iTunes n00b
 

Hm, iTunes seems a bit clunky. Coming from Linux, I've always kept music in categories, like Alt Rock, Alternative, Psychedelic, etc. Well, iTunes seems to have vacuumed up all the songs on my disk and wadded them all up in one place, "Music". This discombobulates my categories, but does it also duplicate all the songs in more than one place?

I see in ~/Music/ there is an iTunes directory, which contains a directory for each artist. This is not useful, as I have only a few tunes from each artist.

So since I am prevented from making categories in the iTunes app under "Music" to organize, I've made my categories under "Playlists" and dragged songs from each category into the respective playlist. Again, does this duplicate them in yet another place?


On another subject, I record streamed music (Streamripper) in off-hours to screen for good new artists later. I eventually listen to all the music at least once and discard 90% of it. But it seems that iTunes still wads the discarded songs under "Music" and remembers it all. Way too much clutter. What do I have to do, clear out Music every so often and start all over? If so, what's the best way?

I suspect that the problem you are having with iTunes is that you are trying to mold it into acting the way you are accustomed to MP3 players acting, rather than working with the way it acts.

And that's fine, if you want. Try a different program to listen to your MP3s if you want different behavior. There are several other choices.

Looking at the files in the filesystem is not useful with iTunes, you're right. That's because it is not designed as a file organizer. It is designed as a song organizer.

iTunes supports categories of music in the iTunes Library window. It is easy to sort your Library by categories, make searches which include categories, make smart playlists which include categories, etc. But this is done in iTunes, NOT in the filesystem.

It does not duplicate the songs in more than one place in the filesystem, no. You can certainly look at them in many different ways, but unless you manually futz with it, it's not going to duplicate songs for no reason.

Whether you clear out your Library periodically to get rid of streamed audio is up to you. Think of iTunes as a database. Do you want to keep everything in your database? Then do. If you don't want to keep everything in your database, then clear the stuff you don't want out.

Trevor

To reiterate what Trevor has said, as a first approximation you should imagine that iTunes has stuck all your songs into one big blob of a database. Imagine that there is no access to the guts of this database via the file system. Instead you use database queries to access your songs and iTunes provides an easy to use way to make these queries.

Note also that there is a preferences setting that controls whether iTunes copies songs into its own sub-folder of the Music folder, or if it just leaves the songs where they are.
You might want to turn off the copying-into-folder option if you do a lot of download & listen once.

I hate itunes for this exact reason. Like for example I have a very large and very eclectic music collection. So, I have some discographies and some compilations, and instead of putting the songs under the comp album, they flag them as the artist. I have to have my music organized by Album, under the artist names. For collections and Comps, I have specified folders for that. I just use VLC on the mac since it has the "play folder" option and you can make play lists. iTunes looks prettier but it also lacks FLAC support, which is something I also use on my Linux boxes as well.

I really wish you could just turn off all the 'organizational' options iTunes has period, and then it would just read from your music directory.

Also, I dislike having my home directory being 60+ gigs, so I have a folder called /Music, which all users can access and I tell iTunes to use that for my Library. Then I can rsync my music directory and my home directory to separate back ups. I only keep documents in my home directory, all my media goes to specific folders. That is just how I prefer to organize it.

Also, there is some sort of bug when you copy them via the Finder (GUI) from one machine to another. I use windows, OS X, and Linux at home so I use SMB to mount my music directories and copy them over. If I copy them via Finder, I get tons of duplicate files. To avoid this, I have been using rysnc instead with the -u option so it only updates the music directory instead of making duplicate entries. So far it seems to work better.

You can.
Turn off the ("Advanced" section) preferences settings "Keep iTunes Music folder organized" and "Copy songs to iTunes Music folder when adding to library".
Then iTunes will leave the song files where you put them with no loss of functionality.

And for those [Rare] occasions when we need to find the exact physical
location of a file, there's no need to go wandering about in Finder. Just
select the file in iTunes, and type command-R.

I trust that was no Revelation. ;)

-HI-

Even though you can turn off that option, it still changes meta data as I have mentioned before hand. Which is why I don't use itunes as my main media player. However, like I have stated many times, I am not the typical user and most people just want it to work. Which it does work, just not how I like it.

There are options available within iTunes preferences regarding how compilations are sorted (General). With "Group compilations when browsing" checked, the files are sorted in the iTunes Music folder under Compilations->[album title]. They also appear under the "artist" Compilation in the library's artist browsing pane. The proper artists are listed in the song pane.

You can change the location of your iTunes Music folder from iTunes preferences (Advanced->General pane) to keep your music out of your home folder (or off of your local drive?).

You can also choose to have iTunes not keep your music organized, though from your descriptions, iTunes can be made to keep it organized in the manner that you desire (assuming I am understanding your post correctly).

I agree that FLAC support in iTunes would be nice, but it does support Apple Lossless Audio Codec, which has as good, if not better, compression capabilities. It is also supported on Linux and Windows (but not necessarily WMP).

Personally, iTunes has, more than anything else, changed the way I listen to music, for the better.

I know all of this, but I still don't like it. Which is why I use VLC and winamp on PC. I do not like how it categorizes my library with in iTunes itself, and I hate how it duplicates things. iTunes is designed to appeal the masses, and it does, but to people who are OCD about their music like me, it just has its flaws is all.

I am not saying it is the worst application out there, I just don't like it enough to make it my main media player. I wish it was open source, or at least had a SDK so people could write third party stuff for it officially.

:D:D

I'm extremely OCD about my music, which is why I like iTunes so much. I was an early adopter of jumbo CD changers, and spent several years unsuccessfully trying to find the perfect changer. I finally came to the conclusion that they all sucked. When iTunes finally offered gapless playback, it became my perfect changer. I've tried a bunch of alternatives, but I've never found anything I like nearly as much.

I'm not trying to convince you to use iTunes. If you don't like it, don't use it. I do think iTunes has more appeal than to just the masses. I'm an audiophile, and (excepting quality speakers and good music) there is nothing else that has come close to improving my music listening experience like iTunes has.

To each, their own. :)

Hmeh...

This behavior of an app is always a knife in its heart, AFAIC. I am completely -with- tlarkin on this subject.

To me, the first strike against iTunes is DRM; the second is closed-source/rigid low-configurability.

And none of this freaky presumptuous rearranging of my junk drawer, please. I think object-oriented, and live in the filesystem because I want to know how things actually are. I'll look at VLC and others, thanks. (I hope whatever I find has a function like the wonderful ByteController menubar controller)

1. Isn't that the case with ALL applications?
2. Maybe I just don't use it as much as you do, but between fast, easy searches and playlists, both smart and manual, I just don't see what you mean by low-configurability.
3. How does the file system give you any more knowledge about the locations of your files than iTunes does? Do you know what blocks and tracks your files are stored on? The fact is, all you really know is that they're somewhere on your hard drive. Neither iTunes nor the Finder is going to tell you much more than that. Even the Terminal can't give much more without a great deal of effort on your part.

1. Nah. As you can see I am used to getting exactly what I want. (Debian) I am not amenible to a one-size-fits-all monoculture.

2. I said I think object-oriented, and live in the filesystem. iTunes stashes my stuff where it thinks is best, and sorts it as it sees fit, not the way I reference nor think of my music, which I happen to think is more valid than everybody else's idea. And iTunes won't hear to another way...

3. We're not communicating. The be-all and end-all raison d'etre of *nix is that everything is the filesystem. Why would I want to know the track and block? Do you think I am insane? As I said above, I think of my music in terms of broad categories, which I listen to according to mood. But no matter the category, I have few songs by each artist and many songs, so my listening is not artist-centric. Right now for example, I am very much into psychedelic (www.techwebsound.com). This does not mean I think in the crammed-down one-track-mind single artist we've been trained to by the RIAA.

I am too weary to explain further. I am probably twice as old as you.

You're in your 90s? :eek: Wow, my father is in his mid seventy's and if I talk to him about file structures his eyes will glaze over like an old fashioned doughnut!

3. There are many reasons for unix beyond the file system. Symmetric multitasking, and security for example. I don't think you're insane, but I think that you're fooling yourself if you think that the unix file system is going to give you more control over or knowledge of your music database than an application specifically designed to do just that.

2. As has been pointed out by others, iTunes doesn't need to "stash" your music anywhere. It can maintain it's database without moving your files.

1. Call it whatever you like, but I doubt that you could find two iTunes setups that look alike unless they had just loaded the same music and made no effort to customize the way they find their music. Hardly a one size fits all situation.

LOL

3. Remember, knowledge is not the idea in this case. Temperament is; I know enough about my emotions to know what I want at a given time without being spoon-fed a rigid orthodox string of tracks from a prepackaged album.

2. Pffthpt. Does it not default to wadding everything into one long ridiculous list?

1. zzz

I notice that you overlook the intractable points I bring up like DRM, the mono-corporo-commoditization of art, unchangeably forced to a single-source middleman (by the very playing app), driven by exasperation to derivative machine-generated music as a last resort path of least resistance, etc.

P.S. VLC is doing fine so far, although no menubar control.

Back to Jbidwatcher to snipe some shirts...

Don't like Fairplay?
http://www.amazon.com/
http://www.emusic.com/

As for single-sourcing the application/player, it works well where the alternatives don't. Of course, I think many/most people on this site have lots of music that didn't come from the iTunes store.

iTunes does not place DRM on non-DRM encumbered tracks. It simply allows Fairplay DRM tracks to be played, giving people another option of playback format.

Now, the Zune's habit of adding DRM to non-DRM encumbered tracks when you squirt them to others--that is intractable*.

Trevor



* I'm using the definition of intractable here as "not easily relieved or cured".

iTunes enforces DRM (Fairplay or whatever); it of course is the second-half of the plan. Naming it "Fairplay", is like naming it the "Help America Vote Act", or the "Protect America Act"...
... does the opposite of what it says it does. Guilty until proven innocent, the germination of a Police State. :cool:

I've gone over our rescinded Fair Use rights here before as most people do not realize that they've been taken away from us for digital, but hayne objects. I've tried to explain it time and again, but just don't care anymore that the silent majority does not understand what's been done to them, who in fact vigorously argue against their own self-interests! mooo...

I am just content to enforce my own Fair Use rights according to the Sony Betamax decision and keep as well to myself, thank you. And of course those other players are proprietary as well; hooks for ads, phone-home, backdoors, etc. Open source is the only reasonably safe field to play in.

Are you saying: when you want to listen to a song, you navigate through
Finder and/or Terminal to locate it... and then tell iTunes to play it? :eek:

As I've said before:

Once in a blue moon I go into Finder and move something just for the heck
of it. But even that is essentially a waste of time. It simply doesn't matter.

The purpose of music is to be listened to. Gone are the days we need to
physically stack LPs, CDs, and tapes alphabetically, chronologically, etc.,
in order to find them. iTunes is the front end to all that drudgery... so we
need not concern ourselves with the minutia of *precisely* where an item
is stored, or what its *exact* filename happens to be.

As for letting iTunes (physically) organize my music, I say: no way José.
Put my stuff "somewhere" when I give it to you, and don't lose track of it.
That's enough, and its prefs can be set accordingly to prevent intervention.

As far as organizing *within* iTunes goes, that what creating Playlists and
"Folders" are for. We can also give Smart Playlists lots of power by adding
our own Genres and (perhaps the most under-utilized of all) Groupings.

Good luck.

It sounds like you dislike iTunes for reasons having nothing to do with it's function. That's fine, as I said above in the thread. If there's no way that you are going to like iTunes, then simply don't use it, and use an alternative. But then it's confusing to me why you would even ask questions about iTunes, unless you were trying to either begin an argument, or else show off some kind of superiority over those people who choose to use iTunes.

And by the way, that 'moo' comment is getting very close to personal insult. Please do not make personal insults on this forum. If you want to argue ideas, that's fine, but if you attack individuals you will not get very far here.

Trevor

Well, here go some very specific issues I have with iTunes, perhaps if someone knows how to fix these issues I could maybe use it more. I have turned all organizational options off.

1) It is not hip hop friendly. Hip hop is a genre where it is very common to have someone featured on a track or album. This could be the beat, a chorus, the actual emcee, sampling, etc. iTunes likes to make these songs their own albums and is confused on who the real artist is. For example, I have an album by GZA, and each track in itunes is identified as a separate album. I find this very very annoying. It doesn't happen with just hip hop either, it happened with a Bruce Springsteen album of mine, I guess iTunes thinks it's the Boss!

2) Comps and Collections, same as above for the most part. I have a Motown collection of about 6 CDs, and iTunes grabs every artist and puts them into 3 or 4 songs from that album. In some cases I own the album as well, so it duplicates itself in that artist's album, instead of under the collection album's name.

I might as well turn off the fancy UI because it really does nothing for me other than add tons of extra albums, and I don't like the look of huge chunks of missing or unknown album cover art. Also, I don't know if this is true or not, but I think sometimes iTunes botches your preferences when you update it. I have noticed some of these funky organizational issues after running updates; I noticed that they get worse or bigger. I can't confirm this, it is just my suspiscion.

My other issue is that I think it can be a resource hog as well, but I only see that when I am beating the crap out of my machine.

If anyone knows how to remedy this issue let me know, because I would like to give iTunes a chance, but things like this annoy me enough to not give it a full chance.

http://www.atpm.com/8.10/images/itunes-tags.gif

Check the box indicating that the song is part of an album compilation.

Trevor

The Compilations sorting is easy. iTunes->Preferences…->General: Check "Group compilations when browsing" Exit Preferences. Select a compilation album, File->Get Info: In the Compilation drop down menu (bottom left), select "Yes." iTunes will now see the compilation as a single album. In the Artist browsing pane, it will be found under "Compilations." Also, in your iTunes Music folder, the album will be located in a single folder (iTunes Music->Compilations->[Album Title]).

I'll have to come back to the hip-hop sorting when I have more time, although they can be listed as Compilations as an easy workaround. Also, you can select the album and Get Info, and list an album artist. iTunes considers artist a song property, and album artist an album property. For example, in my library, the artist for each song on the Natural Born Killers soundtrack is the artist who performs the song, but the album artist is listed as Trent Reznor. In your music library, you can select album artist in addition to or instead of artist.

That should get you started. I'll try to come back with more artist sorting options when I have more time, if no one beats me to it.

That's a very different view than I get with 7.4.2 (4). How did you get that window?

Nah. I point VLC at a directory containing the style of music I want to hear, and unleash it in Shuffle mode. Just like we did in the Western days when I was growing up. I sort my music the way I want to, and since I have my ***** together I only need to sort it once, so then I can just enjoy the ride without a presumptuous app making unauthorized changes. I know some ppl need that help, but I don't.


No, that's just one line of inquiry we got off into. Remember, I also dislike iTunes for lack of configurability, meaning its very presentation, and the assumptions underlying that. So it feels like it is in control... not me. That is backwards.

Relax trevor, I am not trying to start an argument, although I've had plenty of chances here. Yes, I did ask about iTunes, but that was because I am uncomfortable with it. And notice that I am now testing VLC, so I am indeed trying to not use iTunes? This may be offensive to some here, but the mere act of me living is offensive to some, so WTH? Don't read this if you don't like it.

Remember, I have always been the oddity/curiousity on this forum. I used to help people here and actively helped advance the general state of knowledge, but it turns out that I do not live up to the forum's standards as per hayne in an older post, who scolded me for cultural differences. So I've stopped helping, and mainly take now; although you'll notice in this thread I still couldn't help but to contribute a few things.

mooo? Unless you suspect you are part of the herd, you will not take that as an insult. I doubt you are part of the herd trevor, but please take off that copper's hat in defense of hayne's scolding post. I don't fit in with the crowd; let's just accept that. The question is how the forum treats anacronisms?

I cede the floor to tlarkin.

I will try that compilations selection, do I have to enter it for every comp record? Or is it just a switch that recognizes?

My problem with hip hop is that lets say for example I have a song from Ghostface Killa that features a biggy smalls sample, he doesn't even rap on the song, but in the ID3 tag it is listed as a feature. It lists the song as a biggie smalls song. I don't like that, how do I stop that? I don't even own any biggie smalls records.

I also wish that iTunes had the play folder option, loading 50gigs of music into your library can make itunes run clunky. Especially when you are trying to work at the same time.

Maybe my problem is that I don't use itunes to rip music, I use other applications on different platforms. Perhaps iTunes cannot translate a third party tag of the music properly?

Have you spent any time using Smart playlists? I don't see you doing anything that couldn't be done with them, and probably a whole lot easier than the way you're doing them now.

I can't speak for him, but for me, where I have already organized over 80 gigs of digital media, much which I have slaved over ripping from my own personal vinyl, I have no desire to oragnize my music again. My current method works on my windows and Linux machines flawlessly, itunes I have issues with. I am not against iTunes, I am just trying to learn to like it is all.

Smart playlists I run into the same issues. Am I doing something wrong?

I don't know. Maybe. It may be that I'm less picky about the order I listen to my music. I'm probably more likely to use Party Shuffle as I am one of my own playlists.

It also takes some getting used to to set up the right Smart playlists. To get boolean capabilities, for example, requires using two or more Smart playlists inside a controlling Smart playlist. It's not perfect, but it is powerful.

So you use VLC and do manually what iTunes can do automatically? Sure, pretty much everything iTunes does can be done without iTunes, using Finder, and a more limited third party app such as VLC, but it takes longer, and requires the user to spend their valuable time keeping their files organized. I can push my car, but it's easier to get in it and drive.

Personally, I have WAY too much music to try to keep organized myself. It has only been recently that I have acquired a single hard drive large enough to contain it all. I know how to organize it, it would just be too tedious, when I can get iTunes to do it exactly how I want it, with no fuss. Plus, my music tastes are so varied, I can't usually limit most songs to a single genre, and iTunes doesn't require me to. If I have to use smart folders, I might as well use smart playlists.

:eek: Your kidding, right? If not, have you even explored iTunes' configurability? It is certainly not a one size fits all solution. Thus far every iTunes complaint presented in this thread (and ~99% of other internet threads complaining about iTunes) can be remedied by adjusting user preferences.

Personally, I don't care what you use to listen to your tunes; use WMP 9 for Mac if you want. But if you're going to complain about iTunes' capabilities, you might try first investigating the difference between iTunes' limitations and user limitations. I'm not saying that iTunes is perfect; there is a lot of room for improvement. Overall it is, in my experience, superior to every alternative I've tried.

iTunes was not designed with you in mind. It was designed for the ignorant masses, of which 75% of computer users belong to.

Let your Object Oriented mind create something to fill the void, and then enlighten us all with it's grandeur.

I think each album must be done individually, but to be honest, I've never tried doing them all at once. iTunes may be smart enough to realize that they are not all part of the same compilation album, even if you select all your compilation tracks simultaneously. Try selecting two or three compilation albums at once and marking them as part of a compilation album. Let us know how it works. (I'd try it, but I haven't migrated my tunes to my iTunes library on my MacBook yet.)

Have you checked out Doug's Applescripts for iTunes? He has many, many timesaving Applescript solutions for iTunes. If he doesn't have one that will do what you want to do, he probably has one you can modify to get your desired results.


I do wish iTunes offered more options here, or at least easier options. I'd like to go in the other direction. For example, B.B. King and Eric Clapton recorded an album called Riding With The King. I'd like to be able to get the album to list under each Eric Clapton and B.B. King in my library, without duplicating the tracks in my iTunes Music folder. Just because I haven't figured it out yet, doesn't mean it can't be done!

When I had ~60GiB of music in my iTunes library on my G3 iBook, it was never slow, unless I was actually messing with the music files while playing music. My C2D MacBook with a tiny <4GiB library doesn't seem to be any faster. It might be something other than iTunes causing your slowdowns. C'mon tlarkin, you know you like to troubleshoot! :D

About half of my music was ripped via iTunes. I can't tell any difference between it and the stuff that was ripped with third party software.

Sorry for the confusion. That's a screenshot from an older version of OS X and an older version of iTunes. It's someone else's screenshot, not my own.

But the checkbox in question still exists.

Trevor

This is true. So we end up creating several "sub"-playlists first... and
then make our masterpiece from the pieces. One might think it better
to have a stronger Smart Playlist editor (allowing all sorts of complex
boolean relations) in the first place, but that's not necessarily superior.

This is where using playlist folders comes in: to house many simpler
playlists. That way, there isn't a long, long list of them filling the main
window, which would necessitate endless scrolling.

I have folders such as:

• 'CDs for burning',
• 'simple categories',
• 'smart searches', and
• 'special sets'.

Each of those folders contain many playlists - that form the foundation
and building blocks upon which to construct far more precisely detailed
Smart Playlists. [Those -- for the most part -- remain in the main list.]

It may take getting used to (and even seem more time-consuming initially),
but I now appreciate the wisdom of the 'small steps' approach... and having
those "sub"-playlists available, to use in future playlists is a side benefit.