iTunes voice memo name tag content not shown in MP3TAG

Support
1

On my Windows machine, MP3TAG doesn't show any titles of my voice memo's. Why, I would like to know.

Background:
Whenever I record a voice memo on my iPhone, I save it with a descriptive title. Upon saving, a file name too is saved. This file name is generated automatically, consisting of date and time. The descriptive titles I add are helpful whenever I'm looking for a certain voice memo in my archives. I would like to use a tag editor such as MP3TAG to append (add) the descriptive title to the file name, making it one combined file name.

After importing such voice memo's to my Windows PC, my iTunes library presents each memo recording and uses my given title as the "name" of the track. So far, so good.

Now, as many of my voice memo's are of a confidential nature, I need to save them outside of my iTunes library, but still be able to search through the descriptions, meaning titles.

This is where I get stuck. I cannot use MP3TAG to append my descriptive title to the file name, as the "Title" tag shows empty for every voice memo. I have no clue, why this is. I expect that any title that is presented in iTunes, will also be shown in MP3TAG, but this isn't so.

This seems to be the case only with voice memo's. Titles of my iTunes music tracks are shown perfectly in MP3TAG.

Strangely, when I manually edit a voice memo's empty title tag in MP3TAG, this is automatically updated to the memo's name field in iTunes as well as to the title tag in the file properties in Windows Explorer. However, this doesn't work the other way round: MP3TAG doesn't show any change in the title made with other programs (Explorer, iTunes) even after I close and restart those applications and MP3TAG.

[EDIT RichardP: After another attempt I did get MP3TAG to read a voice memo's title after I had edited it in iTunes. So it seems that iTunes is programmed to automatically apply one of two different ways of storing voice memo titles. When importing a new voice memo, iTunes apparantly stores the title ONLY in its database; therefore, the title is not stored as a tag and MP3TAG cannot read the original title. But as soon as the title it changed from within iTunes, iTunes stores the edited title as a tag. END OF EDIT]
I'm confused as to how MP3TAG handles all this and how I can use MP3TAG to present the tag contents I'm looking for.
2

Use the extended tag-view (ALT-T) and tell us if you see any informations about existing tags.

3

I see two tags in extended tag-view:
(1) ITUNSMPB
(2) YEAR
Neither has the content I'm looking for.

4

I am afraid that this is much more an issue of iTunes. For some inexplicable reason, iTunes
sometimes stores data (modifications especially) only in the database but not in the tags.

I am not wuite sure where it is but I think there was an option that forces iTunes to write the database into the tags ... (I am using a very old version of iTunes).

5

I'm aware that iTunes is storing some kinds of information only in its database. However, MP3TAG does read the titles of any music track. I cannot imagine why there would be an exception for voice memo tracks.

6

Could you ask Apple about this? Mp3tag duly tells you that there are some fields filled but others are not. Who should fill them if not iTunes.
You found yourself that any data entered with MP3tag is represented in iTunes. So apparently iTunes withholds data.
How should MP3tag change this behaviour in iTunes.

Just to be sure: you could go through the whole business of checking which tag versions you find in the files (e.g. APE is usually a bad idea), you could check the files for integrity with MP3val or MP3diags.

If you google a little, you might stumble across something like this:
http://superuser.com/questions/173581/usin...a-into-id3-tags

They recommend to use the "convert ID3 tags" function ...

7

That you have to ask Apple.
As you can see you are not alone with this problem:
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7037821

8

I have updated my original posting with the following edit:
After another attempt I did get MP3TAG to read a voice memo's title after I had edited it in iTunes. So it seems that iTunes is programmed to automatically apply one of two different ways of storing voice memo titles. When importing a new voice memo, iTunes apparantly stores the title ONLY in its database; therefore, the title is not stored as a tag and MP3TAG cannot read the title. But as soon as the title it changed from within iTunes, iTunes stores the edited title as a tag.

9

After another attempt I did get MP3TAG to read a voice memo's title after I had edited it in iTunes. So it seems that iTunes is programmed to automatically apply one of two different ways of storing voice memo titles. When importing a new voice memo, iTunes apparantly stores the title ONLY in its database; therefore, the title is not stored as a tag and MP3TAG cannot read the original title. But as soon as the title it changed from within iTunes, iTunes stores the edited title as a tag.

10

So all in all I'm one step further now. Thanks for helping me this far. I'll have to see what my new insights will bring in managing these voice memo titles. For now, I'll give this posting a rest. If anyone has more interesting thoughts on this, I'd like to hear.

11

If i got that right: you do not have to edit the title tag (in iTunes) to get data written to the files but you can use any field, also empty ones. So you do not have to spoil the original title but can use e.g. subtitle to invoke the tag writing.
You can then select all voice memos in MP3tag and delete the superfluous field in one go.