Technipages

Smart phone, gadget and computer tutorials

iTunes: Can’t Change Song Name, Artist, or Album on Get Info Screen

iTunes: Can’t Change Song Name, Artist, or Album on Get Info Screen

By 52 Comments

If you’re a user of Apple iTunes who experiences a problem where you cannot rename anything about your music including “Song Name”, “Artist”, or “Album”, you may have a problem where your music files are set to “Read Only”. You will need to make them writable with these steps.

  1. Open “iTunes“.
  2. Have a look under “Edit” > “Preferences” (Windows)/”iTunes” > “Preferences” (MacOS).
  3. Select the “Advanced” tab.
  4. Note the “iTunes Media folder location“.
  5. Close iTunes and do one of the following based on your operating system.

    Windows

    • Right-click the “Start” button, then select “File Explorer“.
    • Navigate to the location for your “iTunes Media folder location” you gathered in step 4.
    • Right-click the “Music” folder, then choose “Properties“.
    • Deselect the “Read Only” box, then select “OK“.
    • “Apply changes to this folder, subfolders and files” should be selected. Select “OK“.
    • Wait until the attributes are applied to your files.

    MacOS

    • Navigate to the location for your “iTunes Media folder location” you gathered in step 4.
    • Click the “Music” folder to highlight it.
    • Select “File” > “Get Info“.
    • Expand the “Sharing & Permissions” tree.
    • Select the “Lock” icon. You may be prompted for credentials for an administrator account.
    • Set your account or “Everyone” to “Read & Write“.

Open iTunes and see if you can modify your music files now.

FAQ

I followed the Windows steps, but “Read Only” gets re-checked again. Why does this happen?

You may have to apply security permissions to the folder as well. Use these steps:

  • Right-click the “Start” button, then select “File Explorer“.
  • Right-click the location for your “iTunes Media” folder located at the place you gathered in step 4.
  • Select “Properties” > “Security” > “Advanced” > “Change Permissions…“.
  • Double-click your account and check “Full Control. Do the same for the “SYSTEM” group.
  • Check the “Replace all child object permissions with inheritable permissions from this object“.
  • Select “OK“, then “OK” again.
  • Now follow steps 1 through 6 again.

Note: If permissions are grayed out, select “Disable inheritance“, then choose “Convert inherited permissions into explicit permissions on this object“.

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Sadly this didn’t work for me on Windows 10, and I tried it more than once.
    This is so frustrating. Does anyone else have any other solutions I can try. Thanks.

  2. The only solution I’ve found is to kill iTunes and restart it. If I remove readonly attribute it might work for three files out of ten. This stinks.

    It doesn’t stink as much as watching the memory disappear on my brand new iPad; iTunes calculates it as 9GB free, the iPad says it has about 100 MB free. And it keeps getting worse

  4. This is very helpful!
    Although—the read-only continues to check itself after I apply the settings. I did everything listed here more than once, and it still doesn’t work…

  5. Didn’t help me either. I have my music on an external hard drive and it kept turning back to read only.

  6. This did not work for me. ITunes keeps changing the information back from what I entered

  7. Thank you very much! Very clear instruction which is much appreciated :) Thanks again!

  8. Artist shows up OK in iTunes, but does not display when saved on flash drive and played in car. What will correct this?

  9. Thank you so much. Such a simple fix to a problem that has been driving me mad for some time!

  10. So nothing that was in this article or what anyone said in the comments worked. It took me putting the files on my iPod (yes, I still have one of the old 80gb iPods) then editing the files on my iPod adding the artist name and stuff.

  11. This was very helpful but what do I do if the settings reset every time I close the box after pressing apply.

  12. Thanks so much for your help with this problem. You described the fix very clearly. And it worked!!

  13. What worked for me is the realization that I was trying to edit the metadata right after adding it to my library — which was exactly when iTunes was trying to sync it with Apple Music. Apparently Apple locks changes to the files during the upload. There was a spinning icon next to the search bar in iTunes indicating an update was taking place. I clicked that and hit the X to halt the the upload for now and was instantly able to edit my album info.

  14. Save yourself A LOT of trouble….this method does not work for the new itunes update. I wasted hours until i read a comment that worked. All you need to do is download the song you are trying to edit, then view it in the downloaded menu. It should allow you to edit.

  15. Was also quite frustrated at this, the fix that worked for me was actually quite simple.
    I had Windows Media Player playing the song I was trying to edit, how dumb of me.

    All I had to do was to close Windows Media Player or any other program that might be playing the song in any way. Then follow the instructions in unchecking the “read-only” attribute. If the attribute is not there or the line is grayed out, then just go to the security tab and make sure you give yourself full control over the folder.
    Hope that helped!

  16. The solution didn’t work for me, it kept going back to ‘read only’ and the further solution didn’t help. But I read Adam’s comment and found that both of mine were already unchecked, but doing the opposite of his solution and checking the two options fixed the problem.

  17. So unbelievably frustrating to have to pour hours and hours into trying to solve this problem, but so far I’ve discovered that iTunes 12.7.3 will only allow me to change song info when from the View menu list I select “Only Downloaded Music”.

    If I select “All Music” from under the View menu list then all the song info is greyed out. Since much of my music is ripped from CDs rather than downloaded, this is a huge problem. In order for my playlists to work the way I want them I need to be able to change the genres. Thus I need to be able to make that change on the pop-up “Song Info” display.

    I’ve tried the above suggestions & so far nothing has worked.

  18. How I solved this problem: My folder permissions were set to “read and write” and it didn’t make a difference. Probably because I don’t store music in the iTunes folder.

    I had to go to iTunes Preferences > Advanced and turn OFF these two options:
    “Keep iTunes Media folder organised” (turn off)
    “Copy files to iTunes Media folder when adding to library” (turn off)

    Then FINALLY I could edit song info again. Both of those options had to be off. If I re-enabled one of them, I could no longer edit song info. Hope this helps someone. Can’t believe we are having these sorts of problems in 2018.

  19. It seems with every new update from iTunes, something new goes wrong. So tired of this every time this happens. Now I cannot edit songs or make any changes at all. I have followed all of the above steps, and even tried it all a 2nd time, to no avail. Going to look for new software to use, done with itunes at this point.

  22. None of the above fixes are working for me, Can’t edit song info, my permissions are “read & write”. This is driving me nuts.

  23. Crazy. That worked for me.
    Thank you for posting this.

    It’s November 2017, and I’m finding my way around a new iMac running Sierra, and was surprised to run into this.

  25. Thanks for providing the info, Mitch. Sadly, none of this works for me. I followed all of the steps multiple times and also took the advice of commenters. Is it possibly the issue that my music files are on an external hard drive?

  27. Thank you for your explanation on how to add artwork to iTunes. It was so simple due to you.

  30. After searching around in frustration, I found this page and it finally fixed the problem. I still dislike the new iTunes, though. :) But thanks so much for your help!

  31. Followed all the steps but can’t deselect “read only” because it’s not an option. Early iTunes was so much better. Fix it.

  32. I do not let iTunes organize folders as you have no control over the folder layout and quite frankly it makes a mess of things. It is contrary to the way everything else organizes it and if you use other players, the organization it uses does not play nice.

    I found that my problem was limited to using the “Recently Added” view. In Album view, it works fine.

  33. ‘For those who still have this issue, go on iTunes > Edit > Preferences > Advanced > Check “Keep iTunes Media folder organised” & “Copy files to iTunes Media folder when adding to library”

    Worked for me.’

    This just worked for me too! Had tried everything else! Thanks!

  34. I think just possibly what some people are missing here is a very simple (but admittedly easily overlooked) thing: namely, that a song or album must actually be downloaded to your computer in order to be allowed to be edited. In other words, if it’s only in the Cloud, and not downloaded onto your hard drive, editing will not be possible. Hope this helps.

  37. It worked for itunes but the edited songs wont sync to my ipod, just the genre and the others but not the artist’s name

  38. Same problem here on Mac book pro. Was able to change the permissions in name only. It says i can read and write now but still am not able to make any changes at all. 500 gigs of perfectly manicured music collection collected over 12 years since going digital is suddenly feeling very nervous & annoyed. iTunes is feeling like a messy roommate. You guys need to wash your damn dishes and pick up your cloths, because there are tracks floating all over the place. They have drawers to be in, but no, if I want socks, I may as well check under the refrigerator. You dig?

  39. I wasn’t able to change the artist nor the album, on my itunes, (mac),

    If someone knows of a solution please post it,…

  40. I’m on the latest iPod of version which is 9.3.5. This issue started happening when I updated, a few days ago, finally after months of receiving alerts to update. I have a Macbook Pro on Sierra (I believe) with iTunes running the latest version (12.5.5 I think). Before the update downloaded & completed on my iPod, I synced a few songs and these songs I was able to change the song info via “get info” and all is well with them. Once I updated to the newest ios version, I added a few more songs but it didn’t want to update anymore. It’s completely annoying since now those songs are just out of order being sorted either by track number, album or artist name.

  41. Likewise the prior :(
    I did every step, including the FAQ/afterword. It will unclick the “replace all child object permissions” once I click it, hit apply and okay, and consequently the read only button.

  42. For those who still have this issue, go on iTunes > Edit > Preferences > Advanced > Check “Keep iTunes Media folder organised” & “Copy files to iTunes Media folder when adding to library”

    Worked for me.

  43. It’s not working for me (windows) because inside the iTunes Media folder there is no Music folder, only “Downloads” and “Automaticly Add to iTunes”.
    Can someone help please?

  45. This almost worked for me… but the stupid read-only keeps getting re-checked. I followed all the steps for Windows and I’m pretty sure I’m on the admin account but no matter what everything keeps being undone after I click OK.

  46. Did all the steps for Mac, including each individual artist and folder and still cannot change info

  47. Oh, actually it did work!
    The Read Only option remains, somehow, enabled, tho.
    Intriguing…

    Thanks, anyway!

  48. i went to the media folder (for windows) but the only thing that shows up when i click on it is a folder called “Automatically Add to iTunes” with nothing in it

  49. This hasn’t solved my issue on my Mac. I have changed the permission in every folder within the Music folder and including the Music folder, but I still can not change an artist name. Anyone have any other solutions?

  50. I followed all the steps for: “I followed the Windows steps, but “Read Only” gets re-checked again. Why does this happen?” I have two “WMPNetworkSvc” One has “Full control ” and the other one has: “Read C:\Users\Dell-Desk…” I cannot change the second one to Full control.

  52. Thank you so much! This fixed my problem. I thought I corrected all my permissions, but I had missed one higher up in the chain.

Did this help? Let us know!

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.