I ripped a few CDs yesterday, as I am wont to do. After ripping them, I saw that some had data in the year tag, which I did not want. I selected the tracks, pressed Command-I, and tried to delete that tag. I found that I could not do this.
In the past, if you selected such a tag and pressed Delete, and then clicked OK, that field would be deleted, across as many files as you selected. In the latest version of iTunes 12, this is not the case. (I’ve only tried this with the Year tag for now; it probably affects others as well.)
This only affects tags where tracks have different metadata. In my case, the year tags were different for many of the tracks on the same CD. If the year tags are all the same, there is no problem; you can delete them as before.
There are two solutions for this. The first is to use an AppleScript that Doug Adams wrote for a similar problem back in December, 2014: blanking the Genre tag in iTunes 12. Substitute “year” for “genre” in this script, select your tracks in iTunes, and then run the script; it will delete the Year tag.
The other, easier, solution, is to use Doug Adams’ $2 Multi-Item Edit. This app lets you edit most of the metadata for tracks in a single window, instead of flitting back and forth among the tabs of the Info window. It also lets you delete any tag. Just check the tag you want to delete, don’t enter anything in its field, and click Apply.
After you’ve used Multi-Item Edit a bit, you may find that it’s a lot easier to use than the iTunes Info window, and you may end up using this great tool for all your tagging needs.