ITUNESADVISORY misuse

Development Web Sources Discussion
1

I keep seeing ITUNESADVISORY misused as a tag so I thought it was worth a post to share my view:

Most services (that are not apple) use a boolean tag to flag tracks with explicit lyrics. Usually a 0 for not explicit and a 1 for explicit.

ITUNESADVISORY adds additional flags, most notably, it adds a 2, for "cleaned" or "censored" tracks. This is a specific subset of not explicit. Services that use a boolean tag would simply flag this type of track as not explicit. While that is accurate, given the context, it is not accurate in the context of ITUNESADVISORY. In other words mapping an explicit t/f flag to ITUNESADVISORY often misrepresents the data, imo since there is not enough data available to map it correctly.

2

This is correct handling, and is outlined in the documentation for mp3tag already. There are iTunes exclusive details towards the bottom of the page. See here.

3

Thanks for the confirmation MotleyG. I call it out because I have noticed several source scripts that don't handle this situation correctly. There are, of course, bigger problems in the world but this one seems like an easy enough fix. :slight_smile:

4

Usually the web source scripts only return the data that is found in the addressed site. So it would be a problem at the origin of the data.