Hatred of Itunes

Just throw your computer into a quarry

you forgot lukey's galaxy-brain step where you draw a computer onto a cardboard box and put a radio inside the box and turn it on

Check where it's trying to play to, e.g. Apple TV / Airplay - icon to the right of volume slider

iTunes 12.7.4 decided to scramble my library; metadata is combined between LPs, as an example Zappa is now the album artist for a Stockhausen record. If you try to play one track, it'll begin playing a totally different album. Some LPs have completely vanished, renamed to something I can't find or deleted altogether.

It's not as simple as a corrupted xml file, because iTunes has been busy behind the scenes randomizing the actual files - albums are fragmented across three or four directories with varying names, some album titles are now artists and promoted to the top level of the directory. Apple Music's always been disabled, btw.

I can't even think about the enormity of the task to sort this out, this is a 2TB library that took many years to create.

Looking at it a little more closely there's a weird kind of dementia at work - some LPs have been fragmented historically, so that they're in four or five states corresponding to what they were at different stages of being acquired. So for instance four tracks might think they're on a disk that hasn't been mounted in a year, and four other tracks might have some of the same metadata that existed when the tracks were originally copied. It's as if instead of having a record of the files' states as of now, and using that, it's now using a combination of all the historical states of the files and randomly allocating them. I'm not even sure how that's possible.

that's really strange. I think I'm on the same version but thus far I haven't had any issues like that. Will confirm that iTunes does some very strange things with the library, particularly the way it spreads it out on the iPod. I had to import an old library once my HD got corrupted and a lot of very strange things happened. Good luck!!

Still running 10.6 OSX and iTunes cannot upgrade beyond 11.4 version so I’m having trouble accessing the cloud to re import earlier purchases. Any ideas??

soooo glad I never even got on this hamster wheel

Will confirm that iTunes does some very strange things with the library, particularly the way it spreads it out on the iPod

As far as I know, music on iOS has always had a special fragmentation applied to it - each file is broken up and fragments renamed as something not-human-readable. The idea behind this was to make it very difficult to extract files from a phone by mandating that the only way to read music would be to reference a registry file (which of course can be corrupted). When iOS rolled out, the working assumption was that everyone would be trading 8GB of music files at a time with each other in a piracy bonanza if steps like that weren't taken. I believe this is why there are two kinds of music apps for iOS; ones that have reverse engineered that fragmented file structure and therefore require that iTunes exists, and ones that just read files off the disk, requiring that 'disk use' be turned on for that device. (Not an iOS dev, just have been working with these things for a long time. The state of play might be different now)

yea I think you're right. I remember when the iPod came out the RIAA made a big deal about people potentially just dumping an iPod's worth of files onto someone else's library. I wonder if this was done as a concession to them or if they were worried about iTunes sales.

The weird directory structure and file naming on iPod/iPhone is more due to how they implemented indexing and is probably more of a legacy thing at this point. If you copy all the music files off, you can easily open them in a program that dumps them back in the right file name/location schema. I've done that recently to grab stuff off an old iPod.

If the file metadata itself is getting messed up then iTunes has fucked up in a severe way

I'm trying to get the Remote app on my iPhone to recognize the iTunes library on my PC- the ideal end result being me, sitting on my couch, queuing up music on my PC which then plays back through the stereo speakers it's wired up to around a corner- and it just doesn't goddamn work. The app directs me to click a "Remote button in the upper left hand corner of the iTunes app" (this is a complete fiction, no such button is in evidence) to enter a numeric code, and when I try to configure Home Sharing on the PC end I just see an error message asking that I re-enable the Bonjour service. There is no Bonjour service installed or running on my (fairly new) PC, and the only download link I can find on Apple's site is a version of Bonjour for print services from 2010. Apple's phone support failed to understand the question multiple times, never even looked into the Bonjour issue, and recommended 1) I delete and reinstall the app (which would somehow magically fix the Home Sharing issue on an unconnected PC) 2) giving up because "I guess it only works with Macs" (then why didn't you know that twenty minutes ago and why does the Remote's app page and the Home Sharing support article on Apple.com mention "Mac or PC" multiple times)

hhhhhnnnnnrrrrrgh

c ya

R.I.P. iTunes: Apple will kill the clunky, but world-shattering, icon next week https://t.co/fr20zCJApL pic.twitter.com/ckOuPboI5b

— Rolling Stone (@RollingStone) May 31, 2019

Ehh
So does this I have to open three different apps on my Mac when I want to sync my music, podcasts, and movies / tv?

i mean, if you have a library of files you are still gonna have to have a big list of text, aren't you?

maybe it could just be a big square of album art and you just swipe swipe swipe that square, forever, to get at what you want.

swiping fruitlessly at my ipod, like a cat watching a fish on tv

I still use iTunes to organize my music files

https://images.sftcdn.net/images/t_app-cover-l,f_auto/p/a268dc3c-9b62-11e6-a0e6-00163ed833e7/405525892/coverflow-screenshot.jpg

that was nominally functional on the first computer i could use it on, i should give it a whirl on my current one and see if its massive processing power opens up a whole flowing new world

"having" "files" is passé, the cool thing now is paying $14.99 a month to get kneed in the groin by an independent contractor retained by the Disney Co

that's kind of high for getting kneed in the groin

what abut $9.99

iTunes as a library manager for large libraries is great, esp with scripts. Let’s hope this new Music app is also scriptable.

What kinds of scripts do you use?

I like it well enough as is and find it to be especially good for classical music.

Doug's Applescripts for iTunes are the motherlode iirc

I don't mind iTunes these days, confused what's going to replace it on my MacBook and how (and how I'll control it with my android phone).

I’ve written my own scripts that use the discogs API, Google or RYM to scrape for things like genre and year.

I mostly use them for artists Greatest Hits comps, to quickly tag every song with the original single release year instead of the year the compilation came out.

^^^^^ I do the same.

Lately my favorite script is one that goes through my library and gets two unplayed songs from each artist.

that would be… a big result for my library

oof

Spend two decades collecting and cataloging your music...and then have it erased by the same company that sold it to you. https://t.co/DC2WhlPIAm pic.twitter.com/3fjxydh0XQ

— Ted Gioia (@tedgioia) June 1, 2019

The truth is I am a helplessly unreliable narrator in this story, because whenever I use iTunes, I find that I have absolutely no idea what’s going on, or what the consequences of my actions will be.

lol there can be curveballs sometimes but it's not brain surgery

not sure what all this means. should I burn copies of some of the more obscure cds I've uploaded to itunes and subsequently sold? If I transferred an experimental music cd to digital format in itunes, then sold or donated the cd, then itunes disappears and is replaced by a fucking streaming service, but because my cd was so obscure the new streaming app doesn't include it...does that mean I lose that music?

Caveat emptor

I suspect the Slate thing and the blog post it came from are hyperbole, since anyone who spent two decades compiling and tagging a music collection and then didn’t spend $50 to back up those files deserves to lose them. If that happened to me I would restore my library from one of the four places it’s backed up in full. Absolutely stupid design from Apple though, or more accurately, crass and venal design.

should I burn copies of some of the more obscure cds I've uploaded to itunes and subsequently sold?

yes

thanks

"A truly personal music collection is inevitably going to be full of such odds and ends" which aren't part of the apple ecosystem, that is the problem for me

I guess my concerns are multiple: I don't want what happened to dude above to happen to my files (though they are backed up!), and I'm also concerned that my old iPod won't work with the new app. It works fine. I like what it does. I don't subscribe to any streaming services, and will never do so, so the main reason to even have iTunes is organization of files.

"anyone who spent two decades compiling and tagging a music collection and then didn’t spend $50 to back up those files deserves to lose them"

can understand this (although it is callous), but itunes is a trusted music platform, what about everybody unaware of what is happening?

The way iphone’s music app handles compilations is absolute hell

xp callous I guess, but it's not like that was the first time that software mangled a digital library (although it's repugnant that it was a feature, not a bug). Just another exemplar of revenue consolidation trumping individual choice, while marketing ensures that most people see it as a good thing, and only the weirdoes are shut out. I have large physical libraries and only pay for physical media and non DRM digital, but there's always that day when Apple, Google, Microsoft and Amazon are proud to announce a new partnership, AllPlay, which ensures all computers and personal devices play only encrypted DigiLock audio, and you can choose from these six hit albums at CD-quality 96 kbps.

I remember years ago when apple stopped supporting iphoto. it took days for me to transfer my 20,000+ photo files into the new photos app in a coherent chronological order

xp lol

This:

tbh i think everyone is kinda overreacting about itunes rn. lotta questions on the table. they'd be nuts to kill the retail store and the ability to just... listen to your mp3s.

— Jill Mapes (@jumonsmapes) May 31, 2019

that seems right (although the interface could still suck more, kind of a crapshoot)

the key is holding off on migration if possible so that you have a chance to let early adopters find out about unexpected disasters that can get fixed for you before you go

Yeah, well I’m definitely a “remind me tomorrow” guy when it comes to updating software

the main reason to even have iTunes is organization of files only reason to even have iTunes is to transfer files to an iPod

it’s pretty good at bulk id3 editing but that’s abt it for positives

The way iphone’s music app handles compilations is absolute hell

xxxpost but what problems are you running into? I haven't had any issues, just made sure to click the "part of a compilation" checkbox and enter something in the Album Artist field, either Various Artists or the DJ's name for mix albums

F apple, F iTunes, F the event tomorrow

_but there's always that day when Apple, Google, Microsoft and Amazon are proud to announce a new partnership, AllPlay, which ensures all computers and personal devices play only encrypted DigiLock audio_

You mean Spotify right