iTunes Play Button Doesn't Work as Previously

Thanks, kilima, that's a very comprehensive explanation of how iTunes now works. I guess what I'm missing is the "why".

Focusing on the SONGS list, since that's the only view I use, I am now unable to select a Genre, Command-Select a few different Albums, then click Play to shuffle through them. To re-create this functionality in the new iTunes, it seems to me I would have to create a new Playlist with those items and shuffle that. Why? I don't really want to create and un-create Playlists all the time. What's more frustrating, however, is that iTunes 10 (and earlier) offered this functionality and iTunes 11 seems to have dropped it. For what purpose, I don't know.

You're right that I can just double-click a song to switch the focus to the selected items, but, as I stated above, that means iTunes is no longer randomly selecting the first song.

I want the Play button to control the items I have selected -- as it always did before. Changing a basic function -- after ten versions of the software behaved in exactly the same way -- doesn't seem like an "upgrade".

Right, I get all that. I don't dispute a bit of it. But, per the title of my original post, this is not the way iTunes worked in the past, through TEN revisions.

You can still do exactly that, except you don't click play ... that's the Master Control. You double-click your new selection. Now that is what's playing.

This is precisely what I don't want to have to do, and never had to do in the past. I am now forced to select the first "random" song in my shuffle list. Why? What's random about that?

And moving around my library, selecting other things, didn't previously disturb what was playing, unless I double-clicked an item or clicked "Play". That way of operating was straightforward and comprehensible, I was used to it, and I want it back.

Well, that's certainly one opinion. It is not mine.

Example: I'm listening to a given album in iTunes on Monday. On Thursday, I return to my computer, switch to iTunes, queue up a couple of different albums, press Play… and iTunes starts playing what I was listening to on Monday.

You say that's right; I say it's wrong. Value judgments are beside the point, however, and I'm not interested in trading opinions.

My question is a simple one: can I make iTunes behave the way it used to?

Though you haven't addressed the question so far, I would guess the answer is a definitive "no". Certainly I haven't found any options or preferences that would restore the original functionality. I guess I'll have to take comfort from the fact that the previous ten versions were wrong, and this one is right.

😀

That does help. Space bar to start/stop thereafter, I'm guessing?

Anyway, too late for me, I'm afraid: I already downgraded to 10.7.