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iTunes Has Slowly Destroyed My Will to Collect Music

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Re: iTunes Has Slowly Destroyed My Will to Collect Music

#41

Post by Bartweiss »

zyxley wrote: post #32
kitschpatrol wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've found Swinsian to be a viable alternative: http://swinsian.com

No file organization? Having the files automatically organized when the metadata is updated is literally the entire reason I've stuck with iTunes so far.

My experience is that iTunes can't handle anything but perfectly neat metadata about album versions of songs. Every time I've fed it live music, or alternate takes, or anything else weird, it's choked so badly that I ended up wishing for no organization.

Re: iTunes Has Slowly Destroyed My Will to Collect Music

#42

Post by nickbauman »

rocky1138 wrote: post #35

I hate to be rude but this author is a dumbass. In big bold letters he has "On a basic level, I don’t have a music collection anymore because Apple made it too hard and frustrating to maintain one." when instead it should read "I didn't take care of my own music library and instead left it to a third party who didn't do what was in my interest."

Technically Apple is a 2nd party with lipservice toward being a third party. Much of iTunes content comes to users through Apple.

Re: iTunes Has Slowly Destroyed My Will to Collect Music

#43

Post by vlunkr »

wiredfool wrote: post #3

From what I've seen of iTunes ability to keep album art that I've added or automatically download ones I'm missing, there's no way in hell that I'd let it match my music collection. Some of the cover art is ok, some is meh (special edition banners), and some is in the WTF range (one zydeco album especially). Not that I have that much that's not mainstream, but I'm kind of particular about the stuff that's in there.

If you're looking for something to organize, tag, and locate album art I recommend musicbrainz. They have an app for osx. It's not incredibly intuitive at first but I'm currently cleaning my collection up with it

Re: iTunes Has Slowly Destroyed My Will to Collect Music

#45

Post by arielweisberg »

I dislike iTunes as well as the built in music player on my iPhone just due the bad UI and some difficulty downloading songs to my phone. I also use it with iTunes match for all my music and I listen many hours a day and do curate my collection with it.

It's not perfect, but it's not exactly clubbing baby seals. It's always respected my metadata changes even when things start out wrong. I think I got boned a few times when match mixed up explicit/non-explicit versions, but that is it.

I still very much enjoy collecting music and I don't think iTunes is getting in the way of that. I really have to wonder what the author did to delete their entire collection in iTunes? That isn't a thing that is supposed to happen easily on desktop. The stuff I have synced with iTunes match is even harder to delete and there is warning when you try to delete the cloud copy.

On phones yeah it's just a brain dead disaster with multiple ways to have it wipe.

Re: iTunes Has Slowly Destroyed My Will to Collect Music

#46

Post by careersuicide »

I dunno. Reading this I can't help but feel like maybe the author is doing it wrong? I'm going to be charitable and admit that Apple has made iTunes incredibly difficult to use effectively, especially since the store is awful and they really, really push the iTunes store on you. That the interface is so slow and inconsistent doesn't help either.

My advice to anyone who has any desire to use iTunes is: acquire your music from elsewhere as actual mp3 files, tag them using something like Mp3tag[0] and then drag and drop them into iTunes. Make sure you check the "Keep iTunes Media folder organized" and "Copy files to iTunes Media folder when adding to library" options in the advanced settings. The only control you're really giving up then is the exact naming scheme of the files in the folder. But "/Artist Name/Album Name/01 Song Title.mp3" is a pretty sane convention in my opinion. I have close to 18,000 albums in my iTunes library that I've added this way over the last decade and a half. It works pretty well and I have no problem reasoning about what music I have.

I totally agree with his complaints about Apple Music though, it's pretty inscrutable. But I wrote my own music streaming server with Sinatra and iOS app to go with it so I always have access to whatever is stored on my hard drive at home in a way that makes sense to me. If I'm not at home that's what I'd rather do, no syncing or anything weird.

0: http://www.mp3tag.de/en/

Re: iTunes Has Slowly Destroyed My Will to Collect Music

#47

Post by Bartweiss »

ThomPete wrote: post #19

When I was a young teenager in the early nineties I dreamt about having all the worlds music available to me via the internet. This is more or less the reality today. Access beats ownership anyway IMO.

I'm sympathetic to this (well, if I trusted access to continue uninterrupted and offline), but for me we're nowhere near there yet.

Anyone with sufficiently unusual music tastes can't possibly get their content via 'access'. And that's not a high bar - even tame interests like EDM, jam, or jazz are completely unsolved via access in my experience.

Re: iTunes Has Slowly Destroyed My Will to Collect Music

#48

Post by Bartweiss »

careersuicide wrote: post #46

I dunno. Reading this I can't help but feel like maybe the author is doing it wrong? I'm going to be charitable and admit that Apple has made iTunes incredibly difficult to use effectively, especially since the store is awful and they really, really push the iTunes store on you. That the interface is so slow and inconsistent doesn't help either. My advice to anyone who has any desire to use iTunes is: acquire your mu…

I would definitely argue that "make sure you have these advanced settings configured or you're screwed" is a sign of hostile software. I'm totally unwilling to use iTunes or Apple Music for my collection.

That said, if you're particular about your music collection, it's basically always going to take some curation. Giving up because Apple didn't make that easy isn't entirely Apple's fault.

Re: iTunes Has Slowly Destroyed My Will to Collect Music

#49

Post by nekopa »

ThomPete wrote: post #19

When I was a young teenager in the early nineties I dreamt about having all the worlds music available to me via the internet. This is more or less the reality today. Access beats ownership anyway IMO.

I don't understand why you say access beats ownership.

Do you think this only about music? Or books? Or movies?

If so, do you apply it to other things in your life? Do you own a car, or do you only rent? How about your home? Is it better to rent, or buy a place to live? Clothes? Why buy a pair of jeans, when you could pay a monthly fee to have new jeans delivered to your house and return the (month) old ones?

For me, IMO, I would rather own my music, books and house, but rent my car and clothes.

Because access is something that can be cut off or denied.

And at the end of the day, as long as I can walk naked to my home listening to music and reading, I will always be happy.

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