Spotlight authors attribute & iTunes tags

I'm a little confused at present about Spotlight's authors attribute and how it relates to iTunes' artist & album artist tags.

1) It looks like Spotlight can have multiple values in the Authors attribute (the plural attribute name tells me so, plus mdls). Is there any way to write the artist field in iTunes such that it will be parsed into multiple author values in Spotlight? I've tried '/', ';', and ',' as separators, none of which seem to work.

2) If an item did have multiple authors, how would Hazel handle a "Sort into subfolders" action that used the authors attribute as a folder name? I would simply test this, but I don't know how to get multiple values into the authors attribute.

3) Does Spotlight capture the ID3 frame listed in iTunes as "Album Artist"? If so, what does it call the corresponding attribute? If not, are there any alternate ID3 frames that Spotlight does capture which can be appropriately used for "Album Artist"?

Thanks for any input on these questions. You'll be helping me get closer to achieving a well tagged and organized collection.

Emmanuel Gomez

1) Actually, I'm not sure if there's any way to set multiple authors/artists in iTunes. Keep in mind that the Authors attribute is more general than just music so it's possible in other contexts (ebooks?) that multiple authors can be assigned.

2) Hazel will string them together with commas, IIRC. I'd have to double-check.

3) Looking at some tracks I have with Album Artist set, I don't see it in the Spotlight attributes. It's a later addition to iTunes' tags so it's possible that Spotlight currently doesn't index it.

Sorry I don't have any good answers for you but my guess right now is that there's no clear way to deal with multiple artists/authors or the album artist.

Mr_Noodle wrote:Actually, I'm not sure if there's any way to set multiple authors/artists in iTunes.

Could it be done with AppleScript? The kMDItemAuthors reference says that's a CFArray of CFStrings.

Well, the AppleScript definition is provided by iTunes as well. It's up to Apple to determine whether to expose this or not.

Mr_Noodle wrote:3) Looking at some tracks I have with Album Artist set, I don't see it in the Spotlight attributes. It's a later addition to iTunes' tags so it's possible that Spotlight currently doesn't index it.

Can you confirm or deny that it is possible to read the album artist tag informations? I need that for a hazel rule which sorts mp3s into folders.

Wow, this is an old thread. Yes, you can read artist information but it's stored under "Authors" usually. Do "Get Info" on the file in Finder to see all the metadata available.

Thanks for replying. I know that it is possible to read out the Artist id3 tag but is it possible to read out the "Artist Album" tag as well? There is difference which matter to me because sorting mp3s from a compilations in one folder is a pain in the ass.

Spotlight still doesn't have a metadata attribute for the Album Artist (repurposed TPE2) ID3 tag so Hazel won't be able to read it directly. I know there are command line (and GUI) utilities that can process ID3 tags and be used to accomplish what you'd like to do, with or without Hazel involved, but don't have more specific details or recommendations.