Automatically write Playlist name into Grouping tag

[relaxmarco]

Hello everyone,

I've been using MusicBee for roughly a year now and it's been a delightful experience, I could not be more pleased.

One thing though that I haven't figured out yet and that I would really, really like to be possible is to automatically write the Playlist name to the Grouping field as I drag and add the songs to the desired playlists.

See, I use MusicBee to monitor the same folder that iTunes (and Apple Music) uses. In iTunes (synced to my devices via Apple Music) are Smart Playlists I created that have a 3 digit number in their name and a small description after. Each Code corresponds to a certain Mood. (ex: 101 - Exercise, 102 - Roadtrip, etc)

The way I've been doing it until now is to manually write these 3 digit codes into the Grouping tag when I'm listening and organizing new songs or by dragging the songs to Static playlists with the same codes and, from time to time, select all tracks in a playlist and use Additional Tagging & Reporting Tools ''Copy Tag'' function to append the code of that playlist to the Grouping field (and repeat this process for all playlists).

I guess I would like to have this process a bit more streamlined, either by having MusicBee writing the playlist name to the grouping field as I dragged songs to playlists or, alternatively, by a ''Copy Tag'' style batch solution that would append the codes for the songs in all playlists at once.

I'm not sure whether there are any scripts or plugins that could achieve this, for MusicBee, iTunes, or any other software. At least I haven't found any, despite a few people also wishing for a similar feature in some other forums (but with no solution).

So yeah, basically that's it. Any help is appreciated.

[psychoadept]

Hi, welcome to the forum!

From the way you describe your workflow, I would think all you need to do is create auto playlists based on the grouping tag, rather than adding the tracks to static playlists.  It might be possible to programmatically access the Playlist pseudo tag with a virtual tag or a ASR script in the plugin, but that seems like extra work. if you're using Smart Playlists in iTunes why not do the same in MusicBee?

[relaxmarco]

Hi! Thank you.

The idea is to just use Auto Playlists. The Static playlists, at the moment, are more of a means to an end, because I currently have a big bulk of songs (over 30k) that I need to organize, according to the genres I have defined, and place them into playlists. Speed-wise, it's more productive for me to just drag the songs to the static playlists on the side tab (that have the same name as the auto/smart playlists in iTunes) and, once finished with this large bulk, just append the playlist code to the Grouping field of the songs in each playlist. In this case, I avoid typing which would be more energy and time-consuming for such a large amount of songs.

After all that is finished, for the few new songs that I will occasionally add, I believe it's just better to type the playlist codes on the Grouping field directly as I organize them, which will result in an instant update of the files' metadata (in MusicBee, since for iTunes, these files would still need to be 'refreshed' so that they reflect the updates in the tags which can be done by playing them once or with the help of scripts).

So basically, I was just looking to optimize the workflow here. If could choose, I'd rather always use the dragging method, if I was able by doing that to also have the codes simultaneously written in the Grouping field. In the past, I'd have simply used static playlists in iTunes and dragged the songs into them but these days, I prefer to have those codes embedded within the music files themselves, just in case something bad happens to the library or the playlist files, or if I change directory.