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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Minidust: Nov 4, 2009; Keep bustin'

binarysmurf posted:

This is something that shouldn't annoy me, but it does.

I have 2145 songs in my iTunes library which is an exact match with my songs in iTunes Match. This pleases me.

When I sync all my music in iTunes, I tick the box and it tells me it will sync 2145 songs. All good.

Except, only 2144 songs sync to my iPhone 6 Plus. I'm running iTunes 12.01, 10.10 release, and 8.1 beta.

Is there an easy way I can find out what song isn't synching?

edit: This happened under 8.0.2 as well. I don't think it's a 'beta' thing.

This used to drive me nuts. I finally realized that the extra "song" was actually a digital booklet thingy that came with a purchased iTunes album. This was on an iPod classic - not sure if the same thing would happen on an iPhone, but it wouldn't surprise me!

# ¿ Oct 18, 2014 06:16

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# ¿ May 15, 2024 07:06

Minidust: Nov 4, 2009; Keep bustin'

My wife and I are throwing a Christmas party and we'd like to have all of our Christmas songs in a single playlist. Our iTunes libraries are already shared. Is it possible to create a playlist that mixes songs from both libraries, or would I need to add her songs to my own library? I'm way more :spergin:

about my library organization than she is, so I'm hoping to avoid that scenario if possible.

# ¿ Nov 29, 2014 16:17

Minidust: Nov 4, 2009; Keep bustin'

necrobobsledder posted:

Speaking of tagging, anyone know a sane way to try to tag LPs that are directly ripped to tracks that can work with most software? I'm thinking of tracks labeled A1, A2, A3, B1, B2, B3 but don't want to just enumerate them as 1, 2, 3 because I might have another album named the same title with the same year that has a different track set and it'd help me figure out if it's from the LP-only release versions. iTunes doesn't seem to like my track letter-number combos last I saw, and I got random ordering.
I kind of have to curate my own library because most of my music doesn't even show up in Spotify. Also, streaming music to a mobile device really destroys battery life in my experience and given my iPhone 5S barely lasts a work day on battery despite my best efforts keeping media on my device is still my go-to.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding the problem, but have you played around with the "sort album" field in the track info? You could append the Sort Album title with some extra descriptor to keep the tracks separate from other editions, or similarly-titled albums.

On the subject of album metadata - there's no way to set a year for an album outside of the year listed in individual tracks, right? I'd like to use Album Artist -> Year for my overall sorting, but compilations throw that off as I always tag tracks with their release years. That might sound like overkill but I really like using the specific years in smart playlists.

Minidust fucked around with this message at 18:44 on Jan 21, 2015

# ¿ Jan 21, 2015 18:39

Minidust: Nov 4, 2009; Keep bustin'

necrobobsledder posted:

I'm ultimately looking for a tagging layout that could work elsewhere like foobar2000, Media Monkey, etc. and not have my files look like they did in 1998 off of Napster. I'm looking for something more elegant than Album Title [LP], Album Title [Limited], Album Title [JP] kind of garbage that litters music tags from random places online. But I'd like to capture the metadata better to indicate a variant of the same album. I'd prefer something like a "release format" field so I could put down something like "UK LP" "UK CD" "JP LTD CD" and die making a microformat. I currently copied a lot of the edition information into the random "comments" field that isn't sortable or indexable.

Which field are you talking about though? Do you mean the Sort as "album" field in the below screenshot? Do you know if it gets written out to id3 tags in the generic field or if there's a field that's accepted for it? Sounds like it's worth a shot though, thanks.

Yeah, iTunes will alphabetize and group by whatever it reads in the Sort as "album" field, without actually displaying that version of the title anywhere. "Get Info" is the only place you'll ever see it.

It's fun to force iTunes to alphabetize things exactly how you want it this way... I like having the band 311 sorted by the word "three," for example, while still displaying everywhere as "311". It's also a good way to keep the tracks from "1999" by Prince from mixing with the "1999" by Cassius, or "Greatest Hits" by Band X from "Greatest Hits" by Band Y... you get the idea. iTunes automatically populates this field for any band beginning with "The" btw, that's why you'll always see those alphabetized "correctly" right from the get-go.

I'm not really sure if this is manifested in an id3 tag however, or if it only exists in the iTunes data file. So I can't say if it would even show up in other media players... hmm

quote:

Not sure if it'll help for your case, but the Grouping field may be helpful since it's probably the most widely abused tag for "I just want another random field."

Oh man... I suppose it would work. But that's a LOT of re-tagging and :effort:

Maybe with the comments field. Currently I use "grouping" for things like discs in a collection that have their own separate titles. Or occasionally to mimic "bonus tracks" labeling from the back cover of an album, stuff like that.

Minidust fucked around with this message at 03:00 on Jan 22, 2015

# ¿ Jan 22, 2015 02:58

Minidust: Nov 4, 2009; Keep bustin'

Is there a good free server OS that can run iTunes? FreeNAS looks good but apparently it doesn't run the actual iTunes client, so you're out of luck if you want to serve the content to an Apple TV (which is basically all I'd be using the server for).

I've got a usable Windows 7 system, which could work fine but is not ideal as a server due to a connection limit. This is my fallback option however, as it shouldn't be too bad in a 2-person household.

A lot of my searches lead to a mention of Linux-based systems. I'm willing to put in the research if that's a good option, but would those even be able to run iTunes?

# ¿ May 27, 2015 22:13

Minidust: Nov 4, 2009; Keep bustin'

I'm gonna start doing lossless rips of my CD collection. I've read online about how iTunes doesn't play nice with FLAC, but a lot of the articles were pretty old. Is this still the case? I'm not averse to just using ALAC if it's gonna make everything easier.

# ¿ Jun 15, 2015 16:21

Minidust: Nov 4, 2009; Keep bustin'

Dead Goon posted:

No.

You do not state what OS you are using but if you want to use the FLAC format then there are many other options to iTunes on Windows and Mac OS.

Oh - Windows 7 (10 soon I guess) OS. When you say "many options," does this mean that FLAC isn't supported natively? I should note that my main use will be playing through an Apple TV.

Secondarily, I'll be using an iPod classic. So I'll want to use that iTunes feature where it imports a smaller version of the file (as opposed to ripping 2 versions of everything). Any advantage to using ALAC in that scenario?

Minidust fucked around with this message at 16:42 on Jun 15, 2015

# ¿ Jun 15, 2015 16:40

Minidust: Nov 4, 2009; Keep bustin'

Dead Goon posted:

I would do ALAC then.

Been a while since I used iTunes, but there was an option you could export to an iPod and transcode to lower bitrates while keeping whatever you had in your library.

[edit] What you plan to do will be best to be honest, use iTunes to convert CDs to ALAC and then when you export to your iPod, convert to a lower bitrate lossey format. And your Apple TV will play them because it's ALAC and why wouldn't it!

Got my 4TB external drive yesterday. The plan is in motion! Thanks.

So I moved my whole library to the new HDD - entirely through iTunes so I think it should be all good (changed the library folder in preferences, kept allowing iTunes to organize files, consolidated library). I'm now having some unrelated network problems however. Does iTunes get affected by a Windows system restore? My huge library transition went so smoothly, and I wouldn't want to do something that might mess with it! IIRC, my media files wouldn't be affected, but I'm not sure if the library file is referenced in a system restore point, or if it's completely separate. If there's a risk, I'll go a different route for my network troubleshooting.

Minidust fucked around with this message at 15:31 on Jun 23, 2015

# ¿ Jun 23, 2015 15:28

Minidust: Nov 4, 2009; Keep bustin'

Any indication whether desktop iTunes wipes out your embedded cover art, like the new phone app?

# ¿ Jul 1, 2015 04:25

Minidust: Nov 4, 2009; Keep bustin'

Whirlwind Jones posted:

If you turn off iCloud Library it does not.

Yikes. Guess I'll be leaving that off then! Unfortunate, but I suppose the whole "music locker" concept doesn't matter as much when you're getting so much on-demand stuff anyway.

# ¿ Jul 1, 2015 04:54

Minidust: Nov 4, 2009; Keep bustin'

The setup of my iTunes library is a bit irregular - I've got an old computer tucked away as a server of sorts, running iTunes with home sharing turned on. So when I uses iTunes on my main computer, I browse that shared library since nothing is stored on the local machine.

Just updated iTunes on the main computer. I didn't turn iCloud Library on. However, when I try to add any content to My Music, iCloud Library is automatically activated. So I guess it is impossible to use the on-demand stuff without having iCloud Library turned on. All or nothing.

I'd like to mix Apple Music content with my main server library, but I'm apprehensive about the cover art being overwritten. Guess I'll import some music locally and see how it behaves before I proceed, since none of my ripped music lives on this machine for real. It's a relative safe haven for experimentation.

# ¿ Jul 1, 2015 05:22

Minidust: Nov 4, 2009; Keep bustin'

I did a little test. With no local music on my machine, I turned on iCloud Music library. This populated "My Music" with music that was matched (not uploaded) from my iPhone.

It looks like the metadata for these tracks have been copied directly from the files my phone (including the botched album art assigned by Apple Music yesterday), whereas the actual audio is pulled from Apple Music. So while the metadata gives me an exact match to whatever was originally synced to my phone (primarily ripped from CDs and tagged manaually), the audio itself uses the iTunes Match technique and can vary wildly depending on what is available on Apple Music.

Not entirely new information, but I found it interesting that your metadata stays intact.

Next thing I did was to manually import an album to my local library that already had some matched cloud content. I had a few tracks from Rage Against The Machine's first album, originally synced from my rip of the 1992 CD release, but now displaying the 2012 "XX" edition cover art that Apple Music assigned to my iPhone. When I added my own ripped files to the local library, the tracks briefly coexisted with the matched cloud tracks (it displayed as a single album with a few duplicate songs). But within a few minutes, the duplicate cloud tracks disappeared on their own - and the album displayed my 1992 cover art!

So I hope this means that embedded art in local music will take priority in desktop iTunes, which is different from the terrible behavior in the iPhone music app. I restarted iTunes, turned iCloud Music Library off and on again, and my original cover art is still there, sitting happily among a bunch of new Apple Music albums ready to stream.

# ¿ Jul 1, 2015 16:39

Minidust: Nov 4, 2009; Keep bustin'

fwiw I had a hard time streaming on the road today too. Whereas yesterday I had no interruptions. So maybe there was some server-wide issues particular to this evening.

# ¿ Jul 2, 2015 01:32

Minidust: Nov 4, 2009; Keep bustin'

TACD posted:

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?)

Also, saved Apple Music doesn't play natively on an Apple TV (at least, not yet). And while I haven't tested myself yet, I don't think it can be synced to an iPod classic. This won't matter to everybody, but for me it adds some value to CDs and discrete digital purchases still!

# ¿ Jul 2, 2015 14:32

Minidust: Nov 4, 2009; Keep bustin'

Something I've been wondering for a while - what determines the year that gets associated with an album, when tracks with multiple year tags are present? For artist collections, or like a themed compilation with various artists, I tag each track with its own release year (for both :spergin:

and smart playlist reasons). I'd like to sort albums by Artist/Year, but collections and anthology-type stuff always throw this off.

Is there a way to influence what iTunes chooses for the (album) year, or like some type of hidden tag value I could write with an external program?

# ¿ Jul 16, 2015 14:45

Minidust: Nov 4, 2009; Keep bustin'

IUG posted:

I'm not at my library (at work), so I can't check. But I know I have some compilations with multiple dates per album, and I'm pretty sure the most recent year in any track is what gets sorted. I guess it figures that if you have two tracks from 2002 on your 1983 album, then that's a 2002 re-release album.

This is it! Thanks. I just tested it out with the "Naked" reissue of Let It Be. When I changed the tag in one song from 1970 to 2003, it updated the year displayed in the Albums view.

Seems like a logical enough way to handle it, honestly. So maybe I'll choose an "anchor" track on albums where the sorting is problematic. Gimmick the year on one song and maybe add a comment that I could use to exclude it from smart playlists.

The only problem now is that having "Various Artists" albums sorted by year is kind of pointless, and actively counterintuitive for browsing, but oh well. At least browsing an artist's catalog will be nicer.

# ¿ Jul 16, 2015 17:08

Minidust: Nov 4, 2009; Keep bustin'

Stare-Out posted:

Weird little issue I've had with an album for a good while now: I have the three special edition versions of The Hobbit trilogy soundtracks, and they sort just fine chronologically under Howard Shore on iTunes, all three of them, but everywhere else (when the view is sorted alphabetically by album) one of them appears under "T" for "The" instead of "H" for "Hobbit" and I can't figure out why. I know iTunes disregards anything starting with "The" but with this one album it just doesn't for some reason.

For example, with iTunes Match (or iCloud Music or whatever it's called now) on my iPhone the first two soundtracks appear under "H" in the "Album" view but the third one is under "T". Why does it suddenly think the "The" is so important and how can I change it?

Check the sorting tab under "Get info" for the problematic tracks. There are optional metadata fields for sorting albums/songs/artists. By default, iTunes populates these fields when "The" or "A" is at the beginning of the entry (removing the article to fix the sorting). For whatever reason it sounds like that Hobbit album has "The" included in the sorting metadata. You should be able to fix that in iTunes or any third party tagging program, I'm just hoping the involvement of Match/iCloud won't be a problem.

# ¿ Jul 31, 2015 21:36

Minidust: Nov 4, 2009; Keep bustin'

ArcaneMan posted:

Kind of a weird question:

I have an album of mp3s on my hard drive. Currently I have 3 songs off that album imported into iTunes, and they sync with my iphone. I'd like to add the rest of the songs from the album to itunes so I could listen to the other songs occasionally, but still only have the original 3 sync to my phone. Obviously the solution is to have those 3 songs checked and set the phone to sync only checked songs.

Is there a way to add files into itunes that are unchecked by default?

You could try making a playlist just for songs you want to add to the phone, and syncing that playlist. Not sure if the check marks would overrule that though.

The Lord Bude posted:

Does anyone have any idea why I can't seem to get songs to copy themselves from itunes onto my iphone? I have an iphone 6S plus running the latest version of iOS, and I'm running the latest version of itunes on windows 10.

Edit: in case it matters, the songs were ripped from CDs, in apple lossless.
.

If iCloud Music Library is enabled on iTunes or the iPhone itself, turn it off. You can sync the traditional way and then re-enable iCloud Music. It's annoying but I guess they really want to push people to use iCloud stuff exclusively. Plus I guess it makes sense to make it the default on new phones, since the old option assumes you have a separate device you sync from and that probably isn't the case for a large portion of iPhone buyers.

Minidust fucked around with this message at 14:58 on Sep 28, 2015

# ¿ Sep 28, 2015 14:56

Minidust: Nov 4, 2009; Keep bustin'

Yeah that's really dumb. In desktop iTunes, you can view a separate section for compilations, but they still show up at the bottom in the standard Album view. No idea why they didn't do it that way for the Music app.

# ¿ Sep 28, 2015 16:39

Minidust: Nov 4, 2009; Keep bustin'

I just noticed that my computer (Windows 7) has 32 GB of temp files in the iTunes folder (C:\Users\<Name>\Music\iTunes). However, I have the actual media library on an external drive - complete with the "Automatically Add to iTunes" folder and everything.

The files are all sequentially numbered as "iT 1.tmp," "iT 2.tmp," etc., all the way through "iT 597.tmp". It is safe to delete these? Lately I've been doing lossless rips of several hundred CDs and replacing the mp3 versions - might it have something to do with that?

The library file is in there too, and I know that should be left alone. But again, I am 100% sure that my actual media lives in a completely separate location.

My end goal is to start including the folder with the library files in my weekly backup. But I'd like to avoid an extra 32GB if I can help it!

Minidust fucked around with this message at 17:17 on Oct 22, 2015

# ¿ Oct 22, 2015 17:13

Minidust: Nov 4, 2009; Keep bustin'

chocolateTHUNDER posted:

I had this happen to me once. Deleting those temp files is fine, but iTunes just kept reproducing them until I was in the same situation. I never did solve the problem, and I built a new PC with iTunes and it never happened again (this was in like 2007 or something).

So basically yeah you can delete them, but they'll come back

How strange. Thanks!

# ¿ Oct 22, 2015 17:56

Minidust: Nov 4, 2009; Keep bustin'

BigRed0427 posted:

Is Beats 1 radio part of Apple Music or is it free?

It's free. Even if you hide Apple Music in the iTunes preferences, you'll get Beats on top of the "Radio" tab.

# ¿ Nov 3, 2015 15:39

Minidust: Nov 4, 2009; Keep bustin'

To re-enable traditional syncing, you must disable "iCloud Music Library" on both the phone and iTunes. You can then manage whatever is locally stored on your phone like you used to.

This will "downgrade" Apple Music a bit. You can still search for and play individual albums, but can no longer add them to "My Music" and integrate them with your library. This may or may not annoy you, depending on what you wanted out of the service.

I respect the idea behind apple music, and get what they're going for - blurring the line between your own files and the vast Apple Music library, through mandatory cloud integration. It's just not for me, as I have a real collector's mentality with my music as of late. So that line they're blurring is not one I care to have blurred.

# ¿ Nov 3, 2015 19:20

Minidust: Nov 4, 2009; Keep bustin'

binarysmurf posted:

I understand that iTunes stores album artwork separately from the m4a file. In the event I shift my music to an Android device I assume that my album artwork won't migrate?

Is there a way to embed artwork into the m4a file so I can migrate out of the Apple ecosystem and still have artwork? There's software called CoverScout that claims to do this, but it's $US30.

Input appreciated.

Any art that hasn't been automatically populated by iTunes won't be an issue. Otherwise, just add it manually (paste in the "Get Info" window or use an external program like MP3tag), at which point the art is embedded in the file and you're good to go.

For purchased music, just to be sure, I like to copy the art from "Get Info," delete the art, and manually re-add it.

There's no real special formatting to worry about. You can just copy any old web page JPG or whatever is available.

Minidust fucked around with this message at 21:36 on Dec 7, 2015

# ¿ Dec 7, 2015 21:33

Minidust: Nov 4, 2009; Keep bustin'

Escobarbarian posted:

Is there any way to transfer music to my phone from iTunes when iCloud Music Library is enabled without having to disable iCloud Music Library and redownload everything it's deleted? I would like to put some songs onto my phone that are not available on Apple Music.

I was under the impression that iCloud Music Library automatically matched up the music on your phone and desktop, in the style of iTunes match. It matches stuff on your computer to Apple Music, or uploads tracks that aren't on the service for your own personal access, as long as your library is under 25,000 tracks total (which I'm assuming yours is, if you're using iCloud Music Library in the first place). Is that not the case? Like, you lose traditional syncing, but it becomes moot because your entire library is available for streaming on your phone.

Minidust fucked around with this message at 15:18 on Mar 15, 2016

# ¿ Mar 15, 2016 15:16

Minidust: Nov 4, 2009; Keep bustin'

Escobarbarian posted:

I've never synced music from iTunes. I just drag and drop the songs onto my phone in the program, but now I can't even do that. That's what I want to be able to do.

For that, you'll have to disable iCloud Music Library on both the device and iTunes itself. If you've been using Apple Music, its functionality will now be limited to searching and streaming discrete content, since there's no unified library to "Add Music" to.

# ¿ Mar 22, 2016 18:20

Minidust: Nov 4, 2009; Keep bustin'

Mordecai Sanchez posted:

Is there anyway to change the "Recently Added" layout they introduced in the latest iTunes? The old version had all my recently added songs in a long top-to-bottom chronological order playlist. But now it just shows the album art and if I play an album, it stops once that album finishes instead of going into he next. The rest of my library (artists, albums, songs) is listed in chronological order without album covers but I can't figure out how to change it for recently added...

you could always just add the "Date Added" column in the default songs view, and then sort by that. Not sure about Mac iTunes, but I think the Windows version achieves what you're looking for through that method.

# ¿ Aug 19, 2016 02:33

Minidust: Nov 4, 2009; Keep bustin'

Is "Automatically Add to iTunes" completely bugged for anyone else? When I put tracks in there, I'll get anywhere from 3 to 8 copies of it showing up in the library, and the actual files aren't getting moved into library folders. I've made sure "Keep iTunes Media folder organized" is still checked. I've been able to use this for literally thousands of albums so I'm assuming it's a problem with the new update (Windows 10).

# ¿ Nov 2, 2016 14:54

Minidust: Nov 4, 2009; Keep bustin'

Minidust posted:

Is "Automatically Add to iTunes" completely bugged for anyone else? When I put tracks in there, I'll get anywhere from 3 to 8 copies of it showing up in the library, and the actual files aren't getting moved into library folders. I've made sure "Keep iTunes Media folder organized" is still checked. I've been able to use this for literally thousands of albums so I'm assuming it's a problem with the new update (Windows 10).

Schpyder posted:

Automatically add seems to work fine for me, but I can't even do it now, thanks to having the iTunes Match crashing bug, where any time iTunes tries to match a new track it crashes in about 30 seconds. I hope they fix this soon, it only got introduced in the release a week or so ago, and yesterday's update didn't fix it.

Figured out my original problem. Turns out this had to do with user permissions / administrative privileges and all that fun Windows jazz. I think I messed with some folder sharing when going over some media server stuff recently... not positive, but if so that's probably what did it. Or maybe the newest version of iTunes is overly polite with that stuff? Anyway, I've found that if I now start iTunes as an administrator, the "Automatically Add" folder behaves like it used to.

So that weird behavior before was just iTunes seeing stuff in the "Automatically Add" folder... trying to create a new album folder but being denied the permission... adding the stuff to the library anyway, without moving it (because the folder it wants to move it to can't be created)... then, since the stuff is still sitting in the "Automatically Add" folder, it gets added to the library again and again.

Minidust fucked around with this message at 15:18 on Nov 4, 2016

# ¿ Nov 4, 2016 15:15

Minidust: Nov 4, 2009; Keep bustin'

Fart.Bleed.Repeat. posted:

Yes I am reading reading reading and playing around w iTunes and having a few questions about the flow of stuff, especially automation, and how it compares to the Zune software that i'm a bit more familiar with. I have a fairly large library, 500gb or more, mainly accumulated from years of radio DJing. It's all pretty meticulous in folders (d:\music\albumartist - album\artist - title.mp3 for example), and tags and artwork are also about 97% complete. I would very much prefer to keep it in this sort of a structure, since I may use one of several programs to access this depending on task, and being able to find a particular track is a must for editors and Audition, etc. I also still have and use a 80gb Zune- I treat the zune software the same. Because of size, both programs are set for manual syncing, I am OK with this

With the zune software, they're very big on monitoring folders. I can set a monitored folder as d:\music, and when I move folders in there, it updates in the software. If I edit tags on something existing, it updates in the software.
Is this what the "itunes media folder location" option is? Currently set as c:\users\me\music\itunes\itunes media this folder also contains some folders (automatic add to itunes, downloads)

Just tried changing that option to d:\music and it doesnt seem to auto add items i drop into d:\music

My library stays pretty static, so if the answer is "put poo poo where i want it and then rescan", then I can be fine w that for itunes

Am I doing this wrong?

On the playback side of things, I don't have a real pref between the i and Z programs(once things are organized obviously), but I'm also just as likely to navigate to a folder and right click->play in winamp. I'm not so much concerned about playing, I'm open to playlists and smart views and all that and am pretty confident I can find my way around that

iTunes won't automatically display tag edits you make with an outside program, but once you actually play the track in iTunes you'll see the change. Conversely you can edit a tag in iTunes itself and see the change immediately.

Auto-adding stuff is exclusively a function of that "Automatically Add to iTunes" folder you mentioned. Anything you place in that folder will show up in the iTunes library immediately with tags intact.

There's an option to allow iTunes to manage your files, which I like to use. This affects things like filename and directory structure. So like, if you edit the name of an album in iTunes, the actual folder containing the music files gets renamed too.

If you care about your tags/metadata, stay far away from Apple Music (the subscription service). It has a habit of bulldozing album art to match whatever's on their cloud servers (often with strange choices from left-field compilation covers). But iTunes itself won't take liberties with your metadata, unless you ask it to find missing album art.

# ¿ Nov 11, 2016 15:33

Minidust: Nov 4, 2009; Keep bustin'

Fart.Bleed.Repeat. posted:

Do folders/files put into this dump folder then get moved to the general itunes media folder, or do they sit in the auto add folder?

They get moved for sure if you're letting iTunes keep the files organized. The files show up in folders based on your album artist (or a "compilations" folder if the album is tagged as such) and album title tags.

I've had iTunes managing the files from the start so I'm not sure what happens without that option checked. Maybe it still creates the folders but won't rename things based on future tag edits you make in iTunes.

# ¿ Nov 11, 2016 16:10

Minidust: Nov 4, 2009; Keep bustin'

Are there any price-tracking resources for media in the iTunes store? I know about AppShopper for apps, but I was wondering about music (and I guess movies/etc).
Do they just never really have sales outside of the occasional "Essential Summer Albums for $6.99" kind of deal?

# ¿ May 11, 2017 21:05

Minidust: Nov 4, 2009; Keep bustin'

TACD posted:

I've cleaned out all my music from iTunes and starting importing only stuff I actually listen to after cleaning up the tags, and I've already hit a problem. Does anybody know what causes a compilation album to appear under the 'Compilations' heading in iTunes, like so?

It's not the 'Compilation' checkbox under song info, because I have a whole lot of other albums that are marked as such (and are sorted under 'Compilations' in the filesystem) but don't appear under the heading:

It's not having the 'Artist' field set to 'Various Artists', or (as far as I can tell) having any of the 'sort as' fields set, or any of the ID3 tags iTunes doesn't display. What the gently caress does it take to get this program to behave?

Hmm, so you have albums with the Compilation checkbox that [I]don't]/I] show up under the Compilations heading in iTunes album view? That seems odd. As far as I can tell, that checkbox get prioritized over the Album Artist field (i.e. an album with specific Album Artist metadata will still get pulled into Compilations if it has the checkbox checked).

Are your albums properly displaying with all their tracks together at least? It's a common tagging problem to have a compilation incorrectly split into like a separate album for each track, but it sounds like you're past that.

# ¿ Sep 18, 2017 20:39

Minidust: Nov 4, 2009; Keep bustin'

I haven't tried wifi syncing in years, has it gotten any better? I've gotten more finicky with my playlists lately, so it'd be nice if I could just sync changes overnight without going near my computer.

# ¿ Mar 2, 2018 20:37

Minidust: Nov 4, 2009; Keep bustin'

necrobobsledder posted:

I've been using wifi sync on and off because I have a central iTunes library on a virtualized server and until somebody did something in maybe iOS 11 wi-fi sync really actually mean wi-fi sync - it would only work through wi-fi network devices. I know this because wi-fi sync wouldn't discover my iTunes server for years and didn't know about the wi-fi restriction, so I bought a USB wi-fi adapter... and before I installed it, wi-fi sync started working. That was about the time iOS 11 came out and after I updated iOS and iTunes I was able to get wi-fi sync going. So now I can use my VPN to sync from my home machine rather than iTunes Music.

This almost makes me want to try it but I just remembered that my server is technically on my router's "5G" network. I guess I could try switching which network my phone is on but ehhhh I'll probably continue to be a cable-using dinosaur. But thanks for sharing

Goober Peas posted:

I keep waiting for Apple to throw in the towel on iTunes. They've done nothing but consistently make it worse as time passes.

I guess I'm the minority but I still get a lot of use out of it. Even on PC! iTunes + iPhone Remote app + 3 Apple TVs = low effort house party... I love how easy it is to just add Apple TVs as extra playback devices.

# ¿ Mar 19, 2018 16:39

Minidust: Nov 4, 2009; Keep bustin'

iTunes's ability to toggle multiple broadcast targets (e.g. the original computer and 2 Apple TVs) is really neat. Are there any other Apple products that do this?

Or what about products that at least support the receiving end - I know about Apple TVs obviously, I believe there's one of the Airport products too, anything else?

# ¿ Apr 12, 2018 17:50

Minidust: Nov 4, 2009; Keep bustin'

Chris Knight posted:

Check your id tags?

this, and it's often something less obvious, like some songs having the "total tracks" tag (i.e track "1 of 13") and some not.

# ¿ Jun 3, 2018 05:20

Minidust: Nov 4, 2009; Keep bustin'

Maybe old news, but I see that iTunes is in the official Windows store now. Mostly looks and behaves like the standard desktop version, but you get one of those little Windows 10 corner notifications when a new song starts. The onscreen volume overlay doesn't include the current song/play controls like with some other store apps (mostly a thing for laptops I guess) but that's no biggie. I dig it.

# ¿ Sep 7, 2018 14:57

Minidust: Nov 4, 2009; Keep bustin'

Rick posted:

From Apple, you have to read the iTunes download page and click "other versions" to find the x86 version now so this is going to funnel a few people to the Windows store, as well.

Yeah exactly, you have to go slightly out of your way to not get the windows store version in this case. Right now I�ve got the x86 running on my desktop/server and the store version on my laptop and it�s working out alright.

I�ve never bought a music video on iTunes before but there�s an old song I want that isn�t available in any other format. I�m thinking I�ll buy the video and just use that to get the audio. Are there a lot of hoops to jump through for that these days, or is the current video format/container/etc fairly easy to work with?

This article would suggest it�s quite easy with a built-in iTunes function, but not sure if the info is still current.

# ¿ Oct 13, 2018 12:24

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# ¿ May 15, 2024 07:06

Minidust: Nov 4, 2009; Keep bustin'

Is playlist shuffling borked for anyone else or is it just me? I have a pretty expansive Christmas playlist and it's been sticking to songs from like 3 albums exclusively. Re-shuffling doesn't seem to change this behavior. Even if I try clicking a different song manually and letting it shuffle through the rest, it goes back to those 3 "preferred" albums.

It's still "shuffling" in the technical sense as nothing is playing in proper album order, but it just doesn't stray from what appears to be its favorite albums now. Very strange. Wondering if the last update messed something up.

# ¿ Dec 24, 2018 20:16

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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