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

31–40 of 114 posts

Re: iTunes Has Slowly Destroyed My Will to Collect Music

#31

Post by ThomPete »

marssaxman wrote: post #24
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 consider reliability to be a fundamental element of access. If I have music on my hardware, I can always play it. If other people are granting me access to download music from their hardware, I can play it whenever I have access to their hardware, up to the limits of whatever constraints they have chosen to apply to their service, which may include having to spend money or listen to ads. Different people have diffe…

Sure each to their own.

But I believe you will belong to a diminishing group of people who do so and nothing wrong with that.

Re: iTunes Has Slowly Destroyed My Will to Collect Music

#32

Post by zyxley »

kitschpatrol wrote: post #22
UVB-76 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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.

Re: iTunes Has Slowly Destroyed My Will to Collect Music

#33

Post by droopybuns »

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'm very happy with Amazon Music.

Combine it with an amazon cloud storage account and you can sync your library across numerous devices without being locked into any particular platform. It's pretty nice.

Re: iTunes Has Slowly Destroyed My Will to Collect Music

#34

Post by fuzzywalrus »

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.

Its pretty apparent that iTunes does too many things at this point in time: Music (Store / Streaming / Radio / Cloud / subscription ), Movies, Apps, phone management, media player management, and encoder.

Problem is no other applications have access many of these core features Swinsian is nice but I use iTunes Match so I can access my music on phone and I still use an iPod for my car as I find myself in the back country on weekends where cell services is edge at best or simply non-existent.

Re: iTunes Has Slowly Destroyed My Will to Collect Music

#35

Post by rocky1138 »

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."

Re: iTunes Has Slowly Destroyed My Will to Collect Music

#36

Post by wiredfool »

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!

The remote app on ios, and the ability to stream to multiple airport expresses, in sync.

Re: iTunes Has Slowly Destroyed My Will to Collect Music

#37

Post by 6stringmerc »

UVB-76 wrote: post #23
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.

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

Outside of Apple I'm of the opinion Spotify will be the only one that survives as competition. Tidal? Much more likely.

Besides, Spotify is playing ball with the record labels. As numerous articles are indicating though, the RIAA is out for blood on YouTube. That's going to be much more contentious in the future I'd wager.

Re: iTunes Has Slowly Destroyed My Will to Collect Music

#38

Post by ergothus »

Sophistifunk wrote: post #9
AckSyn wrote: post #4

Wasn't that claim determined to be a hoax?

I know something has deleted several dozen MP3s from my collection. The end result of which is iTunes would refuse to sync my phone. Because those two features belong in the same app, and all. In the end I had to delete my entire iTunes music library and start fresh, just so my phone would sync

That was the experience that moved me from an iPhone to android several years ago - not only that I had to wipe my phone to sync, but that

* I couldn't back up what was on the phone (without first wiping the phone) * that iTunes wouldn't let me re-download any music I had bought (this was pre-iCloud) * this was the second time it happened to me - the first time was with an iPod pretty early in their existence, so I was willing to accept incomplete options. (I'm rough on laptops, which is what I had been syncing to)

Seeing that they had no interest in improving this situation after years of being aware of it, I bailed. I'm told that Apple is now better about repeat downloads from their store and have stopped considering the PC as the source of truth for the device but they still are terrible for families with multiple accounts but not one Mac/PC per user.

Frankly, I'm glad Apple is out there pushing boundaries, but I've not missed anything from my iPhone. (my Macbook remains a great Unix-ey device)

Re: iTunes Has Slowly Destroyed My Will to Collect Music

#39

Post by nickbauman »

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.

Re: iTunes Has Slowly Destroyed My Will to Collect Music

#40

Post by Bartweiss »

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."

I still have a music collection, and am quite happy with it. That's true because I had the sense not to let iTunes within 100 yards of the thing.

A better article might be "Apple services are completely incompatible with having a music collection."

Post reply on HN