Traktor 4 Pro has destroyed the metadata of my music collection

Hello. I stepped away from hobbyist DJing for about the past 4-5 years, and I'm now just getting back into it. I recently upgrade to TRAKTOR PRO 4, and have encountered a SIGNIFICANT problem. If I import any tracks into my collection that aren't mp3s (particularly ALAC/AAC/m4a files), Traktor has taken it upon itself to irreversibly delete extensive amounts of metadata from any of the imported tracks. So, for example, if I import a purchased aac file from iTunes, the moment it enters my Traktor library, I lose my artist tags, album title tags, genre tags, record label tags, etc. This is a HUGE problem. I now have to go through my library of thousands of tracks and manually retag everything all over again. Additionally, if this behavior continues, I can't import or use any songs in Traktor that aren't encoded as mp3s or some similarly non-Apple associated format. Does anyone here know if there's a way to fix this problem? I don't feel like Traktor should be deleting tags without my permission, and with this current behavior, the software has become essentially useless to me, considering a large majority of my tracks are either in AAC or ALAC format. I'm at a loss for words right now, considering how much damage Traktor has done to my imported track library and I don't know what my next steps should be. Is Traktor compatible at all with AAC/ALAC files anymore, or have I just wasted money on upgrading to the wrong software? I've never had this problem with previous version of the program and I don't know what to do now. Any help is much appreciated.

Find more posts tagged with

Comments

lord-carlos

Had so search for a bit, but found this: https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/28394/does-traktor-3-remove-my-tags-from-m4a-files#latest

If you use m4a files and select [x] Only write custom Traktor tags it will remove tags after first import.

I would try to set it to [x] Do not write any tags to files and see if that helps.

I asked NI about it back then, but never heard back :( In my mind bugs involving data loss should be handle with a high priority.

@Martiniix_NI Can you check if the Traktor team is aware of this bug?

Steps to reproduce:

Have a .m4a file with lots of tags NOT in traktor collection yet. (artist, title, album etc.)
In traktor active [x] Only write custom Traktor tags
Load into traktor and analyze
Close Traktor
Open file with a tagging tool
Observe: Data loss 🥲

Also a connected bug, if you remove a m4a file from collection, and tell traktor to remove the traktor tags, it will also remove some other tags.

betamax999

Unfortunately, that didn't make any difference. Traktor refuses to acknowledge the metadata on all of my AAC/ALAC/.m4a files. It doesn't recognize artist, album title, anything in the comment field, or the label, amongst other. I can't even get it to acknowledge comment tags or record label on other audio formats (like mp3 files). Basically, the files browser is completely broken and any attempt to analyze or play back a song within the program results in large amounts of lost data, if any of the data is read in the first place. I don't know what's going on with this software but I should NOT have upgraded. I'm going to have to spend days repairing all the metadata Traktor deleted and basically just uninstall the program and never use it again. This is such a huge disappointment and waste of my time and money.

Martiniix_NI

Hey!

I'll talk with the Traktor team about this issue and will let you know.

Martiniix_NI

@betamax999

U think you could send us a couple of tracks to try and replicate this issue?

alec.tron

Not to be harsh - but first rule with any digital data - do your backups (regularly) or learn the hard way…

As for the metadata issue mentioned as this hasn't come up in a while on here afaik - unfortunately, this is a well known issue (but not posted about much, unless someone runs into this for the first time).
And, I do believe this is gross negligence on NI's part. I flagged it multiple times in the past (i.e. at least in the last 2-3 NI forums (which don't exist anymore…), over the course of at least a decade… last attempt was here: https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/37151#Comment_37151 - and now I have all but given up on Traktor and stick to a old versions until something more suitable comes along…), but Traktor does indeed (rather randomly - depending on file/metadata format, encoding, etc in question):

completely remove existing metadata (some of itunes old native tags)
alter existing metadata i.e.
- multi value is one of the biggest weak points from Traktor metadata i/o (where whitespace delimiters are removed (on ID3) resulting in a singular long string, and spec conform multi value fields (i.e. on flac/vorbis) where only the first field persists, and everything else is removed
- leading 0s are removed
- special character encoding can get mangled…

I dealt with this with custom python file parse scripts (with https://taglib.org/ ), that re-inject any destroyed metadata from my main library, after each time I let Traktor write to any file…. but that is a hack to an issue that shouldn't be there in the first place (let alone be ignored for 1-2 decades…).

Good luck!

betamax999

Fortunately, I have backups of my entire music library on three separate external drives, so I was able to restore things back to the way they were.

Funny enough, after multiple installs/uninstalls of Traktor over the past few days, I installed it one more time today, so that I could actually document the problem with screenshots and send a copy of my collection file to NI customer support. So I installed it, imported and analyzed a few dozen aac files, then took a look at the files in my metadata tagging software, and suddenly, without having done anything different, the problem seems to have stopped (for the time being anyway…I'm still very wary that it will start happening again). As of this moment though, Traktor has decided to stop deleting all my tags though. I'll continue to keep a close eye on things and be very careful about the tracks I import, using a special folder just for Traktor music so that the program doesn't have a chance to even look at or screw up my main music library (nearly 2.5 terabytes of music). I can't say the problem is solved yet, because I didn't do anything to solve it, so I'll just keep my fingers crossed and be extra careful for the time being, since the issue could reappear again at any time. The whole thing has kind of soured me on Traktor though, and I'm wondering if I should start looking into potential alternatives that aren't as likely to just delete my metadata without warning. Unfortunately, the majority of my music collection is either aac or alac files, so if Traktor doesn't want to consistently play nice with those file formats, I need to find an alternative software/hardware solution that does.

betamax999

It also doesn't help that my understanding of metadata/ID3 info is almost completely nonexistent. In the past, I just entered whatever information I could from within iTunes/Apple Music. I've tried working with mp3tag recently, but I just can't wrap my head around it. I don't know how to properly use it to its fullest potential and I don't even know what most of those extended tags are used for. I'm currently using Metadatics for Mac to take care of my tagging needs, because it's relatively straightforward until you start diving into some of the deeper tagging functionality, which I just stay away from because, as stated, I don't understand what most of that tagging information even means. All I really need to have control over are the basics, like track title, artist, album artist, album title, genre, comments, etc. It took me forever to even find out which field I'm supposed to use for entering the record label so that software like Traktor will actually display the label information. Up until now, I had been using the "grouping" field to enter label information, but I guess that's supposed to go under the "publisher" tag, which isn't something I was even familiar with until yesterday, when I couldn't figure out where Traktor was getting that information from, outside of manually entering it into Traktor's built-in tag editor, which I'd prefer not to use.

alec.tron

Aye, understanding metadata (handling) is a handful (as it requires insights into character encoding (which many seasoned programmers struggle with… ), as well as audio codecs and their metadata headers and history thereof, which is odd to say the least - and on top of that comes each programs' own issues & paradigms of how to deal with metadata and encoding… )

Unfortuately for us, all DJ programs utterly s*ck at this imo and many do still break due-dilligance / best-practice conventions that have been established for decades (I think Serato still alters filenames when it has a certain encoding… also fun times).

betamax999

Well, I thought the problem had spontaneously solved itself, but I was wrong. Traktor is still erasing all the metadata I've previously entered into any of my AAC/ALAC files after importing them into my track collection and trying to analyze them.

@Martiniix_NI What would you like me to do in the hopes that maybe you can provide some insight into what is causing this to happen? I'll do my best to take any troubleshooting steps you'd like me to take. I really want to get back into DJing again, and have spent a a decent amount of money to get back into the hobby at this point, but if the software (i.e., Traktor Pro 4) is effectively incompatible with a large percentage of my music collection, I don't know where to go from here. I don't want to switch to different DJing software, nor can I really afford to invest into all new hardware for whatever software I would end up switching over to, and I don't want to feel as if I've thrown such a large amount of money away on the hardware that was designed for Traktor. I'm currently at a loss for what to do at this point. I tried contacting Native Instruments support, but they've been pretty unhelpful to say the least. I don't know who to reach out to anymore. I just want to be able to play some music and have fun with Traktor like I used to be able to do, but the past couple weeks have been nothing but stress, and I'm worried I'll have to just abandon the hobby entirely if I can't find a proper explanation and/or solution as to why this is happening. Any help from you or anyone else would my GREATLY appreciated at this point. I've got a lot of bad stuff going on in my life right now, and I thought getting back into DJing would help distract me from some of the negativity in my life, but as anyone who's read this thread can see, it's only introduced a whole new set of problems for me to stress out about.

Martiniix_NI

Hey!

I believe you had a support ticket with one of my colleagues, we will ask you for a playlist with a couple of your tracks. We would like to see what is triggering this issue and if we can replicate the issue.

betamax999

I have been in contact with one of the support agents and on Tuesday (4/8), I emailed them detailed instructions to reproduce the problem along with screenshots showing that Traktor is erasing my track metadata and a Google Drive link to download three example tracks so they can see if they encounter the same issue. I suppose all I can do now is wait to see if/when I hear back from them. I really hope someone is able to figure out why this happening. Anyhow, thanks for the reply. Hopefully someone gets back to me sometime within the next week or so with an explanation/solution for what’s happening.

Phill

As of May 3rd '25, I have been able to reproduce this behavior using my Freshly Cleaned sanitized and retagged M4A Music Collection. (After 20+ years it was time) I was dismayed to find that all my .M4A tracks were missing Artist Title and Genre tag fields.
A look at the ID3V1&V2 tags showed the tags fields were all empty. Luckily my collection.nml file had the data I needed to recover the missing tags. I whipped up a bit of Powershell code to read the collection NML and update the nearly 54,000 Tracks. <bullet dodged>! After several weeks of other cleanup work, today was Traktor reset day, first though, I went looking for the reason the tag fields got stripped in the first place. I added in a single .M4A track to my collection with analyze automagically turned off and the the File Mgmt setting | 'Tag Writing Mode' set mine to 'Write all Tags'. When I did this, the tags fields were preserved in the file.
FWIW, when you are using 'Only Write Traktor Custom Tags' and you run analyze, it is then that the the Tag Fields are removed or set to null or empty string. Just importing files into your collection without analyzing is not enough to create the problem. I also tested with "Do Not Write Tags" mode and that too preserved the Fields. The Problem that I'm observing is only eveident on M4A files when 'Only write Custom Traktor Tags' is set and the Track is analyzed, so it seems to be isolated to writing APE Tags when in 'Only write Custom…' mode.
I've gotta think this issue has been around for quite a while to. I think I saw Empty Fields in files back in the middle of last year but did not take the time to triage it as the Collection had the data and I was busy with other things.

Quick links

Unanswered questions