Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

iTunes Has Slowly Destroyed My Will to Collect Music

slate.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 114 posts

Re: iTunes Has Slowly Destroyed My Will to Collect Music

#51

Post by Bartweiss »

ThomPete wrote: post #27
UVB-76 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of people repeating that line will change their tune when Spotify finally goes out of business in a couple of years time.

Streaming Music in the cloud is not going anywhere. Not sure why that would change that? There have never been as much access to music as there is today. It's a good thing.

Price conflicts. The streaming system is obviously worthwhile, but we haven't negotiated a price point where users, streamers, and artists are all willing to play ball.

At the moment, it seems like someone always has to take a loss, and the rationalization might be ugly.

Re: iTunes Has Slowly Destroyed My Will to Collect Music

#52

Post by jjuel »

bsder wrote: post #50
Cozumel wrote: post #14

Someone has to say it: why do people keep using it? If it's not doing the job it's supposed too, or worse, actively deleting your music it's time to scrap it!

Because iTunes is the only way to get stuff onto your iPod/iPhone.

Not entirely true. I have been using Winamp to load my iPod for a few years now. Yes Winamp is still around and it still whips the llamas a.

Re: iTunes Has Slowly Destroyed My Will to Collect Music

#53

Post by sethhochberg »

Bartweiss wrote: post #41
zyxley wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Agreed, for a lot of people "no organization" is a feature unto itself. iTunes is famous for mangling already cleanly-organized collections of folders on disk, etc.

Re: iTunes Has Slowly Destroyed My Will to Collect Music

#55

Post by pdwetz »

vlunkr wrote: post #43
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

They also have an API that you can use if you're programmatically inclined to automate the process. It does have limits, so be mindful of including delays between requests.

http://musicbrainz.org/doc/Development

Re: iTunes Has Slowly Destroyed My Will to Collect Music

#56

Post by bad_user »

nickbauman wrote: post #39

Golden rule of owning your own (purchased or created) content: only use 3rd party content organization applications. I don't use iTunes for my music. I don't buy things from amazon for my kindle. Regarding UX: iTunes is proof that bad UX doesn't matter as much as "location". Users somehow figure out how to use apps if they matter enough to them.

The other golden rule of owning: never buy DRM-enabled content, even if you can break it, because doing so only encourages the actors pushing for DRM.

And bought content needs backup.

Re: iTunes Has Slowly Destroyed My Will to Collect Music

#57

Post by mayneack »

UVB-76 wrote: post #17
Cozumel wrote: post #14

Someone has to say it: why do people keep using it? If it's not doing the job it's supposed too, or worse, actively deleting your music it's time to scrap it!

There's still nothing better than iTunes, at least on OS X. It's the best of a bad bunch.

In the "don't delete my music" category - google music is pretty good. You can upload your files without deleting them and then stream from web or mobile app. I haven't tried playing offline from the browser, but caching on my phone is fine.

Re: iTunes Has Slowly Destroyed My Will to Collect Music

#58

Post by mulletbum »

UVB-76 wrote: post #17
Cozumel wrote: post #14

Someone has to say it: why do people keep using it? If it's not doing the job it's supposed too, or worse, actively deleting your music it's time to scrap it!

There's still nothing better than iTunes, at least on OS X. It's the best of a bad bunch.

I wish Plex would finish what they started.

Re: iTunes Has Slowly Destroyed My Will to Collect Music

#59

Post by billforsternz »

dave2000 wrote: post #26
sondr3 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Has it gotten better at tagging classical music? I used it for a while a year or two ago and back then it was pretty bad for tagging classical music.

I tag everything the same way, no matter what I use to listen to the music, the OS I use, tag app, music source etc. Just Artist, Album, and track number. Clear all the other fields. For classical, I appreciate that there can be different labels releasing different masterings of the same recording, or different conductors of the same piece, or a given conductor conducting the same piece with different orchestras etc…

Very sensible advice I think. Your system insulates you from things outside your control.

Re: iTunes Has Slowly Destroyed My Will to Collect Music

#60

Post by Fuxy »

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…

My recommendation would be to not use Apple but if you can't do that for whatever reason running your own Plex media server at home and installing the Plex app on your phone should be the next best thing.

I got a freenas box running at home where i keep all my conntent with plex media server running in a jail giving me access to my entrire library anywhere I am without having to worry that some miss click is going to destroy all my hard work.

Owncloud, Plex etc are a great replacement for the mainstream clud based services out there and you have full controll over them.

I would never give up controll over my data for the convenience of the cloud. It feels like gving up one of your findamental rights like the right to free speach to me.

Post reply on HN