Folder filter for music files not seeing artist/file names

[drowning_not_waving]

Hi brains-trust,

 

I'm trying to create a simple workflow to find mp3 files in my iTunes music folder (its quicker than searching in iTunes itself).

 

The search scope is correct and it finds all the files BY SONG TITLE but it does not filter by ARTIST NAME.

 

e.g. I have an mp3 of artist = "Chuck Berry",  title = "Maybelline".  If I search for "Maybelline" it will find all files of song called "Maybelline".  But if I search "MAYBELLINE CHUCK BERRY" it doesn't find anything.

This is even more frustrating given that the filename is "maybelline_chuck_berry.mp3"

 

I need it to find files by SONG TITLE combined with ARTIST NAME.

 

Any help appreciated.

[deanishe]

What Fields have you selected under the "Advanced" tab of your File Filter settings? You need to add kMDItemAuthors in order to search artist names.

[drowning_not_waving]

I have kMDItemAuthors in the file filter + Title, DisplayName, UserTags, OMUserTags.  It finds artist name but not in combination with song name.  So, as explained, it will find "Chuck Berry" and "Maybelline" but not "Chuck Berry Maybelline".  I get a blank even though I have a song by "Chuck Berry" called "Maybelline"

[jdfwarrior]

I have kMDItemAuthors in the file filter + Title, DisplayName, UserTags, OMUserTags.  It finds artist name but not in combination with song name.  So, as explained, it will find "Chuck Berry" and "Maybelline" but not "Chuck Berry Maybelline".  I get a blank even though I have a song by "Chuck Berry" called "Maybelline"

 

Have you double checked the file to ensure that the metadata is actually there? I created a filter for a music directory, set the file type, the search scope and then added tje kMDItemAuthors tag and, in this case I was searching through a folder for a band called Thousand Foot Krutch, and specifically looking for a file called "We Are". Searching for "thousand foot krutch we are" returned exactly the file I was looking for.

[drowning_not_waving]

Yes David, the metadata is there (get info on the file shows correct author and title).  The tagging is good.  That is not the issue.

 

The problem may be something to do with the fact that, when searching, the Alfred results only display the song title - rather than the file name (which is what I expected).  I assume this is some sort of standard Alfred setting.  So, unless the artist name appears in the song title (which would be incorrect) it just won't find title + artist (author).

 

P.S. thank you for your interest in helping solve this.

[deanishe]

What I think is actually happening is that all the words in your query must match one of artist or track name (or whatever other fields you've added). Alfred doesn't find files where one word matches one field and another word matches a different field.

The reason artist + title works with some files is because by default Alfred also searches kMDItemAlternateNames, which is set to the full filepath for MP3 files (and this is where Alfred is finding a match). So if the full filepath (not just the filename) contains both artist and title, Alfred will find it:
 
~/Music/Chuck Berry/Some Album/Maybelline.mp3 will match maybelline berry because both words are in the filepath.

~/Music/Compilations/Best of the 50's/Maybelline.mp3 will not because maybelline and berry aren't found together in any of the artist, title or filepath fields that Alfred searches.

 

If you want it to work as expected, you'll probably have to rename your audio files so the filenames include artist and track title.

Edited November 19, 2014 by deanishe

[drowning_not_waving]

Thanks Deanishe.  That makes sense.

 

I also found a workflow that does it much better than I could: https://github.com/caleb531/play-song.