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 iTunes gets a bad rap from a lot of people. It's considered bloated, clunky, and a lot of users hate the interface. They're not wrong. However, after a little bit of use, it is actually a powerful music (and to an extent, video) organizer. The problem is that your average iPod wielder doesn't really take the time to learn how to use it, but just spends enough time to get the music from point A to B to C. Since a lot of us use this programs for the iPod, here's a list of some tricks to help you get more use out of iTunes. Managing Music   The first and foremost thing you should do is build up some playlists. Playing music straight from the library can result in repetitive plays, mixing music with non-music tracks, and let newer songs get lost in the (literal) shuffle. The library does have it's use though, even if you're not going to be playing your music directly from it. The browser will let you keep track of particular artist's albums, look at your collection easily. Here you can see a filtered playlist, showing just one album by one artist. You can sort it by "(All Albums)" so you can see everything you have by that artist. A helpful hint is that if you're in a playlist and want to see this info in the library are to use those arrows that are usually for the iTunes Store.  These dots will redirect you to the library with the browser filtering out all of the other info. Clicking on the arrow for the artist while holding option or alt will show you everything in your library by that artist. Doing the same for the album will only show that album. Moving Your Music and Library If you are switching your computers and want to keep your library the way it was, there are one or two things you need to move. First would be the music itself, and the second would be the music library files created by iTunes. This is the music library, with the Artist, and Albums inside of it. Standard iTunes organization.  This is the actual library files. Most of the time your mp3 (or whatever format files) are going to be stored in here.  You have to replace both the folders and the library file itself. The easiest way to do this is to launch your fresh version of iTunes, let it create your new folders, and then replace them. Keep in mind you might run into a problem with your old drive name not being the same as the current. The easiest way to fix this is to use a temporary disk image. If your old drive was called "Tycho" but your new drive is called "Leela", then the library won't be able to find the files using the new location. You should be able to make a temporary disk image with the name of the old drive, and move the music into there (and any temporary folders it was in). Then change the iTunes settings to your new location, and have it consolidate to the final location. You can also export the iTunes library file from within the program by going through the menus:  Playlists These are you friends. Smart Playlists are your best friends. Once you figure out how iTunes can automatically sort music for you, you won't be able to listen to music from the Library again. Especially if you have a large library. First, my favorite playlist I call "3000".  This playlist will take out any song I've listened to in the last few months. Once I listen to a song, it is removed because it automatically sorts music by least recently played. This playlist also only looks at the Music library, so my podcasts and videos won't show up here. Now that I have a larger library, I also have this same playlist, but for 1,000 songs. That would be songs I've listened to even less recently. You can also create other playlists that follow other criteria. For example, rating your songs can be very useful. It'll let you create playlist that are only pulling songs from your favorite songs (say, 4 & 5 star rated songs). An easy way to get yourself in the habit of rating songs is to make another smart playlist.  Here are some albums that I've added recently, and listened to at least 3 times already. I can now go through this playlist, listen to the song, and rate it. Once it's rated, it's removed from this playlist. This will also exclude songs I haven't really listened to enough to actually form an opinion, as well as my non-music tracks. When a song is rated 4 or 5 star, it will automatically show up in my workout playlist. When a song is new, it'll show up in my "New" playlist, because it has less than 3 plays. Useful Keyboard Commands
IUG fucked around with this message at 04:49 on Jan 4, 2015 |
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Dec 2, 2008 00:43
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Just wanted to say thanks for this. I didn't know about Smart Playlists and you gave me quite a few useful ideas. To contribute something, the thing I find most useful for iTunes is this toaster plug-in. It's a little old and I just recently started using it again but I haven't noticed any issues. Edit: nevermind on the toaster. It still works but I guess something is incompatible with newer iTunes versions because it adds about 20 seconds to the opening of iTunes. TangyRaptor fucked around with this message at 03:01 on Dec 2, 2008 |
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Dec 2, 2008 02:32
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I have a love/hate relationship with iTunes. I love it because it's pretty, is the only program guaranteed to work 100% with my iPod, etc. I hate it for almost everything else: proprietary tags, the inability to modify how it arranges your folders, how it deletes files occasionally when you allow it to organize your library for you or ignores random ID3 write commands when you don't, how slow it is, its inability to manage a library that contains more than 50 gb, etc. That said, there were a couple tips and tricks I didn't know about there. I might have to use them now that I'm adding my 300 gb library back into iTunes for the twelfth time. gently caress.
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Dec 2, 2008 03:53
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Frontalot posted:I have a love/hate relationship with iTunes. I love it because it's pretty, is the only program guaranteed to work 100% with my iPod, etc. I hate it for almost everything else: proprietary tags, the inability to modify how it arranges your folders, how it deletes files occasionally when you allow it to organize your library for you or ignores random ID3 write commands when you don't, how slow it is, its inability to manage a library that contains more than 50 gb, etc. I've never manually managed my iTunes library, and I'm all the happier for it - it's never deleted files randomly or anything like that. I don't understand why people have to manually arrange their filesystem - you lock yourself into one way of viewing your data, whereas if you let the program index your music for you, you can sort your music by any number of different criteria. My iTunes library is 90gb, I've never had a problem with iTunes chugging on the database  Another protip - you can create folders that contain playlists, and you can create smart playlists that incorporate data from other playlists. What I like to do is create a folder of smart playlists for my most listened to genres of music, cycle out anything that has been played in the last day, then set my party shuffle to draw off that folder. Voila, now I have Jack FM but with music I actually listen to. Bottom line - iTunes only really works well if you let it take care of managing your music, and only if your music is properly tagged.
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Dec 2, 2008 04:45
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1st AD posted:I've never manually managed my iTunes library, and I'm all the happier for it - it's never deleted files randomly or anything like that. I don't understand why people have to manually arrange their filesystem - you lock yourself into one way of viewing your data, whereas if you let the program index your music for you, you can sort your music by any number of different criteria.
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Dec 2, 2008 04:59
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Is it possible to put all your music on an iPod, delete all of it from your computer, then stream it on to the computer off of the iPod (without copying)? Using the standard software or otherwise?
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Dec 2, 2008 05:25
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Aominux posted:Is it possible to put all your music on an iPod, delete all of it from your computer, then stream it on to the computer off of the iPod (without copying)? Using the standard software or otherwise? Yeah, but then all of your music is on a hard drive that gets tossed around all the time.
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Dec 2, 2008 05:30
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For proper tagging and music cleaning, just look at TuneUp. It's an addon for iTunes that can clean/auto tag poo poo and add album art. It's $20 for a lifetime license, I dropped it after about 5 minutes of using it. Just makes life simpler, if you're lazy.
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Dec 2, 2008 05:39
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Sock on a Fish posted:Yeah, but then all of your music is on a hard drive that gets tossed around all the time. I'm not worried about data loss; I can burn DVD backups or something. I really just want all the music in one simple place and to have that place not be my hard drive.
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Dec 2, 2008 06:02
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1st AD posted:I've never manually managed my iTunes library, and I'm all the happier for it - it's never deleted files randomly or anything like that. I don't understand why people have to manually arrange their filesystem - you lock yourself into one way of viewing your data, whereas if you let the program index your music for you, you can sort your music by any number of different criteria. Not if you're using an external hard drive on OS X. Believe me, I've tried every way I can think of, and not letting it manage files is the best way I've found for my workflow (which is: new music sits for a holding period on my internal hard drive so I'm forced to listen to it, then I batch move all of that over to the external with MediaRage). Way 1: Let iTunes handle poo poo, set the library to my external hard drive and use smart playlists to listen to new tracks. I've lost files this way. I forgot the exact details, but I double clicked a file when my external wasn't plugged in. I listened to it fine in iTunes, and when I got home iTunes said it was syncing my library back up. Except the song (no, the entire folder it was in) randomly disappeared. Nowhere to be found on my external either. Worse, every other tune somehow pops up missing even when my external is plugged in. I can double click it, sure, and they work fine, but otherwise they're just skipped over. Way 2: Handle poo poo myself. I've never had any file loss with this, but it has a lot of minor annoyances. Whenever I migrate my new music over to my external (I generally do a lot at once), I just readd the entire "Music" folder of my external. This does typically take ten minutes but I can find other things to do. The catch is if any file was marked as missing, it adds a duplicate of the file. That and all the proprietary tags that iTunes does (or even changes in titles from something like Áëπ to ä) get erased. Any way, I'd love to hear if there's some way I'm missing, or if anybody has the same situation as me.
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Dec 2, 2008 06:09
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I think the key to liking iTunes is how anal you are about your metadata.
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Dec 2, 2008 06:22
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iTunes can do a few things at once, like rip from CD, play something, and sync your iPod. The status display shows one thing at a time, and though it tries to flip through the items, sometimes you want to see what's up. In the playback info area with the track name and such, clicking the little circle on the left with a triangle in it will flip through the progress or status of each task. It also brings up an animated frequency graph display. Seems basic, but I have run into people who did not know you can click on the thing. If your tracks are not tagged to your liking, you can do batch edits. Put together a list you want to edit, using regular or smart playlists, or navigating the library. Select multiple tracks with shift-click, then press Control-I on Windows, or Command-I on Mac. It'll ask you if you want to edit multiple items, click Yes. I use it to fix album art for my obscure-rear end albums, change genre labels that were granted by some microcephalic lunatic, and turn compilations that are buried in 'Various Artists' into more accessible albums.
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Dec 2, 2008 06:23
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I've used iTunes with the database on an external hard drive since Mac OS 9 and version 1.0 Make alias of iTunes music folder, point alias at external drive, name appropriate so iTunes can't replace or create a local library since the alias is already there. Never had a problem.
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Dec 2, 2008 06:32
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f#a# posted:Worse, every other tune somehow pops up missing even when my external is plugged in. I can double click it, sure, and they work fine, but otherwise they're just skipped over. If you restart iTunes, all the 'missing' tracks come back if you've remounted the hard drive. Another thing: what filesystem are you using on your external? If it's not journaled HFS+, it really should be. I've found iTunes gets a bit confused if the case insensitivity rules are different, and NTFS or FAT32 doesn't deal with umlauts and such the same way. Also, if it's not getting weird characters properly when you reimport, it's probably because you need to convert the ID3 tags to the newest format before editing the metadata. iTunes doesn't rewrite the tags because it might delete something important, but there's a menu item for converting them.
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Dec 2, 2008 06:36
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Nice thread. I have a couple questions about iTunes that maybe someone around here can shed some light on: 1. If I edit track or album information under the "get info" tab, does this write the new information to the ID3 tags? I assume that it does. 2. Related to (1), if I add album art in iTunes to an album, does it embed it in the tags or only display it in iTunes? 3. Maybe I'm dumb but I'm confused by the sorting options when viewing the library. Example: I'd like to view albums by year, with the most recent first. I can click on the album column to display "album by year" but it doesn't seem to be sorted in a logical way. It starts with a 2003 album, then 1998, 1980, 2003, 2001. I don't get it. 4. Does anyone know how genius actually works? Does it analyze other peoples' libraries for songs that are in the same playlist or songs in the same library? I think I'd like genius more if I had some actual idea how it worked other than "using the power of the cloud, it chooses songs that go great together." Thanks Steve. Tips: You're listening to music but also browsing around your collection - to get back to the currently playing track, click the little leftward-pointing arrowing in the main info box at the top of the screen. There are a lot of scripts out there that can do many useful things. They're free and don't require any technical expertise. http://dougscripts.com/itunes/
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Dec 2, 2008 06:44
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This question isn't exclusive to iTunes users, but how do you guys organize your genres? I tried for a while to get really intricate and precise by using a [Genre] / [Subgenre] format (i.e. "Metal / Groove") but I eventually said gently caress it and now I just have "Rock," "Rap," "Electronic," and "Metal."
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Dec 2, 2008 06:44
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f#a# posted:Not if you're using an external hard drive on OS X. Believe me, I've tried every way I can think of, and not letting it manage files is the best way I've found for my workflow (which is: new music sits for a holding period on my internal hard drive so I'm forced to listen to it, then I batch move all of that over to the external with MediaRage). I use a similar method (holding cell on internal hd, good files "graduate" to the external). I let iTunes handle everything itself, but I always have the "move a copy to the iTunes folder" or whatever checked. That way, when I want to add files to the library, I just use File > Add Folder to Library, or drag-and-drop (no need for whole-sale rescans; wtf?), and delete the internal hd copies. There are usually no missing files this way (see below), unless the external isn't plugged in. The trick is that the "holding cell" files are always played with some other media player (MPC usually). This keeps the iTunes library fairly static and stable; no MIA files or random de-tagging. The downsides have already been noted - idiotic characters and stupid proprietary tags. I am lucky that most of my music falls into the typical Artist - Song scheme, with no mucking about with compilations, live versions, etc.
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Dec 2, 2008 06:46
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thegloaming posted:This question isn't exclusive to iTunes users, but how do you guys organize your genres? I tried for a while to get really intricate and precise by using a [Genre] / [Subgenre] format (i.e. "Metal / Groove") but I eventually said gently caress it and now I just have "Rock," "Rap," "Electronic," and "Metal." I just gave in to the same problem. I've also narrowed mine down to "Rock" "Rap" "Comedy," "Instrumental" and a couple others. It'd be cool if you could keep the main genres but also designate sub-genres. From reading the iTunes support forums it seems there isn't really support for multiple genres, but people suggested using the "comment" field and smart playlists.
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Dec 2, 2008 06:48
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VERTICAL WIPE! posted:1. If I edit track or album information under the "get info" tab, does this write the new information to the ID3 tags? I assume that it does. 1. Yeah, it does. At least, it should. Sometimes it fails and doesn't tell you, usually this is because it the id3 tags are corrupt, if you delete them with another editor it can start working again. 2. This is weird: if you add art specifically to a song it adds it to the tags in the file, but if you use the download from iTunes option it will only put art into a database and not into the file. 3. Album by year sorts by artist then year then album name then disc number then track number then name. If you want to sort everything by year, enable the Year column and sort by that. (Right click on the sort bar, or go to View Options.) Tip: Clicking the sort bars in a specific order (like date added then artist) sorts ties in the last clicked one using the first one's sort. Use that if you want a complex ordering of songs that isn't Album by Date or by Artist. 4. No idea, it's magical. Only Steve and his army of turtlenecked programmers know. One complaint I have about iTunes is that it's pretty dog slow when adding songs to the database. It takes a few minutes of completely locked-up iTunes to add one song. Of course, I have a 400gb library, but still, it could have the decency not to totally lock up. Lots of other things are slow and clicks aren't responsive enough with this much music, but I can't really complain because nothing else can do what iTunes does.
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Dec 2, 2008 07:05
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I got a GOD drat question Why the hell does it take so many loving steps to burn a goddamn CD in iTunes? Every other media organizer I've used has allowed me to either select the songs, right-click, and select Burn CD, or select the songs, right-click, add them to the burn queue, and then burn the CD. Not iTunes! I have to add the songs to a playlist, then open up that playlist, then burn the CD from that playlist! And I can't just right-click on the songs and tell iTunes to create a new playlist from my selection: I have to create a new playlist separately, then add the songs to the playlist, then open the playlist, THEN burn the CD! JESUS H. gently caress WHO DESIGNED THIS loving poo poo Also, is there a way to make iTunes automatically update its library so I don't have to delete and re-add songs whose tags I updated with a program that actually does it properly? THIS INCLUDES alerting me to any songs it can no longer find and giving me the option to either locate them or remove them from the library! Weedle fucked around with this message at 07:20 on Dec 2, 2008 |
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Dec 2, 2008 07:10
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Rock Tumbler posted:JESUS H. gently caress WHO DESIGNED THIS loving poo poo File->New Playlist From Selection
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Dec 2, 2008 07:15
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chimz posted:File->New Playlist From Selection why isn't that in the right-click menu 
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Dec 2, 2008 07:16
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Aominux posted:Are you sure? Do you know if that's true for all models? Someone in the Zune thread said that the Zune can't do this and it's a complete dealbreaker. It would be a huge plus for iPod+iTunes. I know that I used to be able to play the music from my iPod within iTunes, and even if I couldn't, all the songs loaded onto the iPod are just sitting in a hidden directory that you can access when you've got the iPod mounted as a mass storage device. Still, burning a ton of DVDs and keeping that DVD collection updated along with loading new songs on to your iPod seems like a lot of work for little benefit.
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Dec 2, 2008 07:30
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friendship waffle posted:I've used iTunes with the database on an external hard drive since Mac OS 9 and version 1.0
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Dec 2, 2008 07:34
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Sock on a Fish posted:I know that I used to be able to play the music from my iPod within iTunes, and even if I couldn't, all the songs loaded onto the iPod are just sitting in a hidden directory that you can access when you've got the iPod mounted as a mass storage device. A long time ago you could manage your iPod music just like another playlist including dragging music from the iPod to the library, but the music industry decided you couldn't any more. If you set your iPod to 'manually manage', you can still play music from your iPod and drag songs to it. I don't understand why you can't play songs from an automatically synced iPod, it'd be incredibly useful for when I don't have my external hard drive. It's generally a bad idea to have your only copy of your music on your iPod, it's possible but you're likely to be hosed over one way or the other.
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Dec 2, 2008 07:41
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Last time I used iTunes it decided to rewrite the tags on most of my music without asking. I am only 90% sure it was iTunes, but still, what the gently caress? When it didn't recognise the ID3v2.4 tags (because it has awful standards compliance), it simply rewrote them as ID3v2.3 but using the ID3v1 tags, so I've lost my music data on a whole bunch of files  Is there any way to open iTunes in a "read only" mode?
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Dec 2, 2008 10:19
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Rock Tumbler posted:I got a GOD drat question May I suggest that you use MediaMonkey? It's about 9328593258321751398 times better than iTunes, really fast, and easy to use. It also has features to answer all the gripes you have.
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Dec 2, 2008 10:26
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Silvah posted:May I suggest that you use MediaMonkey? It's about 9328593258321751398 times better than iTunes, really fast, and easy to use. It also has features to answer all the gripes you have. Heh, I already do. It's hands-down the best music organizer I've ever used. I'm more bewildered than anything else that iTunes has been around for close to eight years and still sucks this much.
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Dec 2, 2008 10:39
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Guess I'll try Mediamonkey, I'm getting kind of pissed that the "group compilations together" option is checked yet artists in the compilation appear scattered all over. Is there any way to fix this with the Album Artist tag? Or do I have to mark them all as compilations or something? Trying not to give up just yet..
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Dec 2, 2008 11:43
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Having artists from a compilation CD scattered all about pissed me the hell off too. But I was able to get it under control after browsing the iTunes support forums. It seems simple enough but it took me a while to get it right. Here's how I make it work: 1. Album artist should be set to one thing. So for an album of Bob Dylan covers I just set album artist as Bob Dylan and left the artist for each track intact. 2. Under "Get Info" -> "Options," choose "yes" for "part of a compilation." 3. Under the advanced menu of iTunes preferences, choose "group compilations when browsing." This worked for me and there are no longer random artists cluttering up my iTunes/pod.
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Dec 2, 2008 12:43
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Nice thread. I recently somehow lost 30gb of music from my laptop. It's all stored on my ipod, and I've started putting it all back on manually. Is there any way at all I can transfer it it from the ipod to itunes? I don't hold much hope for a solution but if anyone has a solution I'll push some positive energy your way 
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Dec 2, 2008 13:02
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Senuti is a free mac program that will copy music from your ipod to your computer.
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Dec 2, 2008 14:10
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Thanks for this. I started buying all my music off of Amazon (it's DRM free) but I still use iTunes when I'm listening on my computer (and iPod).
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Dec 2, 2008 14:12
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Rock Tumbler posted:Also, is there a way to make iTunes automatically update its library so I don't have to delete and re-add songs whose tags I updated with a program that actually does it properly? THIS INCLUDES alerting me to any songs it can no longer find and giving me the option to either locate them or remove them from the library!
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Dec 2, 2008 15:47
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Rock Tumbler posted:And I can't just right-click on the songs and tell iTunes to create a new playlist from my selection: I have to create a new playlist separately, then add the songs to the playlist
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Dec 2, 2008 15:58
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chimz posted:3. Album by year sorts by artist then year then album name then disc number then track number then name. If you want to sort everything by year, enable the Year column and sort by that. (Right click on the sort bar, or go to View Options.) Tip: Clicking the sort bars in a specific order (like date added then artist) sorts ties in the last clicked one using the first one's sort. Use that if you want a complex ordering of songs that isn't Album by Date or by Artist. Holy crap, you just solved my biggest complaint about how iTunes sorted things. I always wished that you could sort by Artist, then Album based on it's release date. I had no idea this option existed, I figured it would just sort all albums by the Album's name.
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Dec 2, 2008 16:19
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Goldguy27 posted:what? alias it's also called a symbolic link, the functionality is very robust on the mac.
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Dec 2, 2008 17:56
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friendship waffle posted:alias Technically, symbolic links and aliases are different. Should work with either though.
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Dec 2, 2008 18:07
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I think an mac os alias is a type of symbolic link, whereas the unix-style is another type, but that may not be correct.
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Dec 2, 2008 18:22
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| # ? Apr 19, 2024 20:41 |
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 Can anyone tell me why this happens? As far as I can tell the tags are all exactly the same for artist, album, album artist, etc. I have a couple albums like this where everything seems identical, yet it separates them.
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Dec 2, 2008 18:29
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