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

tuyop: Sep 15, 2006; Every second that we're not growing BASIL is a second wasted; Fun Shoe

I have a question about iTunes Match. Sorry if there's an FAQ somewhere.

I've been wondering how much control I have over what stays on my phone.

I just made a smart playlist of checked songs. Does itunes match let me sync that playlist up and maintain all of my other playlists? How do I keep songs from being automatically removed from my device?

Can I still manage everything using checks, but have access to all the other songs in my library in case I want them?

# ¿ Jan 22, 2012 17:10

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# ¿ Apr 27, 2024 17:43

tuyop: Sep 15, 2006; Every second that we're not growing BASIL is a second wasted; Fun Shoe

Toe Rag posted:

I've never used the checks in iTunes for anything, so maybe they behave differently, but in my experience, all your music is deleted from your phone, and the library is replaced with a "list" of what is in iTunes Match/iCloud. The playlist you're referring to will be on there, but I find playlists on iPhones to be pretty worthless.

Don't you tap those playlists or songs to store them locally? I don't want to have to use 3mb of data every time I listen to a song.

I guess I mean that I'd like to store my checked songs locally. And I use the playlists on my phone because I have like 90gb of music and only 32gb on my phone...

# ¿ Jan 22, 2012 17:42

tuyop: Sep 15, 2006; Every second that we're not growing BASIL is a second wasted; Fun Shoe

WithoutTheFezOn posted:

When you enable iTunes match on your device, it will erase all the music currently on that device.

iTunes Match doesn't work with Smart Playlists that reference other playlists.

As to downloading every time, here's how it works on my iPad:

In the Music app, I'll tap the Playlists button, which shows all the playlists iCloud knows about. When I tap a playlist, the screen changes to show all the songs in that playlist. To the right of each song, there is a cloud icon. Tapping that downloads the song (and removes the cloud icon). At the bottom of the screen there is a "Download all" button, which does what it says.

The songs of the playlist now reside on my iPad. How long they'll stay there, I don't know. At least a few weeks, if I don't download any more songs. I assume it's tied to the amount of free memory somehow, but that's just a guess.

Once downloaded, there is nothing on the playlist screen that shows it's downloaded. However, in the Album view, if all songs from an album are downloaded there will be no cloud icon by the album name.

But, if you go into Settings - Music, there is a slider labelled "Show All Music". If you toggle it off, the Music app will only display music that's loaded onto your device -- except for the playlists. It'll still show all your iCloud playlists. In Song, Artist, or Album view, it'll only show what's loaded on your device.

Clear as mud?

Yeah thanks, it doesn't sound like a service that really does what I want. I think I'll pass.

# ¿ Jan 22, 2012 19:23

tuyop: Sep 15, 2006; Every second that we're not growing BASIL is a second wasted; Fun Shoe

Packard Goose posted:

This doesn't make sense. How do I get songs from my computer to the iPod/Phone if it isn't in the itunes library? You can't drag and drop songs to the iPhone.

iPhone or iPod classic?

Here are the steps you should follow in your case.

1. Backup your media to your external drive.

2. Get iTunes.

3. In iTunes, file>add folder to library. Add the perfected folder.

4. Check to make sure the metadata is to your liking.

5. Sync your iPod with that iTunes. Ensure that you uncheck "sync automatically" and even "open iTunes when plugged in" in the syncing menu. This gives you the control you want.

6. Enjoy your music.

I don't understand your concern. iTunes will only change file names if you tell it to, and why do you care about file names at all? The whole idea is to let iTunes organize the whole mess and put it on your devices in a pleasing manner. I haven't looked at my music folder with ~160gb in it in years, iTunes has it covered.

# ¿ Jan 30, 2012 15:08

tuyop: Sep 15, 2006; Every second that we're not growing BASIL is a second wasted; Fun Shoe

Packard Goose posted:

I think it does. I know that when looking in my music folder it lists album, artist, song title, even year which is why I'm so confused as to why itunes says over 100 songs are 'unknown album.'

I guess I can try re-adding everything again, but if I do that I'll have to delete something like 440 duplicate songs because I can't seem to find where I have a playlist or whatever causing duplicates.

Is it a good idea to set iTunes to convert everything to AAC or whatever as well?

Wow you're having a terrible iTunes experience.

I don't know what the benefit of converting to AAC is.

# ¿ Jan 31, 2012 00:18

tuyop: Sep 15, 2006; Every second that we're not growing BASIL is a second wasted; Fun Shoe

withak posted:

Isn't the convert option for transferring stuff to an iPhone/iPod? I think it keeps the stuff on your computer intact but puts a lower bitrate AAC file on the device to save space.

I tried it once on a friend's ipod nano because he was out of space, the AAC files were like 10% larger than his original MP3s. It may be because he had super low-quality mp3s on there and iTunes somehow upscaled them, but converting to AAC didn't seem to save him any space at all.

# ¿ Jan 31, 2012 11:09

tuyop: Sep 15, 2006; Every second that we're not growing BASIL is a second wasted; Fun Shoe

Not exactly related to iTunes, but is there any way to send my girlfriend our itunes library (140gb) without actually sending her a portable harddrive in the mail?

I think that there are three problems and I'm pretty close to just doing the portable harddrive thing:
1. The first problem is the fact that it's nearly 30 000 files, somehow, and I don't want to compress it because then the music will sound terrible.
2. The second is the size, obviously. I can't find a free hosting solution for a 140gb file.
3. Even if I can solve 1. and 2., there's the problem of upload speed. My ISP seems to top out at .3mbps up. That means that a 140gb file will take about 324 days to upload, if my arts-degree math is at all correct and it holds top speed the whole time.

The other option is DVDs, but that's 29 DVDs I'd rather not meticulously burn, while somehow splitting the whole library perfectly into 29 4.7gb chunks, then paying shipping on a literal stack of DVDs.

Am I missing something here? Has anyone sent 140gb of data over the internet before?

# ¿ Jun 5, 2012 00:55

tuyop: Sep 15, 2006; Every second that we're not growing BASIL is a second wasted; Fun Shoe

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.

# ¿ Mar 15, 2014 17:32

tuyop: Sep 15, 2006; Every second that we're not growing BASIL is a second wasted; Fun Shoe

IUG posted:

Yeah, by making it an "AND" statement, it's only including songs that show in both of those playlists. You need tell it to look in either playlist.

Oh, that makes perfect sense. Thanks!

# ¿ Mar 15, 2014 20:23

tuyop: Sep 15, 2006; Every second that we're not growing BASIL is a second wasted; Fun Shoe

Thwomp posted:

Can someone tell me I'm not crazy in that iTunes just won't update via the Apple Software Update (or that it's already updated but the ASU just shits the bed when trying to see its updated)?

Windows 7 for reference.

Yeah the last couple of updates have been like that for me as well. I haven't been able to download the iOS updates either.

# ¿ Mar 17, 2014 14:22

tuyop: Sep 15, 2006; Every second that we're not growing BASIL is a second wasted; Fun Shoe

So, Windows 7, latest iTunes, I bought an album last week and now I've got duplicate songs on my iPhone but not in the music library on iTunes. I originally downloaded the album through iTunes on the phone, so maybe it messed stuff up? I manually deleted the duplicates within the phone but now it looks like this:

That's in the phone menu>on this device>music. It's just really weird and I don't know why some of the songs have no modified date, some have no plays despite being played, and some have that empty circle thing. Is this a known issue and how do I fix it?

# ¿ Feb 3, 2015 00:41

tuyop: Sep 15, 2006; Every second that we're not growing BASIL is a second wasted; Fun Shoe

IUG posted:

Plus Apple was the first major HD based mp3 player. They probably got a lot more attention than any before them, when it was just SD card based mp3 players. They were portable, mass storage, affordable hard drives made to be filled with mp3s.

Also back when other solutions were much less convenient. It's nothing now to copy music onto a flash drive and pop it in your friend's computer, or share a dropbox folder full of gigs of music or just tell your friend to torrent an album, but back when the iPod was king, having a portable HDD with that much music on it would have made piracy much more convenient. Kind of like if cassette tapes ever held hundreds or thousands of songs, the recording industry may have had a problem with sharing mix tapes.

# ¿ Feb 25, 2015 01:22

tuyop: Sep 15, 2006; Every second that we're not growing BASIL is a second wasted; Fun Shoe

The Modern Leper posted:

It sounds like iTunes servers (along with other Apple internet services) are currently down. When I try to open iTunes, the program freezes when it tries to access the iTunes store, which means that I can't play my local songs until the online situation is resolved. What a ridiculous program.

Yup, down for me too.

# ¿ Mar 11, 2015 13:43

tuyop: Sep 15, 2006; Every second that we're not growing BASIL is a second wasted; Fun Shoe

If I create a new itunes library on my local drive for streaming, and one on my external hard drive for local media (but same laptop), can I log into Apple Music and everything in both libraries?

# ¿ Sep 21, 2016 23:35

tuyop: Sep 15, 2006; Every second that we're not growing BASIL is a second wasted; Fun Shoe

This is weird, I'm on a Mac. I keep my iTunes in an NAS. The library, media, all of it in the same folder. It's been working well forever but now it doesn't have a library file anymore. I see:

ITunes Library Extras.itdb
ITunes Library Genius.itdb
ITunes Library.xml
ITunes Music Library.xml

Then twelve "temp file x.tmp"

But no .itl files. What gives? Can I use any of these other files to rebuild it?

I also have a folder of Previous iTunes Libraries, but the most recent one of those is October 2018 so I'd rather not restore one of those.

# ¿ Mar 3, 2020 00:32

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# ¿ Apr 27, 2024 17:43

tuyop: Sep 15, 2006; Every second that we're not growing BASIL is a second wasted; Fun Shoe

astr0man posted:

Are you on catalina? The library file should be called something like "Music Library.musiclibrary" now. When they switched the branding stuff from itunes to music.app the library file format changed too.

Nah, Mojave.

# ¿ Mar 3, 2020 01:27

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