Songs in iTunes Need an Explicit Tag
No, I don’t mean the things you download from iTunes, but rather for things you rip yourself. It would be nice to easily make a playlist that I could listen to out loud and not have to worry about my kids hearing an F-bomb or something similar.
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Comment by DackAttac
I’d like to think this feature isn’t far off. They already have it so content you download from the iTMS can be viewed with that little explicit box in your library/playlists, and iTunes is usually pretty good with treating user-imported tracks with the respect of iTMS-purchased material. You can even get that high-quality album art now. (When the tool works.)
The problem is it’ll probably take longer for the CDDB (where iTunes downloads its importing tag info) to catch up with this, since it’s a separate entity from the iTunes Store. And, like the composer tag is now, it’ll probably be scattershot at best.
The sad truth is that there’s no universal guideline for the explicit tag. Each label has their own rules, some permitting content I certainly wouldn’t want young ones coming across, and Aerosmith’s discovered the maximum number of F-words they can get away with label-free. (Other artists have as well, but that was the first shocker to me.)
Here’s what I recommend until Apple figures something out:
Download “PearLyrics” or a similar lyric-downloading program so you don’t have to wade through the pop-up infested lyric sites to get the lyrics. Search for any words you wouldn’t want your bundles of joy hearing and pop the word “Explicit” in the comment field. Then make a “kid-friendly” smart playlist where “Comment” “does not contain” “explicit”.