iTunes: filtering only Magnatune music in your music collection

A few weeks ago, Magnatune member Casey D asked me via email:

Do you folks add any tag I can use to just say "hey, grab some random magnatune stuff, it's all pretty darn good" to my iTunes setup?

Well yes! We do add an id3 "description" that gives the musician's home page at Magnatune. You can see it--for instance--in the VLC media player:

Unfortunately iTunes doesn't recognize it, so the quick answer to Casey's request to make a playlist of only Magnatune music was "no, sorry, I don't see how to do that in iTunes".

I thought his request was very reasonable, however, so I went about fixing the situation.

As of today, all our MP3s have an id3 "grouping" tag of "magnatune", which you can verify in iTunes:

You can use iTunes' "smart playlist" feature to create a playlist that only shows you music you've downloaded from Magnatune, by looking for this "grouping" tag:

which then gives you a view of just your Magnatune songs.

and if you choose "view - show column browser" you can easily select artists and albums from Magnatune.

Thanks, Casey, for pointing out something really useful that should have worked, and thus prodding me to make it work!

-john