007 but the track was originally release in 1992… Then I would want to be able to listen to it with 90′s… I might also want to listen to an artist’s older stuff, when they were in their prime.

I like the tagging idea as well… It would be a pain to edit each track and it would be a constant tweak. I don’t see the point of sub-genres. I put multiple genres in the genre column and use smart playlists sort them out. I have an alternative rock playlist that has about 10 playlist dedicated to the genre. I also have folders for country, classic rock, rock and others. A lot of songs make multiple folders… doesn’t take any extra room!

By: Jthekk2

Jthekk2 — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 05:28:55 +0000

I have a lot of different jazz groups that have overlapping members and such. I have the artist as the person who actually released the album, and under the grouping, I put that artists name as well as any prominent artists that I have other music for. That way, I can use the grouping tag to create smart playlists that have those artists songs over all the different albums from different artists, whether it be one song from the album or all of the songs.

By: Phil

Phil — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 18:54:05 +0000

This relates to the reply made by Peter last April regarding using grouping to keep various album titles grouped together (ie multiple CDs in one box set, each with a differing album title). He said that using the grouping field he could tag all the CDs within the same set and keep them together. What I need to know is if this affects the coverflow view or album grid to group these albums under ONE art. I haven’t been able to figure out how to make this happen, if it is at all possible, and have an album that is one artist, but divided into different “acts.” The best way I could think to differentiate the different acts on the album was to group the songs in an act in it’s own folder and change the name of the album tag to reflect which act those particular tracks covered. While this works as a list, it does not allow me to view the album as a “whole” using the coverflow view. It seems the only way to merge differently tagged tracks is if the ALBUM title is the same even if their are multiple artists. I’ve tried using the grouping, sorting, and “part of a compilation” options with no success. Is there any way to merge these tracks under one album art while retaining the different album names?

By: Anaya

Anaya — Wed, 20 May 2009 15:53:51 +0000

I found the grouping field to be useful in my music collection because I listen to music in 3 different languages, English, Korean, and Japanese. Sometimes I just want to listen to songs in one of those three languages so the having the language of the song filled in the grouping field (and having that field being displayed in iTunes) really simplified that process. If only my iPod Classic would support playing by the Grouping field, my life would be complete. But it doesn’t so I’ve been resorting to using playlists. Oh well.

By: cgudrian

cgudrian — Sun, 17 May 2009 10:15:07 +0000

The problem with using ‘Grouping’ for tagging is that you cannot add a certain tag to a bunch of songs. It would just replace the previous contents of the Grouping field with the one tag you would have liked to be added. You have to tag all of your songs one by one. That’s not feasible at all. I wonder if there exists a script which can manage tags appropriately in that way.

By: MGP

MGP — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 05:40:03 +0000

Hi Guys – No one has mentioned the page in Get Info entitled ” Sorting”. It seems I cannot type into it at the import stage – although later after importing one can. Does anyone know how this page fits in to all the above?

By: UnoNoOo

UnoNoOo — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 07:17:40 +0000

It has been my experience, that songs tagged as being in a compilation, will not show up in an artist search on the ipod classic, & this is a deal breaker for me, because half of all my music would have to be tagged in compilations. Therefore I don’t use coverflow on the ipod. Its function is the same as the album category. I too have many duplicate songs & if I was to start over again, I probably would have used playlists to a greater extent, to reduce the duplicates, but with over 20k songs, retagging isn’t in the cards.