Hatred of Itunes

I haven't used iTunes much on PC and never with an iPod, so I don't know how bad it gets. But judging by QuickTime/PC, which is a horrible virus that infects everything in reach, I can just imagine. On Mac, QuickTime isn't obnoxious at all; perhaps the same logic applies to iTunes with regard to how it treats the platform.

not really a hater, as i said upthread, itunes just isn't as flexible as it should be, and i'm not like a super power user (not interested in foobar, for instance, on the other end of the spectrum, i have a day job). mm is pretty much ready for primetime out of the box + it lets you go nuts with scripts etc. if that's your thing

Mac user here, so hearing a lot of these Windows horror stories surprises me (though not too much, since QT on Windows has always been kinda terrible).

Why wouldn't library migration on Windows be just as easy as it is on OS X? I've moved my library to a few new computers over the years, and all it involves is dragging + dropping my iTunes folder (containing iTunes Library file and all my sorted music) to the new computer. File paths on both machines are pretty much identical, but I think it's worked even when my user name (i.e., HD/Users/Username/Music/) changed.

fuck this stupid shit of a programme imo. or windows xp, whichever. fuck them both, in fact.

'accessing itunes store' for the past 3 hours.

You'd think iTunes would be able to import a CD while playing another album, but apparently not.

Of course it can! It can even import a CD while playing that same CD, which I don't quite understand and is probably not something I'd recommend.

When it does that, I think it's actually playing the imported files, no?

I dunno, it seems able to access the CD audio files for playback and ripping simultaneously. Modern technology!

On mine, it stops importing when it's finished the current track, and continues playing the chosen MP3. Probably something to do with my settings then...

iTunes has completely stopped opening for me. Just endless beachball everytime.

I had no idea how much i depended on iTunes before it stopped working. I want to smash my computer to little bits

have you tried downloading an update?

how do you do that w/o opening iTunes?

oh wait. i figured it out. lets see if it doesn't crash my whole computer like it did last time

I would love itunes if it didn't crash ALL THE FUCKING TIME. Sometimes it seems like it puts a heavier load on my system than Crysis, which is just fucking ridiculous.

Nope, still beachballin'

brb, tantrum

they just released a new version. haven't downloaded it yet.

http://sbooth.org/Play/

Florence & The Machine crashed my iTunes 4 times this morning.

don't know about Play but I'm a big fan of their other app Max. I used it last night to take 198 mp3s with meaningless file names but good tags and various rates and VBR and with one drag and drop converted them all to 192 bitrate CBR and named them all "artist"-"name".mp3 so they could be read by my DJ CD player properly.

yeah Max is the bomb

copied from another thread so WGW knows he is not suffering alone:

oh yeah also your CD(s) have been delayed by my shitbag computer deciding to unrecognize my itunes library. i am going to fix this bullshit, and then once the CD(ok not to ruin the surprise but you will be getting um, many CDs, perhaps thematically worked out)s are done i am going to replace this gentrified piece of shit and bash it to pieces w/a hammer.

oh man it has been a long week

oh yeah after i got it to recognize my library again it erased 6 years of playlists, most of which were used to keep track of the gems that came up on random play that i had never listened to before (i have 35000 songs so redoing this is fucking impossible).

"You must eject before disconnecting"

lol

http://sbooth.org/Play/

― Tracer Hand, Thursday, 16 July 2009 10:41

This looks good. I've long avoided iTunes but am slowly weakening on account of, er, something I'm not sure of. The relentless marching of time, perhaps.

Anyway, is this Play thing any good? I'm bored of never being able to source any of my mp3s but I'm concerned that since all my music is on an external hard drive, it won't work/sync reliably (the external drive isn't always plugged in).

Or should I just get iTunes anyway and quit my whingeing? NB I don't own an iPod of any flavour obv.

Oh shit, it looks like Play is Mac-only. Any PC tips?

foobar 2000 is pretty good

Why use iTunes at all if you're on PC and don't own an iPod? I was a big fan of MediaMonkey before I switched to Mac. Not the most clean interface, but really powerful and adaptable, especially good for if you have to do a lot of cleanup on your ID3 tags on music files spread out in a lot of different directories, adding album art, and other junk. Also try old standby Winamp which, though more bloated than it used to be, is still decent.

Foobar's great as a very simple no-frills player, but the options are kind of crazy and not user-friendly if you want to change how it looks, having to install plugins or write cfgs and whatnot. Also I hated the file/album browser, but if you're using Explorer anyway it won't matter.

(Note that I totally have gotten used to iTunes after a while, partially becuase it started and feeds an addiction to high-res album art)

Why use iTunes at all if you're on PC and don't own an iPod?

Two main reasons:

1. I'd like to be able to search my whole (hovering around 1tb) collection using instant filter words
2. I'd like not to have to duplicate mp3s in a new folder every time I want to make a compilation, ie. I need a playlist function

Foobar seems to be serving my purposes very well so far (half an hour in), and seemingly without resorting to iTunes' off-putting insistence on actually reorganising where all my music can be found.

you dont have to have itunes reorganise yr music

I quite liked Songbird's library interface, though the Linux version I was using was a little wobbly, maybe it's fixed now or the Windows version is better. But in the end I gave up on having a "library" of all my stuff and retreated to old-fashioned Winamp with no media library.

Why use iTunes at all if you're on PC and don't own an iPod?
This would be me, and I have so far resisted installing iTunes, but hate the way that you can't even look at the iTunes website if you don't have the software installed.

Like, I just want to see what you've got, maybe get or even read about a free podcast that happens to be hosted there, use one of those "free music download" offers... and if I could see what I was missing, maybe I really would want to have your software shit up my music filing* and god knows what else**. But until then I don't really plan to install it just because it's become the default for interfacing with hardware which I don't even have.

* compilations scattered across 12 different artist directories? uh, no thanks
** maybe iTunes is OK on this front, but since Windows QuickTime routinely steals all yr file associations in some weird way that bypasses the normal file association system so you can't put them back, I am not too inspired at the idea of touching any other Windows software by Apple

compilations scattered across 12 different artist directories? uh, no thanks

you can fix that. there's a checkbox. i can't remember what it's called.

What I really want is a magic app that'll sift through my entire collection, deleting all duplicate files and somehow converting all compilations into playlists using the one copy of the relevant track that remains. I'm dreaming, aren't I?

"Part of a Compilation"

Akkkkkk Foobar seems to split my compilations into separate tracks, one per folder! There's no way to listen to them all in a row, as far as I can tell. What am I doing wrong? It's almost enough to make me bin the whole idea.

itunes' saving grace is this wonderful site:

http://dougscripts.com/itunes/

despise compilations...I want "artists" to show up as "artist" not "compilation". maybe doug's got a script to do that, because if you select multiple tracks, you can't unclick the "part of a compilation"

this one might do it -

http://dougscripts.com/itunes/scripts/ss.php?sp=notpartofacompilation

although this is a v good program for dealing with ID3 tags in general -

http://www.chaoticsoftware.com/ProductPages/MediaRage.html

Media Rage is amazing. I remember using it way back when OS 9 was around, so I'm glad to see it's still alive and kicking.

I'm on a PC...

oh yeah sry - i'm sure there are even better ID3 programs for the PC

Mediamonkey will be able to do pretty much everything said above. Search is great, you can browse by file directory, artist, year, whatever you want. Convert filenames from tag information. You can make a playlist with your duplicates. There's a lot of playlist stuff you can do. And it is free, though there is a commercial version with bells and whistles. Seriously, try this.

Winamp can do a lot of it too with its library, but not so much the file changing level.

Mp3tag is a great free dedicated program for tag cleanup and sorting, also does the fancy filename from tag stuff.

This update is taking the piss. JUST WANNA PLAY WITH NU ILX IPOD APP!

Status: copying old files
Status: validating install
Status: checking component registration
Status: validating install
Status: chillin with sum hos
Ststus: hold on imma thinka sumfing

....

Haha yeah I got that when I did the upgrade dance cos I had to u/g the ipod to v3, which meant downloading it, which meant upgrading iTunes, which meant all the above. It seemed like it took 20 mins to install.

I only use itunes to copy shit over to my tooch tho - winamp rules all.

about once a week, iTunes stops recognizing my iPhone and i have to reinstall it.

AWESOME! THE FUTURE!

last night i installed my iPhone into the pavement. after i deinstalled i noticed that it had been "cracked" as the young programmers say.

The Comedy Podcasts: your suggestions please has given me the first occasion to think about podcasts since 2007 or so, but itunes is giving me shit for it.

For some reason, none of the podcasts I download will sync to my ipod. I checked out some forums and the advice I found most often was to set my ipod to be synced manually. I tried that out and it worked, but from the standpoint of someone who acquires large amounts of music on a regular basis, it has been an unwelcome change.

Does anyone else have this problem? Does anyone have a solution?

Thanks.

Nevermind, I just found the solution.

http://www.podcastpickle.com/forums/lofiversion/index.php/t8808.html

Neeeeevermind.