iTunes for Windows has been released. In addition to standard audio-playing features and iPod support, now Windows users can make use of Apple's pay-per-track music service.
http://www.apple.com
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iTunes for Windows has been released. In addition to standard audio-playing features and iPod support, now Windows users can make use of Apple's pay-per-track music service.
http://www.apple.com
YES!
Imagine if nobody ever has any problems with this program. It slowly infiltrates homes, more and more people use it, and then, they see Panther... then Microsoft falls... Hrm.
Imagine, Peace in the Middle East.
Imagine, Affordable Health Care, anywhere in the world.
Imagine, noone anywhere, is hungry, homeless or oppressed.
What do these have in common?
They all have a better chance actually happening than Apple overtaking Microsoft.
people actually pay to download music..?
thats plain crazy, if you ask me..
any impressions on the release?
I don't have to pay extra to use a Windows iPod with it do i?
No.
It is working pretty well for me, but seems to be a bit of resource hog.
Holy shit it's huge. Why is an audio player 19MB? Is it a resource hog?
answered before i could ask, thanks
Nope. No fees. If the iTunes<->iPod integration is as seamless with PCs as it is with Macs, you can forget MusicMatch.Quote:
Originally Posted by stormy
I've heard a couple people bitching about iTunes already, though. Hell, when I first bought a Mac a long while back, I was switching over from Winamp 2 to it. And I was used to how I organized my music (barely organized, actually), and having this giant searchable database didn't really feel good to me right away. One complaint was from a guy who liked how he had his music organized, and didn't want iTunes to mess with it, and apparently the Windows version didn't even prompt him before moving files. Not cool. I remember the Mac version asking for my permission, heh. Anyway, now he has to reorganize, and he didn't plan on using iTunes as his permanent mp3 player, at least, now yet. If you keep proper ID3 tags and organize things carefully, iTunes will sort songs by artist, and below that, by album.
But the thing is, it doesn't matter how the folders store it, in the actual program, it's all easy to find. Once you get used to it, I feel it's the best mp3 player out there. Now, if Apple's email client and the Finder were such leaps and bounds ahead of everything else as iTunes is, I'd be even happier than I am now. But the next OS X update appears to make huge improvements to the Finder so I'm happy about that.
Honestly, Windows iTunes is a big thing for Apple, but I think the announcement that Apple is backing AOL's music store, and that next year Apple's kicking off a promotion with Pepsi in February... 300k bottles, 1 in every 3 wins a free song. This is going to be absolutely huge.
edit: Yeah, in response to the above, I've heard the Windows version is a huge RAM hog. Mine's using 3.3% of my RAM and 2% of my CPU right now, which is hardly putting a dent in my performance, but I hear the Win version is pretty greedy. As for the size of the file, it doesn't seem odd to me... I've heard complaints of bloats, but honestly, for me, it's a centralized music solution. If I want a song badly enough, can't find it on p2p, am too lazy to walk down to Newbury Comics, for 99 cents, I'll take it. On my college network, tons of iTunes users have their libraries shared to listen to. Furthermore, it keeps all my mp3s organized, and it updates my iPod when I connect. So yeah, I guess it's kind of big for a music player, but it does a lot if you use all of it.
it moves files :/
bleh. i'll pass
Hasnt moved my files.
It hasn't moved my filed either.
I find the program pointless. It is far far too big to be an audio player (hell I consider Winamp3 too big to be an audio player) and as for sorting that is why Microsoft invented right click->new->folder.
First, I've heard a lot of people say that they didn't find it (the PC version) to be a resource hog at all. Maybe it is just different opinions.
As far as moving files, it absolutely should not without asking. A lot of people just click warning boxes that come up without actually reading them, so maybe that's what he did.
As far as "big"... what does that mean? You mean as in screen size? If so, just minimize it down so that it is only the controls and the track display.
Oh come now. We are long past the days when a 19MB app should be considered large.Quote:
Originally Posted by stormy
I think they were referring to the file size, which is tiny compared to some of the updates that shitty little bouncy globe tells me to download for Mac OS X. :)
So was I. (Referring to file size.) Why would you bitch about a 19MB application when the files it works with are each 5+MB?
Wait. What advantages over media player does this have?
It's not Media Player.
"snap"Quote:
Originally Posted by Lhadatt
I'll just copy and paste what I wrote over at my site...
Why use iTunes?
Here are my reasons for liking the app. Of course, I have little to no experience with WinAmp, so I can only compare the benefits to other apps that I know.
I think that the first major thing is the way you browse and play your music. With most apps I used before iTunes, it was either (a) open songs up one at a time to play in the app, or (b) whip up a playlist. With iTunes, the app gives you a big cataloged list of all of the music that you have. So, when using the app, every song that you have is there right in front of you, even if the songs are located in different places. You can sort your library by any tag that is supported - artist, song title, album, genre, encoding quality, you name it. You can turn on the filtered search option, which then puts three small scrollable columns at the top: artist, genre, and album. So, for example, you want to see all of you Ayu songs, you highlight her name and only her songs are shown. Want only your trance music? Same thing. There's a live search dialog at the very top, so as you start typing a search term, only the songs that match that term will show.
Of course, you can then create your own playlists and then drag songs from your libary into them, but you can also create "smart playlists." What these are are playlists that automatically add songs to themselves according to what rules you give them. For example, I have a "Top 25 J-pop" smart playlist. This list dynamically updates itself with the 25 J-pop songs that I play the most. Or I have one for listing any new songs I've added to my library in the last 30 days, in case I've forgotten.
Also integrated into the main player window is album cover art. (Of course, you can hide the art if you don't want to see it.) What is nice is that iTunes support cover art that is imbedded into the tracks. So, when you add the cover art, it is put into the actual song file, and follows it wherever it goes. So, if I have a track, and give it to Pro, if he loads it up in iTunes, the cover art will be there.
Then there's the networking feature. If there are multiple copies of iTunes on the same local network, they can share their libraries. So, for example, I can put iTunes and all of my music onto my desktop machine, and tell it to share its library. From there, my laptop copy of iTunes will then automatically find that there is another copy of iTunes sharing its music, and the desktop's entire music library will show up as a playlist on the laptop copy. So, if you want to have one "jukebox" computer in your house, it can share its music library with every other computer in the house. Or, each member in your family can share their own personal libraries. Thinking even bigger, I've heard of many schools where the Mac-using students shared their libraries over the local school network. This "sharing" isn't actually giving the other people the files - you are basically streaming the music from that other person's computer.
If you want to burn a CD, it couldn't be easier. Just make up a playlist, hit the "burn" button, and it's off. You can burn your music to a regular audio CD, or you can burn an MP3 or AAC CD.
That's a few things, and as those are all from the Mac version, of course the PC version could end up being a bit different. I've really come to love iTunes, if for no other reason than it is nice to have a browsable list of all of my music, instead of having to make playlists or pick songs to play one at a time. (BTW, for anyone worried about having this large iTunes window always floating around, it minimizes down to a small "controls and track info" panel.) But even beyond that, there are a lot of nice features, such as the smart playlists.
In comparison to other players 19mb is big, and when the program is that big usually the footprint is big too. I think Winamp and the DivX player are about 5 mb downloads. I finished the DL and i'll check it out after the game tonight. I'm currently using Winamp 2, 3 is too buggy and overdone. I use MusicMatch for my iPod and ripping, so at the very least i hope to replace that with iTunes. I'll post impressions later.
Dunno. I've fiddled with it for all of 15 minutes and I'm already liking it more than Winamp. J-Radio and a dozen electronic stations with the press of a button? Yes, please.
It's a hell of a lot easier to organize files, too. Thank god for one click file renaming, too.
So far, so good.
I use the macs at work and exclusively for music, just because, yes, iTunes is that easy and painless to use.
In media player, you have to open files, save as a playlist, and then open those playlists if you don't want to hassle having to open those mp3s all over again.
In iTunes, all your songs show up in the program. Nifty.
Does it really take 19MB ram? If it does, my lousy 32MB on my laptop won't cut it...
Winamp 5 for me. Still buggy, but so far I likes it.
FYI, the 5 means "the stability of 2, with the flashiness of 3." It's got a neat lookin new default skin and a BEAT METER!!
:wtf: this is BSQuote:
Originally Posted by install notes
not sure what i should do now
cka, too bad all the flashiness of Winamp 3 is pants.
Seriously, I cant believe Winamp wasted so much time and energy on Winamp 3. Its such a pile of trash... worst sequel to an application EVAR!
Heh, I downloaded Winamp 5 and its pretty sweet. It's also pretty useless though. I mean there is absolutely no difference between it and 2 that I can find other than the interface, which I really don't care about. I mean there are even still gaps in-between play list songs... ah well, I'll still stick to 2 I guess.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mman
Ditto, it's still pretty buggy though. But I got it to work allright.
After using iTunes and iPod together, why would you want to sync with anything else? MusicMatch = :yuck:Quote:
Originally Posted by stormy
Well, currently iTunes has a 39MB footprint in my RAM, plus another 4MB background program that i have to get turned off. This will be reserved for iPod usage. ID3 tag editing was better in music match, but overall this interface looks better. Since its library function is case sensitive and " " sensitive i have some tags to fix.
Stupid bug #1: If you want to type in a new artist name for example, and you want it to start with a capital letter, it won't let you type the capital if the autocomplete is matching to a word with the lowercase letter. You have to finish the word, then go back and redo the first letter.
Is this a program I have to buy? Fuck that...
edit: nevermind.
How do you do that one-click rename shit?Quote:
Originally Posted by Click_Stick
someone tell me how to disable iTuneshelper.exe
If i can't get this thing off :curse::curse::curse:
start menu > run > msconfig > startup. Uncheck that option. It might keep coming back every week or so, but it's better then every time you turn your comp back on.
thanks, still seems to work fine even though ituneshelper is gone.
For comparison's sake, winamp 2 only uses 8MB of RAM for me.
I'll stick with WinAmp 2. I don't need something to organize playlists or download music for me, I just want something to play the damn MP3.
MusicMatch is teh suck. I used it for about 2 minutes before it was uninstalled and I went and found a replacement. I use EphPod for Windows now and it's light years ahead of MM.Quote:
Originally Posted by Grave
I'm at least interested in iTunes though. I actually like the idea of being able to buy one or two songs if I want to. Beats having to buy a whole CD for a couple of songs ;p
I wish there was some program to convert ID3 tags to unicode...then maybe a jukebox program could actually be useful if it could read all the songs properly at once.
And having a program that sorts and lists your MP3s so that you don't have to open an open dialog to go find them doens't help you in the playing of the MP3s? I can't imagine why anybody would ever want to deal with having to open each and every song they want to hear manually, or having to make a playlist every time they want to listen to multiple songs without doing that.Quote:
Originally Posted by Rick
I'm not totally sure what you are talking about, but if you mean edit the ID tags without bringin up a seperate window, click on the information that you want to change, and then quickly click on it again, just like if you were re-naming a file on your Desktop. Any visible information (track name, artist, album, genre, etc.) can be changed that way.Quote:
Originally Posted by diffusionx
If you were talking about something different, then ignore that.
Indeed. This is one of the few bitches that I really have about iTunes.Quote:
Originally Posted by stormy
iTunes, at least on Mac OSX, can handle any language, and you can convert the ID3 tags from one format to another using one of the menu options. My library, for example, is an intermixing of English and Japanese track and artist names.Quote:
Originally Posted by Psx
Of course, this might be because OSX is natively supportive of all major languages out there. I don't know if Windows has native multi-language support, so I don't know if it works the same way on the PC side.
Click highlighted title. Once.Quote:
Originally Posted by diffusionx
Type.
There's a nasty bug with it not recognizing CDs or not updating CD info when you change CDs. I'm trying to rip all of my CDs, but it sucks ass to restart the program every time I switch CDs. Hopefully there will be a quick patch for this, because I really like everything else about it.
Eh, I'll stick with Winamp 2.8. I've used it for years, and it gets the job done.
Uh, yeah. I really don't care. I have no clue what I want to listen to in advance, I just open the folder and if I see something I feel like hearing that's what will get played. If I want to listen to the whole album that happens to be open (my stuff is organized in Windows Explorer by Artst-->Album) then double-clicking the next song isn't much of a hassle.Quote:
And having a program that sorts and lists your MP3s so that you don't have to open an open dialog to go find them doens't help you in the playing of the MP3s? I can't imagine why anybody would ever want to deal with having to open each and every song they want to hear manually, or having to make a playlist every time they want to listen to multiple songs without doing that.
What happens is that Japanese is handled fine because it is set as my default for non-unicode applications. All filenames and directories on my system are in unicode so they display correctly no matter what. The ID3 tag contained within the files is not in unicode however, and as there is no way to fix this that I know of, reading ID3 tags is useless for me. It would only work with Japanese, and songs that use the roman alphabet(although accents would get screwed up as well). Chinese(Big-5) and Korean(EUC-KR) would be left out...and that is a significant amount of music I listen too.Quote:
Originally Posted by shidoshi
Im pretty surprised you actually have English music.Quote:
Originally Posted by shidoshi
As for me I dont think Ive ever heard a Japanese song I liked.
edit1: question, is there any way to sort the columns so artist is first?
edit2: Last night I was like... pfft this program isnt better than Winamp (much to my dismay, I pimp Apple here more than just about anybody, and I dont even have a Mac), but then I went back to it... and yea, if you are gonna use it just in the same way you do Winamp, don't bother switching. However, try out Smart Playlists... try rating a few songs... try going on the internet radio... its really really cool and way better than anything Winamp ever was.
Yea, its a bit of a RAM hog compared to Winamp 2... but people, Winamp 2 is six or seven years old and doesn't do most of the stuff that iTunes does. And besides, most of you probably have 256+ megs anyway.
Just a quick FYI: The 19 MB file size might have something to do with the fact that it also includes QuickTime....
Just wanted to say that there is software that will properly convert ID3 tags to unicode based on your default system setting. here
See, from what you're saying, using iTunes sounds like it would allow you to do all of that, but far easier and more convenient. But, whatever.Quote:
Originally Posted by Rick
all you have to do in winamp is select all the mp3s in your album folder, right click, either Play in winamp or enque in winamp. It's easy. Or you can just do the same thing to the folder containing the MP3s you want to listen too (although this option hasn't appeard since the latest time i installed winamp). If you have all your files organized in folders already, you really don't need all the stuff in iTunes. The 25 most played and recently played lists are cool though.
Yeah, I'm not the total "it has to be Japanese or it sucks" fanboy that a lot of people probably expect that I am. I like almost everything, and have songs from every genre in my library (top40, hip hop, R&B, jazz, country, rock, alternative, etc.). Though, my English tastes could probably be mocked by people anyhow, because my favorite stuff are things like classical music or Frank Sinatra.Quote:
Originally Posted by diffusionx
I think part of the problem is that, by far, the stuff that gets the most exposure over here is the pop stuff, which, if you hate American pop, you'ree LOATH Japanese pop. And, for stuff like rap, their artists don't adhere to this "you have to look and act like a thugg" mentality, so a lot of their rap acts come off as seeming like jokes. Once you get past the stuff that is heavily marketed, though, they have a lot of "genuine" artists that I think are just as good as some of the artists over here.Quote:
As for me I dont think Ive ever heard a Japanese song I liked.
I can get every other column to switch to a different slot, but I can't get anything to come before the song title column. Odd.Quote:
edit1: question, is there any way to sort the columns so artist is first?
I think this is indeed the biggest problem for those people who are trying it for a bit and then saying they don't see the point. You can't come into iTunes expecting it to act like your other MP3 players. If you try to use iTunes like WinAmp, then of course it's going to seem like a worthless program. If you go into it and try things the iTunes way, I think you then get a far better idea of the purpose of the program and why it might be a better choice.Quote:
and yea, if you are gonna use it just in the same way you do Winamp, don't bother switching. However, try out Smart Playlists... try rating a few songs... try going on the internet radio... its really really cool and way better than anything Winamp ever was.
Like I said before, I can't imagine why anyone would want to stick with browsing through folders for the song they want to play when you have something like that. I know, opinions differ, but if I had to be back to the days of stopping what I was doing to go pick a new song every time the one I was just listening to stopped, I'd go mad.
And as far as organizing your music, there is nothing that comes even close to iTunes. (At least on the Mac side - maybe you PC people have something.)
It probably won't work, but highlight a song with screwed up tags, go up to "Advanced," go down to "Convert ID3 tags," and play with the last option a bit to see if anything will work.Quote:
Originally Posted by Psx
I can't give much advice, though, because the differences between multi-language handing on the Mac and on Windows are different. I wish the mess of multiple languages would be fixed up, but I think Windows does it the MS way because that is what MS wants, and Mac OSX does it a more "standard" way to try to adhere to standards. I don't see either side budging, and it causes problems. I get MP3s all the time that were created on a Windows system where the ID3 tags are nothing but gargage. It's frustrating.
Uh... all you have to do in iTunes to plan an entire album of MP3s is start playing the first song. From there, the rest will play in order. That, you know, kinda seems easier to me. *shrug*Quote:
Originally Posted by stormy
What if you want to keep playing music, but shuffle through your entire collection? What if you want to, in no more than two steps, play every song by a certain artist without stopping? What if you want to continuously shuffle through every song by one artist? What if you want to play all of the songs of one genre that you have - classical, for example?
These are all things that have nothing to do with playlists or any fancy features, yet seem to be impossible the way WinAmp works.
I like iTunes. And I tend to hate the "omfgmac" shit.
Is there any way to refresh your song list? If I remove files, or add files, iTunes doesn't want to recognize them.
I got the folder options back. I can do everything you said there just as easily without making a playlist, except for playing specific genres. If i want all my songs i can right click My MP3 folder, hit play in Winamp and it will play everything. From there shuffle is just one more click. So that's 3 clicks. Same can be applied to artist, or album. Granted i organized all my folders myself, but it's not like iTunes does all the organization perfectly, you still need to do a lot of tweaking ID3 tags and such.Quote:
Originally Posted by shidoshi
I honestly like both, but for me on a laptop with only 256Mb of RAM, i can't stand the performance hit.
Another handy tip for the day:
If your sound ends up sounding muddy or staticy in iTunes, go to the Control Panel, into Quicktime Settings, and change the Sound Out option from DirectSound to waveOut. I was having that problem myself, and changing it to waveOut fixed it.
I just downloaded iTunes..and...
Holy shit!!!
First of all, it's the only player I've used aside from winamp that lets me simply add an entire directory to the playlist and randomize it easily when there are dozens of subdirectories and hundreds of files. Nice.
Second, my computer/mobo/soundcard has a fucked up problem. It can't play wav's or mp3's properly, there's some fucked up conflict. So, mp3 sound quality isn't up to snuff, and occasionally the sound skips. Itunes somehow fixed that. I forgot that I had a badass speaker set. Itunes also seems to have a nearly perfect high/mid/sub balance level (about as perfect as a 160kbps mp3 can get, anyway)
Also, the randomizer seems to randomize better. Don't ask me why, it may just be pure chance, but out of gigs and gigs of mp3s, there are just some songs winamp never played that Itunes has played. I have no explanation for this.
Me= :)
Quote:
Originally Posted by Icepick
If you're dropping new songs on iTunes or deleting them in iTunes, it does all of your management for you. If you're just putting them in the iTunes directory in Windows, it won't automatically add it.Quote:
Originally Posted by Icepick
Putting new songs into a folder won't have iTunes instantly add them to its library. For me, since iTunes is my default player, if I double click the song in the Finder (Desktop or whatever for you) once I've put it where I want, it will then be added to iTunes. Or, you can just drag it to the iTunes window or whatever.
Or, if you've put a lot of files into different folders, you can go File -> Add to Library, and pick your main library folder. It'll go through and recognize all of the files that were added, and add them to its library.
For getting rid of music, you can do that directly from iTunes. Highlight the song you want to get rid of, and hit Delete. iTunes will then ask you if you want to throw the song into the trash (recycle bin) or if you want to just remove it from iTunes' library.
I've been messing around with this for a few days now, and I'm having fun with it. I'm gonna switch over to it for my main player. Right now I'm going through and fixing up the library by giving the songs the right track numbers and giving the albums cover art. When I get done, I think it'll be pretty slick.
Yea I wanna do that too but the problem is that my 955 files are in complete, total, disarray. Winamp kinda masks the lack of ID3 tags by using the filenames but a ton of my files didnt even have ID3 tags, and most of them dont even have the album name on them... its gonna be a loooong loooong time before this is in order.Quote:
Originally Posted by flux=rad
But yea this is now my main player, its running a lot better than it did yesterday (for some reason) and Im happy with its performance.
My conclusion of iTunes for windows:
Too big, bloated and slow for me. The only features that I really liked were the 'smart' playlists and also the rating system. I was never really a fan of jukebox programs anyway though.
I'm a little pissed. My sings are doing this stupid ass electronic skipping shit.
Kind of like the effect they occasionally use on the voice of the hip hop guy in Lincoln Park.
Needless to say, this is unacceptable. I tried changing the sound output, and it does nothing.
When it skips my PC processor usage jumps by 10-15%.
Why? Help me. I love this program... and really want to keep using it.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Icepick
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Originally Posted by DArque Bishop
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Originally Posted by DArque Bishop
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Originally Posted by Icepick
Thank you sir.Quote:
Originally Posted by omfgninjas
Update:
OK. It didn't do it yesterday. Since then I have created a shared folder on my network, and installed drivers for my Wacom tablet.
Why the hell would either of those be causing this?
Other complaints:Quote:
most embarrassing, Apple did not test its client on Windows 2000 enough. Part of the coolness of iTunes is that it comes with built-in CD burning software. Yet this software taps into critical Windows system services, and several users have found that their system will not boot after iTunes is installed. The problem is likely to happen if users have other CD burning software installed, especially applications that support on-demand packet writing. Apple is aware of the problem, and in most cases it can be solved by a boot into Safe Mode and an uninstall, but that's a solution to problem that shouldn't exist. No one expects the installation of an "MP3 player" to bring a system down. While some will undoubtedly put the blame on Microsoft's OS design in order to defend the mighty Apple, that won't change the fact that bugs such as these make Apple look amateurish on the Windows coding scene—a scene that has traditionally thought poorly of Apple software "ported" to Windows.
That said, another charge being aimed at Apple relates to iTunes' library management. iTunes can be configured to scour your computer and move all of your audio files into an iTunes managed hierarchy on your file system. This functionality is not enabled by default, but several users are apparently enabling it by accident, for they are later amazed when they can no longer find their files. When they find them, they may be dismayed to find that iTunes routinely renames files according to its own naming scheme (which is not very customizable). The iTunes scheme users folder names to denote artist and album, leaving filenames only with track numbers and song titles. For some, this is unacceptable. One user complained that his entire hand-coded collection of vinyl rips was renamed by iTunes. At the very least, a dialogue box should warn users of the effects of allowing iTunes to manage all files by copying them into the iTunes folder. Of course, if all files are thoroughly tagged, then re-organizing the files isn't much a of a chore. (Once again, we see reasons why a metadata-supporting database-oriented file system is the way to go.)
Of course, the good news for Apple is that these items are easily fixed. The other challenges they face are not so simple.
http://arstechnica.com/wankerdesk/03q2/i-tunes-1.html
Im reading that... and its saying that Apple is trying to "lock people into" AAC, iPod, and the iTunes Music Store... instead of using Windows Media 9 format and one of those 40 different pieces of shit audio players...
Uhh.... if you're gonna use something, might as well be the best. iPod may be the priciest mp3 player but its by farrrrrrrrrrrr the best one and Windows Media Player 9 is absolute trash and by proxy so is all the other online music stores using it.
Shows how much I listen to him.
AH Goddamnit! I was really enjoying Itunes until it made like 80 folders in my music folder by artist and renamed the files. Damnit, I have to re-organize back to genre like I had before. Shit, this is gonna take hours.
Why would you "re-organize back to genre" unless you're not going to be using iTunes anymore?
I make a smart playlist in iTunes, and am able to organize by genre in about 2.5 seconds. :p
I dunno, everything just looked so much neater that way. And now it's renamed them all crazy like as well. I like to keep my folders tidy, but now there are 1500 folders in my music folder with one or two files in each folder.
:cry: :cry: :cry:
If it's the same as the Mac version, there should be an option called "Keep iTunes folder organized" under Advanced that you can uncheck.
Huh. Wish I would have seen that before everything got screwed.
Oh well, time to re-organize. Everything will be prety great once I re-organize.
The only time it does this is if you go to advanced>consolidate library, correct? I don't want to be doing this by accident and it seems to happen a lot.Quote:
Originally Posted by Mr-K
See, I consider that neat and tidy. *shrugs*Quote:
Originally Posted by Mr-K
And as Schlep said, if you end up using iTunes full time, why reorganize? One of the main points of iTunes is not having to go dredging into your music folders anymore. The only time I EVER touch my music folders is if I'm adding an MP3 that isn't coming from a CD, and at that point, the Artist -> Album folder sorting scheme makes it a lot easier to know exactly where it should go.
More iTunes rants and caterwauling.
Yeah... like I'm gonna buy the albums anyway.
However, that raises an interesting point.
Why not just download the songs you want from an album, then mail the musicians a five spot?
Does iTunes automatically save the main playlist/library? I fixed up the "main library" so to speak and I don't see how to save it. I'd be pissed if it reverted to how it was before. I think it missed a few folders of songs too, I don't think it has all of my songs. And what's the best way to make individual playlists? Like I have whole albums (like Nirvana) that I keep on one folder and a playlist (for winamp) that calls up just those tracks (so I'm listening to just that album).
Edit: I got it. I understand what Shidoshi was talking about, I though he just had his files really un-organized, but having your playlists right there is nice (your really lazy if you can't be bothered to open a window and select a playlist though). I have things set up pretty well now, so I'll give it a few days to see how it works out for me. Oh and those songs it didn't add...I'm not sure why they won't play in iTunes. They might be .ogg files.
Another Edit: I just rebooted and itunes just freaked out on me. the library list is all screwed up, for some reason it doubled the tracks i have. Example, the first track is "woo hoo" by the 5,6,7, 8's. So it has that track listed (which it says it can't find when it tries to play it) and then the one underneith that is "woo hoo" and that plays fine. So it's like it duplicated the track, renamed it but one of them doesn't work. It didn't do it for all the tracks but for a lot of them. ANd all of the winamp playlists I imported don't work now. WTF.
One more edit: Lol, I have no fucking clue what this thing is doing. I got the playlists to again but the main library is still fucked. I'm going to reboot and see if it fucks things up again now, so i don't waste any more time.
Quote:
Originally Posted by shidoshi
See, it's not "Neat and tidy" when it decides that one song should go in a file named "inflames" while another goes in "In Flames". Same thing!
I still have no fucken clue what the hell it was trying to do with all my Cowboy Bebop tracks, but it obviously just gave up after making 1000 different folders for each one.
Winamp 2 for me.
Last update from me! Fuck this thing! It keeps losing the tracks, I can right click on it and do "show info" or whatever and it gives me all this info and even where the file is located. So why the fuck is it asking me where it is when it ALREADY KNOWS? It seems to change which tracks it can't find everytime I start it, and it duplicates tracks that don't work (as I mentioned earlier). I'm going to keep it on the HD, but someone give me a yell when they put out a patch for this mess.
P.S- Winamp 2 works well for me and j00!
Your id3 tags probably don't agree. If you fixed them in iTunes (which is pretty damn quick and easy), they'd move to the same folder.Quote:
Originally Posted by Valgar
but the way it handles ID3 tags is retarded
"u2" is different than
"U2" is different than
"U2 " etc, etc...
On many of my albums where the info came straight from CDDB, the album and artist names were not purely identical.
and it couldn't synch my iPod without running into unknown HD errors that i never got with MusicMatch. I had to connect and disconnect the iPod 4 times before all the songs made it over.
The software was obviously not ready for release on PC yet. I assume they just did it to get iTunes music store up for the shopping season. They have already announced getting over 1 million downloads of Windows iTunes, and thier iTunes traffic has almost doubled in that time.
So, hey, you know what? Don't have it organize your music automatically. Problem solved. I've used iTunes for over two years, and can't recall ever having the fits over file organization that you people are having. At the same time, though, I organized a lot of stuff myself, had iTunes leave it that way, and only let iTunes do its own organization when bringing in new music from CD - which, so long as you have your tags proper, works just fine.
Technical problems, though, I'm not surprised to hear, considering that this is for the most part a 1.0 release on Windows. Apple is typically pretty good about getting updates out, so if a lot of people are having these problems, I wouldn't be surprised to see a 4.1.2 or whatever release in the near future.
Since when do dirty hippies have internet connections and the ability to make webpages?Quote:
Originally Posted by Regus
Seriously, they might have a very valid point. But pointing a finger and yelling at Apple about it is totally going about it the wrong way. Blame the right people.
Because people NEVER get tired of bitching. That's what this is all about! Bitch, bitch, bitch. And yes, hey, "U2 " IS different from "U2", in terms of characters. All iTunes is dealing with is what you gave it. If you don't care to fix it, don't complain about it. How does the program know? I find the iTunes organization system perfectly sensible, and I have since its first release, because I actually take care to keep my ID3 tags in order, and as a result, iTunes keeps my music where it ought to be. It's a good system if you'll take the time to realize what it's doing and organize within it.Quote:
Originally Posted by shidoshi
MusicMatch knows "U2"="u2"="U2 " :rolleyes:
anyone who listens to U2 doesn't deserve to own a computer.
:lol:
Fix your tags, you lazy bastards.
i don't actually it was just the easiest band name to type outQuote:
Originally Posted by diffusionx
Got annoyed and decided to test it myself. Hey, what do you know, so does iTunes! Probably because it's impossible to differentiate between "u2" and "U2" when making a folder name.Quote:
Originally Posted by stormy
I think everybody just needs to wash the sand out of their collective vaginas, that's all.
Why the fuck is it making duplicate (non working) entrys in the playlist and losing tracks when it knows where it is? That's one buggy bitch we're talking about here.
Damn Im burning a disc now and let me say this is the best mp3 program I've used. It was like fucking four of the easiest steps in the world to make a CD:
01. Make a smart playlist which required no work other than clicking the "Smart Playlist" button and typing the first two letters of the band's name.
02. Clicking the BURN CD button in the Smart Playlist window.
03. Putting in a CD.
04. Clicking the WRITE DISC button.
Jeez I remember when I used MusicMatch it was a pain in the ass, I remember you had to drag and drop, and shit when I used Nero I had to go through a goddamn wizard and then drag and drop and name the file and damn...
and dont get me started on Windows Media Player... its interface is absolutely unusable for doing anything but watching pirated movies and porn. It is trash.
but this is awesome. This is how software should be!
Sure iTunes may be buggy and a system hog but Apple's got software design down 600000000x better than anyone else out there.
edit, I just imported a CD which involved me putting the CD in the drive and clicking that context sensitive button that then said "Import"... this is so intuitive its ridiculous.
The irony of this statement being used to defend an Apple product is just golden.Quote:
Originally Posted by shidoshi
I just reinstalled WinXP on my PC last night so I haven't gotten around to the Windows version of iTunes, but on the Mac, you can just select all songs by an artist and do mass editing of tags. So for my 4000-something files that didn't have ID3 tags, it was much easier and faster. The bulk of work I had to do was changing the song names to be different from the file name. My 'delete' key got a workout.Quote:
Originally Posted by diffusionx
I hope that's a feature on the PC version. :)
So how is iTunes for Windows any better than using Winamp 2 with the album list plugin?
Try it and see...
But the smart playlists and super easy burning/ripping are 2 examples I could probably come up with off the top of my head.
I don't want to try it, because there seem to be a lot of reports circulating around about iTunes reorganizing MP3 collections and fucking around with PC's in a variety of other ways. How are smart playlists different from the capabilities offered by Winamp and its thousands of plugins?Quote:
Originally Posted by diffusionx
I don't really care about burning, but are there any limitations of the iTunes ripping capabilities?
Plugins? Fuck that shit.
Smart playlists... like it lets you enter a few different parameters and it automatically makes a playlist.
In 2 clicks you can get all of the songs by one artist, all the songs you rated 5, all the songs in a genre, all the songs from 1978 (or any other year), etc... its actually really powerful and hella easy.
As for ripping... erm, no, no limitations that I know of.
Honestly Ive used Winamp for... oh I dont know maybe 7 or 8 years now but after 2 days of iTunes I realized its superior and I would take iTunes over having to fiddle around with goddamn Winamp plugins any day.
Sure you could probably *do more* with Winamp and its plugins but iTunes is so damn easy and you dont have to worry about mp3 files anymore as much as you do whatever shows on iTunes... and like I actually want iTunes to reorganize my files, it never did but I rather it would but I dont know how to do that.
The only way it reorganizes everything is if you set your default iTUnes music directory to where you have your music before turning off the 'auto-sort' option (or whatever its called). I just imported my music from File->Import Directory and nothing was reorganized.Quote:
Originally Posted by Mamoscott
A new version of iTunes is available (4.1.1) see here
Now that's more like it, it actually works now. It still doesn't work 100% with my shortcut media keys though. Hope they hop on that for the next update.
Is there a way to make the library auto-update as songs are added?