First, I had to install a perl module that my shiny new Mac didn’t come with (depends on fink):

fink install mp3-info-pm

Okay, now to write a quick script that can read the id3v2 tags and write the data as an id3v1 tag.

!/usr/bin/perl

addv1.pl to copy the id3v2 tag to the id3v1 data

use MP3::Info qw(:all); use Data::Dumper; usemp3utf8();

$v2tags = getmp3tag($ARGV[0],2); print “V2 Tags\n”; print Dumper($v2tags); print “Applying V1 Tags…\n”; setmp3tag($ARGV[0],$v2tags); $v1tags = get_mp3tag($ARGV[0],1); print “New Tags:\n”; print “V1:\n”; print Dumper($v1tags); Okay, so that works for one file, but I’ve got well over 2,000 mp3 files in my collection, so…

find ~/Music/iTunes/iTunes\ Music -type f -name '*.mp3' -exec ~/addv1.pl "{}" \;

Enjoy!

Update: Thanks to the admin over at macosxhints.com, I now know that from within iTunes you can just click Advanced->Convert ID3 Tags… Don’t I just feel like an idiot now. Leave it to a guy who made “The Switch” to OSX from Linux, not Windows, to find the hard way to do something.

1. The hardware is not expensive. I’ve seen Sirius tuners for as cheap as $60. I’ve even seen them being given away for free if you sign up for 6 months of service.
2. The subscriptions aren’t that much. If you only want to pay month to month it’s about $13/mo. These days, that’s about one movie ticket, and you get SO much more entertainment from the radio than you do from a 90 minute piece of Hollywood crap. Personally, I pre-paid for a year of service ($142), and odds are that when my year is up I’ll pay for the lifetime service ($500).
3. Terrestrial radio is crap. You’ll realize that within an hour of listening to satellite radio. None of the music stations have commercials. None. Zero. Just back to back songs, and maybe (but not always) a DJ. Also, the stations don’t change format on you part way through the day. That has always annoyed me with standard FM stations. I’ll find some station that I actually like, then the next day it is crap because it turns out that they only play what I like between the hours of 11pm and 2am on alternating Tuesdays in months that end in ‘y’. My music is always where I expect it to be. If I want to listen to big-haired 80’s rock, I can turn to channel 23 (Hair Nation) and it will ALWAYS be playing Def Lepard, or Motley Crue, or Poison, or something like that. If I want classical, I switch to 80 “Symphony Hall”, and it will ALWAYS be classical.

If you don’t like Stern, that’s fine. I do. I would ask though, why don’t you like him? Have you really listened to an entire show? Or have you just been influenced by what the press has said about him?

I’ve heard people say, “He hates women”. Bullshit. If you’ve listened to his show, you know that’s not true. Does he make fun of strippers? Absolutely. Now tell me with a straight face that you’ve never made a joke about a stripper. Does he make fun of stupid people? Yep, regardless of gender.

I’ve been told that he’s homophobic. He hired George Takei as the new announcer for his show. George Takei! Don’t know who that is? Ask any Star Trek fan, they’ll tell you that as far as they are concerned, he was the first gay man in space. And by the way, George was great. They could do a show with just Howard and George and I would listen. So, the show launched, seemed good to me, but I have one concern. The lack of censorship. I know that sounds strange, but hear me out. I hated the bleeping and clipping of the show as much as all the other fans, but they did add something. In an effort to not get constantly censored, the crew on the show would have to come up with really creative ways of saying things that would get by the FCC, and I for one found a lot of humor in the creative uses of language via innuendos and plays on words that they would use in order to get their point across. Hopefully the loss of that will enhance the show since they can spend more time on their bits rather than wasting it on trying to get around FCC regulations. Howard has already said that he is going to try to do the show without cursing, though he said “fuck” something like six times in the first show, and chastised himself every time.

That’s my take on satellite radio and the new Stern. I’d love to hear yours.

I’ll risk the lawsuit. Seeing as how I’m married to the singer, it seems unlikely.

Oh, and if you like it, check out the website.