Stop iTunes Jumping To Show Next Track Playing

So I guess I started this thread a while ago ... looking though it now - just to comment further -

I have sent my thoughts on this to iTunes. To no avail at this point. The suggestions about iTunes DJ or creating a playlist of some sort appear to be the available alternatives. The pros and cons don't really work for me, but thanks for trying, I appreciate the suggestions.

So I start a song playing somewhere, then I scroll on through a huge collection and start fixing metadata somewhere else - I may well be happy to just let the next song on the main list play through (from where I was before) and so on, but I just don't want the main list to take me away from where I have scrolled to since - where I might be working with tags (art, genra, whatever). I don't want to be creating some other list just for this kind of listening partly because what else happens is, while I'm scrolling though the main list, I may interrupt what has been playing through and pick a new place to play through music - exploring the collection in a chosen way, but not chosen beforehand, but not randomized either, while muti-tasking elsewhere in the main list. So I just don't want to be jumped from where I'm at to the next song that starts ... I was hoping for an easy solution rather than a work around that requires a new list. Or maybe if some script or something could be written to alter how iTunes functions in that regard (but I have no idea if that is possible outside from iTunes developers themselves).

Anyway, I've gotton used to it - sigh - thats just how the software operates.

Again, thanks for your suggestions and attempts to resolve.

As far as I can tell - now using iTunes 5.2 - if I open iTunes and, in list view, simply start a song from the main library list somewhere in the list, and do nothing else but scroll away from that song to somewhere else in the list, the main window will jump back to the next song that starts playing when the song I started ends ... this is exactly what I don't want iTunes to do.

It seems to me that both Chris and Tracy provided a way to deal with this. I think it is fine to have the same thing described different ways, as peoples minds certaintly do seem to work differently.

As far as being able to go back to the current song playing at any time I want, there is a simple menue item that does this - which is a good feature - and to my mind, does the very same job, but at my command only and not automatically by the software. The menue item is -> Controls -> Go To Current Song.

Personally, I would prefer if iTunes stopped doing this automatic action so that absolutely no extra effort was required to avoid the issue - although the DJ work around doesn't sound super complex or anything.

I actually never new a Mac-mouse could ever be used to right-click until just a couple days ago - by pressing the control key and click mouse combonation. So I have been a bit at a loss regarding a part of the above instructions. I assumed I just didn't have that funtion available on my system. I'm kind of suprised I've used a Mac for so long not knowing about that.

I find iTunes 11 is generally an improvement regarding this issue when you view your library in Albums view or Artists view - it either stops after the song or plays the next track without jumping the window to show it when it begins, no problem. Although under Songs viewing mode for the full library it still jumps back to show the next song when it starts - unchecking the little box by song names can stop that problem, that solution was right in plain view and I never though to do that, so thanks for that option. iTunes 11 also has useful options with its 'play next' or 'add to up next' for more control of things, I find those helpful sometimes too. So there have been software improvements - yay. And there are some useful ideas through this thread - thanks.

That jumping view issue was a problem when I was working through my large collection and fixing mixed up or combined metadata tags and album art - Doug's Scripts helped do a lot of otherwise tedious 'retagging'. Now that my collection is cleaned up to my liking I avoid these problems by setting tags and album art how I prefer each time I add new music. Now I find genius is a good way to eplore music in my library I'm not familiar with, as genius finds songs similar to ones I choose for it to base a new playlist on. All things considered, I don't know of any software that compares, or could compete with iTunes for Mac computers. I'm kind of surprised this thread still gets any attention. Well, I'm signing off now - good luck out there.