Hatred of Itunes

I was talking to a colleague about this and he doesn't mind Apple messing around with his music because music isn't really a big deal to him.

Being someone who loves music I cannot fathom how anyone else who does could ever let anyone else - especially a company with such contempt for personal ownership of files - take control of their collection.

As long as they don't kill off manual star ratings (which they've been trying to do for a while), i'll be fine.

files are just…so exhausting

It does give some form of control over the process but I can’t imagine dragging and dropping 200 GB worth of files manually.

ha I just transferred 3 TB to a new drive by literally dragging and dropping, it takes a while but all you do is start it before bed and let it churn away

I’ve done a ‘copy all’ manually to a new drive too, yes, but making a 200 GB selection out of those 3 TB and manually copying that to yr iphone...

true, thankfully I don't use my phone for audio at all, I do have a whimsical selection of various MP3 files on it but the iTunes interface for phone is so terrible that I almost never use it, also the bulk of my collection is FLAC

iTunes will automatically make a list based on what it thinks you want on your phone/iPod - it seems to grab everything with high play counts but also randomly chucked on a bunch of shit I never listened to in lieu of stuff I actually did. still got it mostly right though

The only thing I really use iTunes for is importing new CDs as WAV files so I don't have to manually enter track names. Occasionally I convert some files to MP3 for uploading. But I do zero listening, pretty much, I use VLC/FLAC for everything. You can make playlists in VLC and save them as well.

Does VLC do smart playlists these days? havent used it for music in ages.

probably not, but I don't actually know

i use it to keep a video playlist, which it seems to fuck up easily if there are file problems, so i would guess no

False alarm, the new Music application appears to duplicate pretty much all functionality of iTunes, they just moved backups, video and podcasts out to new apps.

this is good news—I have never used iTunes for anything *but* music and it seemed like all that other functionality was what pulled it down.

But I'm not letting my guard down, I have never updated w/o my library getting fucked somehow, and the story above seems consistent w/ their m.o. of owning every aspect of the listening experience. ffs they took way the headphone jack!

*away

"the iTunes interface for phone is so terrible" how so? I mean, you can sort by artist/album and play a song. what more do you need?

I don't love how deleting songs can be a chore: when you're in your downloaded music library trying to get rid of music you've downloaded without deleting it from your full library, and simply "remove download" it (often?) sends you back to your full library, rather than staying in your downloaded music library.

xp

when I try to sort by "Songs" in iTunes I see one Arthur Russell track and that goddamn U2 album, and that's it. When I sort by 'Albums", it lists everything as an individual track starting with the album title and tagged "unknown artist". Same with a Genre sort once you click through to the album list. Totally useless. Haven't bothered to troubleshoot because I do literally no listening via phone. CDs in the car, stereo at home, laptop for DJ gigs. I think I threw those tracks on the phone for a plane flight home like two years ago.

Pretty sure these aren't tagging issues because this shit worked just fine on my iPod Classic (RIP).

I don't love how deleting songs can be a chore: when you're in your downloaded music library trying to get rid of music you've downloaded without deleting it from your full library, and simply "remove download" it (often?) sends you back to your full library, rather than staying in your downloaded music library.

― L'assie (Euler), Tuesday, June 4, 2019 7:21 AM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

feel like apple thinks of the "downloaded music" tab as a necessary evil that distracts from what they're selling which is apple music

they just moved backups, video and podcasts out to new apps.

― Siegbran, Monday, June 3, 2019 11:45 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is the first thing that they've done in a minute that i fully support. admittedly i panicked with y'all at first

yeah I have apple music! but I want downloaded music so that I can listen whenever, not just when I have a good connection w/ lots of data. bumping me back to the full library seems like a bug but I I dunno.

"the iTunes interface for phone is so terrible" how so? I mean, you can sort by artist/album and play a song. what more do you need?

Smart playlists would be great. A "Loved" playlist where anything I click 'love' on gets added to. Ability to rate 1-5 stars, not just 'loved' vs 'disliked'. A complete "recently played" history. Count of how many times a song has been played, and ability to sort by that. Ability to store non-Apple bought/streamed tracks, like could on laptop. An EQ would be nice.

Errr... the star rating is still there.

on mobile?? I don't see it.

You have to go in to Settings>Music and enable the "Show Star Ratings" option. Then on the screen that shows the full album art in iTunes you can tap on the three dots in the bottom right corner of the screen and you'll see a "Rate Song" option. You can then change the star rating of the song.

Yeah they tried to kill it but brought it back after people complained. It’s still not as easy and straightforward as it used to be but better than nothing (probably the one feature that still binds me to Apple Music/iTunes given how much I rely on ratings for my synced smart playlists)

hmm there is no "show star ratings" option on that menu. I have iphone6 w most recent IOS version.

it's there for me on iphone6 with latest iOS.

Supposedly it's known to not show that option for some users, but it can be forced to show if you go into itunes and check option to "sync only checked songs and videos". Except uh only ever use my phone so I don't have itunes now. Super.

they're not even killing itunes on windows, apparently. i don't know why i use itunes on windows. yes i know, it's because i owned an ipod in 2007 and haven't cared enough to try and export everything into something else.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0IpYkNZRdi8

Thanks for that j
So they really are moving the sync to the finder - in the same manner that Craig satirized during the announcement. How dumb

maybe they have been using all that telemetry junk that's been the fad to learn how much people sync without itunesing first. personally i rarely sync my ipod without also fiddling with the list of what will be put on it, so it will seem kind of dumb to have to do that in the music app then sync in the finder.

the finder is for files!!

Long time iTunes hater here.

Used to have to use it to get music on my iPhone but ditched it once I switched to Android phones.

Wife still has iPhones though. Is there a way to get music onto her phone without using iTunes? Because I'm loathe to install the bloated piece of software on my new (non Apple) laptop.

You can initiate a WiFi sync from the phone (Settings/General/iTunes WiFi Sync), and whenever I connect by cable it automatically starts syncing, so I guess you don't have to go into the Finder so often?

"Still, the smart-playlists feature isn’t explicitly mentioned in Apple’s PR, and the company hasn’t said anything about whether users will be able to transfer their lists from the old program to the new one."

https://www.theringer.com/music/2019/6/5/18653818/itunes-smart-playlists-feature-apple-spotify-streaming-services

The beta of Catalina with the new Music app is already out, it has smart playlists functionality if I’m not mistaken?

yeah now that I look it appears that article is from a week ago, sorry

I don't think I've ever once used what has "secretly been the best feature of iTunes—and a harbinger of the streaming age—for more than a decade"

neither have I!

i like smart playlists, just to catalog curiosities like my most played from a certain year or "how many songs are in my library longer than 10 minutes" or "songs with the word 'kill' in the title." I used to use smart playlists to organize music by albums and artists before they developed an album view--now i have dozens of old smart playlists for a single album clogging up my playlist bar that i'm too lazy to delete.

If anything, the smart playlist/filtering features of iTunes are too limited. You cannot quickly/easily drill down multiple criteria without tediously building these rules in the smart playlist editor.

so I'm sure this isn't specific to iTunes but I haven't downloaded an app or application for ages on my Windows 10 laptop. I can either download iTunes as an 'app' from the Microsoft store - which doesn't give me an install file that I can find, or by looking for different versions, as a 'normal' .exe install.

basically what the hell is an 'app' on Windows pc if it's not an application?

I think the Apps on Windows 10 are more lightweight versions of the software that are designed to run on the Universal Windows Platform and so look (and work) the same on various devices - tablets, laptops, phones etc.

Don't use the iTunes one but do have apps for Netflix and BT Sport installed on mine

ah thanks. I don't trust them!

Suddenly IA at iTunes turning every album cover into a RoundRect.

does anyone else still use an iPod? i kind of collect them, tbh, because for many moons i travelled a lot through areas with no connectivity and hated having my phone drained of battery (i will not buy an iPhone, ever).

my 30GB iPod collection (i have four lol) works just fine. don't really understand why anyone would need anything else.

Yes, I have a 128 and it sounds better than my iPhone but convenience won that battle long ago

because of my hatred of iPhones it's never been a problem, i just keep one iPod in the car and a few in the house and swap them around lol.

I use my 80 gb iPod only in the car, I wish I had a spare