The iTunes thread: iTunes version <insert number> is out: Tell us how much you hate it

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > The iTunes thread: iTunes version <insert number> is out: Tell us how much you hate it

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TACD: Oct 27, 2000

Haggins posted:

iTunes match sure is taking its sweet time. I have about 14,000 songs and signed up for the service around 3pm yesterday. The "Gathering Information" took around 3 hours and the "Matching Your Music" is less than 1/3rd of the way done even though it's been running all night (it's 6am right now).

Mine appears to be looping through step 3 over and over. It's definitely 'finished' at least twice. I wonder if it's freaking out because a large portion of my library is Ogg Vorbis.

zalmoxes posted:

I'm a little confused about match. The reason I bought it was so I could have it ID my songs and finally give me proper metadata for my library, but if I delete a song that is marked as "matched" and redownload it from icloud, it still doesn't have artwork or proper metadata.

Yea, I want to transcode all my OGGs to MP3 and match / redownload them, but I'm not going to bother until somebody finds a way to utilise Apple's master copy of album artwork and ID3 tags.

I rather shortsightedly used to 1) Rip all my music to OGG and 2) Delete artwork from downloaded albums as it was unnecessary clutter in my pre-iOS device days. And yes, now I expect Apple to fix all these problems I created for $25, thank you very much!

# ¿ Nov 17, 2011 02:46

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# ¿ Apr 29, 2024 05:05

TACD: Oct 27, 2000

Ugh. Finished converting all my .ogg files to .mp3, successfully matched the vast majority of them... but none of them are displaying track numbers, and there still appears to be no way to fill in this missing information from iTunes. :psyduck:

bonzaisushi posted:

I highly suggest you guys use a program to help clean up your tags before you enable match. Beatunes ( http://www.beatunes.com/ ) is a pretty badass program for that. Made adjusting genres/track titles/etc a breeze! Pre beatunes i had about 5k tracks to upload to match, after i ran it i only had about 3200.

Is there something similar to this that doesn't cost more than the Match service itself? I found somebody (https://twitter.com/!/tapbot_paul/status/138269351643070464) who claims to have written a Ruby script that will pull information from iTunes' database but I have no idea how to compile / run this on my machine.

I'm hoping and praying that a 'fill in missing information' option isn't one of those things Apple will stubbornly refuse to implement for no reason at all.

# ¿ Nov 23, 2011 18:50

TACD: Oct 27, 2000

GreenBuckanneer posted:

I do hope you downconverted those.

Converting one lossy format to another

Oh jeez, believe me that ferreting out any transcoded-and-not-matched tracks is a major step in my mental music organisation plan. Which is looking like a literally years-long project if I'm going to have to go through my metadata and manually sort it all out :cry:

I additionally have a whole bunch of music stuck in 'Waiting' status for no apparent reason, and iTunes Match thinks it's done uploading everything. And albums that exist in the iTunes store but haven't been matched. And even weirder, albums that have been matched but that don't exist in the iTunes store:

This is giving me a headache.

# ¿ Nov 23, 2011 20:14

TACD: Oct 27, 2000

TheKeeper posted:

Is there any way to de-authorize computers you no longer have access too? I've been using iTunes for years on my many iterations of PC desktops. However like a retard I never realized I needed to de-authorize them when I changed PCs.

Flash forward to today when I purchased my very first Mac (17" MacBook Pro) and when I attempted to sign in to iTunes on it I am told I have used my five authorizations and need to deactivate one in order to set it up on the new laptop. The only problem is I no longer have access to any of the other PCs tied to the account. Is there any way to do this online or whatnot? Can customer service do it? Will be be a hassle?

Thanks! Now back to figuring out an entirely new computing system...

Log into the iTunes store from within iTunes, and click 'Account' under your Apple ID in the top-right. You should see this option:

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# ¿ Dec 9, 2011 08:14

TACD: Oct 27, 2000

RICHUNCLEPENNYBAGS posted:

You will download the songs the first time and then when you run out of space it will delete the ones that you've listened to least recently. It seems like it would basically do the checking off for you, in other words.

Are you sure it auto-deletes old tracks? I've never seen anything that says that. Genuinely curious, if it does then I'd love to know so I can stop deleting albums once I've listened to them to save space. Wish there was an easy way to view all the music currently loaded on the phone.

# ¿ Jan 23, 2012 00:55

TACD: Oct 27, 2000

Diabolik900 posted:

You could turn off "Show all music".

Well bugger me.

# ¿ Jan 23, 2012 09:37

TACD: Oct 27, 2000

GobiasIndustries posted:

Is there any way to add old tracks to a current podcast? I've got a few old episodes of a podcast (Dan Carlin's Hardcore History) that I'd like to put back in iTunes, but every time I try to drag them to iTunes, they show up as a separate podcast.

I remember looking up how to do this a while ago. It's an absolute clusterfuck of editing .xml files and hoping you don't destroy iTunes. Google it but it's probably not worth it.

# ¿ Jan 25, 2012 05:28

TACD: Oct 27, 2000

I have a question which somebody here probably has an answer for: I have a 'best of' playlist on my Mac that is just for songs I've rated 4 or 5 stars (I probably need to make more specific playlists, but anyway.) Now, on the Mac that playlist includes all songs from albums I've rated 4 or 5 as a whole, while on my iPhone only specific tracks rated 4 or 5 show up. Can I change a setting in my Smart Playlist to avoid having all the tracks on rated albums show up? Should I just avoid rating albums and rate individual songs instead?

E.g. In this screenshot, only '4 Years' and 'Late Nights' show up on the iPhone playlist while they all show up on the Mac

http://i.imgur.com/6Fb3m.png

These are my Smart Playlist settings.

http://i.imgur.com/G3LuA.png

# ¿ Jan 31, 2012 00:34

TACD: Oct 27, 2000

chupacabraTERROR posted:

I've done some research into this but I was hoping someone could tell me from experience: does iCloud backup save all of your app data?

edit: Sorry, this may be more of an iPhone question than an iTunes question. The reason I posted it in here is because I'm assuming iTunes and iCloud are closely related. I am new to i-things.

Yes.

# ¿ Feb 4, 2012 22:56

TACD: Oct 27, 2000

helsabot posted:

I guess I was also a little skittish with how it would handle apps, since we've both bought stuff under our own apple IDs, and how the cloud/match would work. If i move everything to my computer, and then itunes match it, would I just sign into iTunes match on his computer and then we'd both have access to everything?

Assuming you have the newer non-DRM copies of music files then you can just import the media files and they'll play without fuss on anybody's device. And yes, once they're all on your account and matches you should be able to log into iTunes on his machine and download everything.

Apps will still be tied to the iTunes account that bought them - you can have apps from more than one account on a device but you'll need the purchasing account's password to update (not use) them.

I guess this is personal preference but just thinking about having apps on my phone from more than one account and needing multiple accounts / passwords gives me a headache. It upsets me enough that some of my apps are from the UK store and some are from the US store.

# ¿ Feb 7, 2012 22:57

TACD: Oct 27, 2000

So I just noticed that the 'iCloud status' and iCloud icon columns were missing in iTunes. Went into my iTunes account page and there was a button offering me the chance to 'Add this computer to iTunes Match'. I only have this one computer. What the gently caress?
Edit: Actually, I bet it disassociated this machine from iTunes Match when I tried to change my region to the UK to buy a UK-only app. Sucks I can't do that anymore

# ¿ Feb 11, 2012 08:29

TACD: Oct 27, 2000

pyrotek posted:

Now that I bought iTunes Match and finally decided to let my phone backup to iCloud, is there any reason to sync my iPhone anymore?

New podcast episodes still inexplicably fail to download directly to the iPhone

# ¿ Mar 3, 2012 10:12

TACD: Oct 27, 2000

NOTinuyasha posted:

So I store everything on iTunes Match only, nothing locally. I'm having issues with random tracks in my library becoming unplayable forever until I delete them and re-add the local file. If I just try to the play the track, it gets skipped silently. If I try to download it I get this:

Usually it's just random tracks, but I had half of one album die all at the same time once for some reason. Edit: And it's happening with my iPhone too.

You're slipping, Tim

This problem is slowly eating away at my library so I might end up ditching Match soon.

This doesn't solve your problem but you might like to know you can hit Command-Shift-4, then press the spacebar and you can take slick screenshots of any individual window

# ¿ Jun 7, 2012 01:41

TACD: Oct 27, 2000

I've come to the conclusion that I'm pretty much done with iTunes Match - of the three main benefits I wanted from it, 1) Having access to all my music everywhere, 2) Having all my music upgraded to higher quality, and 3) Having all my tags sorted out for me, it only does two of the three and only 1 is an ongoing benefit.

And even that is dubious since the times I'm likely to want a lot of music (e.g. such as going on a long flight) I have to make preparations ahead of time since inevitably my phone will have helpfully erased all the mixsets I downloaded onto it last time, which it then won't let me download over 3G despite having unlimited data.

It also annoys me I can't change my iTunes store region with a Match subscription :mad:

# ¿ Jul 3, 2012 03:17

TACD: Oct 27, 2000

Hiyoshi posted:

Even if you have a credit card for that region?

Yes. It tells me I need to cancel my Match subscription to change region (I used to change semi-regularly to update a couple of apps only available in the UK).

# ¿ Jul 3, 2012 20:15

TACD: Oct 27, 2000

mister ginger posted:

Ok, so I have been kind of lazy about updating my itunes. (Currently running 10.5.3) But I updated my iphone to ios6 today, so when I plugged my phone into my computer itunes tell me it can't update my phone without the newest itunes. So I go to itunes.com and download the newest version (10.7). But when I click to install it tells me I need 10.6.8 (OS) Is there anyway I can find a 10.6.3 version for i-tunes?

I'm not clear from this if you're running Leopard or Snow Leopard, but in either case it sounds like you're not on the latest point release of the OS so you should really run Software Update and get up to date (why haven't you done this already over the past few years?). iTunes 10.7 should run fine in 10.6.8.

# ¿ Sep 20, 2012 11:41

TACD: Oct 27, 2000

benisntfunny posted:

There is metadata and playlist information that takes up space outside of the actual music.

Unless he's embedding a full episode of Archer into the ID3 of every song there is no way that's going to take up 15 GB.

# ¿ Oct 17, 2012 00:33

TACD: Oct 27, 2000

BooDaa posted:

http://arstechnica.com/apple/2012/10/apple-confirms-itunes-overhaul-delayed-until-late-november/

Start the wailing and gnashing of teeth.

Spooky. This is literally the phrase I was planning to use in conjunction with this news. You beat me to both of them I guess.

# ¿ Oct 31, 2012 00:17

TACD: Oct 27, 2000

So this is fun. I had an iTunes Match subscription that I allowed to expire, but I can still use it (on my Mac and on my phone) as if I had renewed it. Anybody else experiencing this useful bug?

# ¿ Nov 17, 2012 17:50

TACD: Oct 27, 2000

IUG posted:

Are you sure you weren't billed for it? I know Microsoft does this for Xbox Live. And Apple surely has your credit card info. I think it ties into your iTunes account for downloading applications, and you probably used it for your first year of Match (or however long the subscriptions are).

I admit I haven't checked my actual bank statement yet, but I'd be very surprised if I was since 1) I got the "your subscription has expired" email, and 2) I am now able to switch between the US and UK stores again which was a large part of why I didn't renew my subscription right now. If I can use iTunes Match and retain the ability to swap store regions when I need to, that would just be splendid.

# ¿ Nov 18, 2012 11:06

TACD: Oct 27, 2000

So how do I add MP3 clippings into the ringtones section? All I can find online is useless (and inaccurate) guff about loving about converting files to AAC and changing the file extension and whatever, and I refuse to believe that in 2012 such arcane bullshit is require just to make my phone play stupid tinkly tones when I get a call.

# ¿ Nov 30, 2012 18:17

TACD: Oct 27, 2000

Here's an annoying problem I'm having: All my iTunes music is stored on my Mac laptop, and I frequently play it on my PC via Home Sharing. However, this frequently (as in, ~1 in 3) results in the last 30 or so seconds of the track being cut off and iTunes skipping prematurely to the next track. I can tell it to go back to the last track and drag the position indicator to roughly where it was, and it'll play the rest of the track fine... so why the hell is it chopping the ends off of so many songs?

# ¿ Dec 20, 2012 16:58

TACD: Oct 27, 2000

Herr Tog posted:

gently caress this dick poo poo. I am trying to get 10 again from Apple from here: https://support.apple.com/kb/DL1103

The update-avoiding thing is always a mug's game with Apple. Any new iBlobs you buy are going to require iTunes 11 before you know it, and you'll be trying to avoid OS updates and all sorts to keep hold of your preferred software versions. Staying updated no matter what is part of the dark pact with the devil you sign when you start buying Apple products

# ¿ Dec 25, 2012 13:51

TACD: Oct 27, 2000

dexter6 posted:

Thanks for the feedback. Anything else I should consider before pulling the trigger on iTunes match?

The two main problems I have with it are 1) I have a lot of ~2 hour mixsets, many of which are above the allowed limit for uploading. Because you can't manually sync extra tracks to a device with Match enabled, this means I can't listen to these without doing a full manual sync. 2) is the fact that I want to listen to my music the most when I'm on a long train or plane journey - which is when I have the least Internet connectivity. So just be aware of your connection quality and download caps, I guess.

# ¿ Jun 14, 2013 12:08

TACD: Oct 27, 2000

porktree posted:

Ok, some iTunes weirdness. I normally sync both my phone and ipad to itunes a couple times a week. The devices are both on 7.03, and itunes is 11.1.2.31 (windows 7, 64bit). Suddenly last week, itunes stopped 'finishing sync' - it literally gets to that step and will stay there forever on both devices (or for 3-4 hours). I can unplug the device and it's fine, I can shutdown itunes and start it back up and it's fine - I can do a backup only and it works. AND, if I sync the device over wifi the sync finishes. Anyone see anything like this, and know of a way to fix it?

This happened to me for a while; I think I got off lucky in that a backup / restore fixed it.

# ¿ Dec 23, 2013 13:51

TACD: Oct 27, 2000

Can somebody please explain to me how I should be syncing my podcasts so that I don't constantly get "This episode is temporarily unavailable" on my phone? All I want is to be able to play half of SGU while I put away my laundry, then put my headphones in and listen to the rest while I walk across town. I've tried enabling and disabling the 'Sync subscriptions' options on the phone and on my Mac, enabling and disabling 'Sync podcasts' in iTunes, and generally following some of the more reasonable suggestions in this thread. At this point I have no idea what the 'Apple way' of doing this looks like but I'm pretty sure it's not supposed to look like an enraged nerd throwing his phone under a bus.

The Milkman posted:

Does anyone know of a good solution for sharing an iTunes library over the internet? I used to use Simplify Media a few years back but that's been long gone. If there isn't anything feasible anymore aside from a full blown VPN set up, I'd take something that presents a remote web interface.

I know I could do iTunes Match but with my friends' lukewarm impressions of it and my loving awful experience with Google Play's cloud music have me leery of shelling out for it. Especially since I'm stuck with this galaxy s3 garbage for a few more months and won't be able to use the mobile side of it in the meantime.

I'm pretty sure Plex could do this.

# ¿ Jan 9, 2014 18:31

TACD: Oct 27, 2000

Nihiliste posted:

You might consider trying Stitcher instead of Podcasts. Seems far more reliable for sync, and while it's meant for streaming, it has an offline mode that caches your playlist (that's right, playlist).

My understanding was that third-party apps like Downcast or Stitcher aren't able to sync playback information with iTunes, or am I wrong? It's not uncommon for me to be halfway through 3 different podcasts at one time, so syncing the current playback location between phone / Mac is super important to me.

# ¿ Jan 9, 2014 21:45

TACD: Oct 27, 2000

Nihiliste posted:

They don't sync with iTunes, but Stitcher is multi-platform - iOS, web, Android. You'd just have to stop using iTunes as your anchor for podcasts.

Ah I hadn't thought of there being a web interface. I'll give that a go then, thanks.

# ¿ Jan 9, 2014 22:51

TACD: Oct 27, 2000

Bouchacha posted:

Podcast syncing is not happening so far. Reconstructing my subscriptions on my computer ends up with duplicate entries on my app so I just gave up and use my iphone exclusively.

Honestly, you're better off keeping podcasts in one place. I spent way too long trying to get podcast syncing working in any meaningful way, and it is just broken. The answer is Stitcher / Downcast.

# ¿ Jan 25, 2014 03:22

TACD: Oct 27, 2000

tuyop posted:

I set up a smart playlist to merge two non-smart playlists to get the songs from both on my wife's phone easily.

Both those playlists have about 1600 songs in them, together. But the new smart playlist only has 30 songs and I can't find the option to change that. I have other smart playlists with like, 9000 songs in them, so what gives?

Here's the dialogue:

Deselecting "live updating" does nothing.

Shouldn't that be match 'any', not 'all'?

# ¿ Mar 15, 2014 17:38

TACD: Oct 27, 2000

Holy poo poo, I just noticed that at some point iTunes removed the 'iCloud Status' field. I can choose it as an option for a smart playlist but in my actual library the column is called 'iCloud Download' which simply appears to show if I can download it or not. As far as I can tell there's now no way to tell which tracks are matched and which are simply uploaded.

I hadn't finished replacing my library with higher-quality matched versions and well I guess Apple decided they didn't want people doing that because :dong:

Christ, I loving hate iTunes.

Irritated Goat posted:

Is there a accepted method of cleaning up tracks now? My wife added her stuff to our collection and a lot of it isn't tagged properly. I usually use MP3Tag and occasionally MusicBrainz to get the information I need but something I can fire and forget would be better.

MusicBrainz also has the weird habit of attributing tracks to big compliations when there's only 1 song from the artist it sees without an album name.

I've been meaning to try the method outlined here for a while, but I guess it probably won't work now. It drives me absolutely nuts that there's no way to update matched songs with Apple's ID3 information

# ¿ Oct 8, 2014 17:38

TACD: Oct 27, 2000

astr0man posted:

Yeah it's there for me in 12 as well. You have to 2-finger click (right click) the columns in "songs" view to get the column choices thing.

I don't know what I'm doing wrong then. iTunes > About says 'iTunes 12.0.0 140'

Edit: Oh, I'm an idiot. I'd done a clean install of Yosemite and hadn't yet added this machine to iTunes Match. :downs:

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TACD fucked around with this message at 22:38 on Oct 11, 2014

# ¿ Oct 11, 2014 22:26

TACD: Oct 27, 2000

Honestly I don't know if iTunes makes me more mad or sad these days.

You can't select multiple Smart Playlists at once, by the way.

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# ¿ Apr 14, 2015 15:12

TACD: Oct 27, 2000

89 posted:

So, with this whole new Apple Music thing, why would a subscriber ever purchase a song from iTunes now?

Personally, I listen to a lot of my music when I'm travelling, which usually means I have no signal and I'd prefer to have the actual file.

That said, I find I'm getting a lot more of my music from Bandcamp recently. And if iTunes' performance at setting up my 'personalised profile' or whatever when I started my free trial is anything to go by, I really doubt it's going to be able to replace Spotify for at-home streaming.

# ¿ Jul 1, 2015 12:48

TACD: Oct 27, 2000

SLOSifl posted:

You can make any song available offline though, wouldn't that work just as well?

Hm, maybe. I've only just started playing around with this TBH. I am still deeply suspicious of anything cloud-based that Apple does, but I'll try it out over the summer and see how I get on.

I have a question: Why has the 'iCloud Status' of some of my previously-owned tracks now changed to 'Apple Music'? Is this a straight upgrade from 'Matched' (i.e. matched but now also available on Apple Music) or is it a glitch, or something else?

# ¿ Jul 1, 2015 17:56

TACD: Oct 27, 2000

89 posted:

So, with this whole new Apple Music thing, why would a subscriber ever purchase a song from iTunes now?

I've thought about this a bit more, and here's my reason. Beyond my distrust that Apple won't remove songs from my phone's local storage before I go on a trip, I don't want my music to be contingent on a monthly fee for perpetuity. I don't like the idea of being tied into a subscription (or the Apple ecosystem, which I might want to jump ship on someday) for all my music, and even in the shorter term it only makes financial sense if on average I buy more music per month than the subscription fee. Maybe these are crotchety old-man reasons but I think in the end I won't be paying for Apple Music because of them.

That said, I do have a Spotify sub because I get huge value out of being able to generate a radio station from any artist or track, and I find a lot of new music that way. As far as I can tell Apple Music doesn't have that feature (yet?)

# ¿ Jul 2, 2015 12:54

TACD: Oct 27, 2000

kloa posted:

Oh, neat! I'm in the UK so this is the first chance I've had to play around with the whole radio thing.

# ¿ Jul 2, 2015 18:15

TACD: Oct 27, 2000

smr posted:

Is this even remotely possible?

I would think the easiest way would be to download any higher-quality versions of matched songs first, then turn off match and flatten / reinstall iTunes. Make a smart playlist along the lines of type=music, iCloud status=matched, bitrate<256kbps, delete everything in it and redownload from the cloud. Then you can start fresh and weed out duplicates.

# ¿ Jul 28, 2015 23:15

TACD: Oct 27, 2000

I realise that with iTunes I might as well fart in my own mouth as hope it'll work the way it's supposed to, but does anybody have any insight into why I'm not able to access the music on my MacBook from my PC? Home sharing is turned on and signed into on both machines, I can access the PC from my Mac just fine, but no matter what I do I can't get the stupid Shared Libraries thing to appear on the PC. I hate iTunes so much

# ¿ Aug 29, 2015 18:27

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# ¿ Apr 29, 2024 05:05

TACD: Oct 27, 2000

Kaizoku posted:

This is going to sound dumb, but the macbook is awake when you�re testing this?

I wish it were that simple

Yea, the laptop is on and iTunes is open, and I can see the shared library on the PC, taunting me.

# ¿ Aug 30, 2015 05:12

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > The iTunes thread: iTunes version <insert number> is out: Tell us how much you hate it

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