Where is iTunes DJ in iTunes 11?

teslazap wrote:

iTunes DJ was the ONLY feature I used.

My typical day:

Start iTunes -> open iTunes DJ -> Play -> forget about iTunes.

Start iTunes > select Music > Play > Forget about iTunes;

does the same thing.

Hello, I was wondering how it it possible to achieve a workflow similar to the sadly, sadly removed iTunes DJ function with iOS Remote?

The iTunes DJ use case was simply perfect when having parties at home. I've 3 Airport Express and 2 AppleTVs and via AirPlay the music is distributed perfectly in-sync through the entire house. I did start iTunes DJ on a smart playlist of acceptable content for the occasion, my girlfriend and I have both the iOS Remote App on our iPhones, guests could also select (resp. like) music (with less rights) from the iPad App. Working perfectly like one would expect an Apple solution to a problem.

From the start of iTunes 11 I had a separate computer I never updated and with installed iTunes 10.7—using it only as a party iTunes DJ & Airplay hub. A few month ago I switched to a virtual machine with an installation of iTunes 10.7 just for that. But now after the Remote App was updated to iOS7 (**** you auto-update!) the support for iTunes 10.7 iTunes DJ control was removed. Parties coming up and I've an old iPhone 3Gs I was thinking to reactivate just to decently control my music at the next parties. But this can't be "the Apple way" to have to use old stuff on the entire chain to get something useful working here.

It's so simple... only choose what to play next from a (more or less random) set of suggestions. "heart"/star or whatever you want without affecting whats currently playing and control it from your phone and on multiple clients. While sounding like that the "up next" function does fill the gap at all. It a complete riddle how this could be a comfortable substitute.

How should one use iTunes 11 with the iOS7 Remote App at all in this situations?

I simply don't get why this was changed while this was working so well and with no equivalent to the competition? I've been trying hard to get this working for me but it's so annoying to go backwards and backwards like this.

Regards 😟

Go look for the app "playmysong", it works with Spotify. Not the same as the fantastic, now lost ITunes DJ, but close

Thanks. Looks good, although I only use spotify on a non-regular basis. Guess thats gonna change. :-/

And after some googling I found AirFoil to transmit spotify by airplay. But does it work sync'd on multiple Airplay clients? I noticed recently (after I upgraded a 30year old FM Radio with a Raspberry Pi to become an AirPlay client) that synchronous playback over multiple devices is somtimes not supported.

Hi there!

I have the same problem, dj was perfect for parties. I have found an app, that shoul fix it...

https://itunes.apple.com/cz/app/playmenext-hd-music-player/id414766983?mt=8

iTunes will be back in iTunes 12, new and improved and better than ever!

rthomas I sure hope you are right. 11 has been a disaster! No DJ, syncs on IOS 7 are ridiculous. Anyone check how much memory your messages are taking up as "docs" with no bulk delete? Re-releasing 10 would seem like upgrade to me.

Here's my problem with the Up Next feature: Say I want to randomize a smart playlist containing only unrated tracks. And say, while a track from this playlist is playing, I decide to rate it. Suddenly, the track stops playing and skips instantly to the next song, because it's no longer in the unrated tracks smart playlist.

With iTunes DJ, I never had this problem. It would continue to play out the song after I rated it. Not only that, but it would stay in the recent plays portion where I could look at and fiddle with the ratings as long as I like without it disappearing from the list or making me have to open two menus to change the rating.

My current solution is that I have to drag a copy of my smart playlist tracks out to a regular playlist then randomize that. Unintuitive and lame.

The only problem is that AirFoil costs money and iTunes DJ was free. 😢 But it is an exellent solution otherwise. (It is how I manage my tunes).

But you don't know that 🙂

Chris,

You aren't getting the point at all. There actually is a huge difference between "open iTunes DJ" and "select Music". The former, with one click, gives you an amazingly well crafted perpetual playlist from your music, but the latter either takes much more work crafting a playlist, or for less work simply provides an unimpressive random playing of all the songs in your library.

See, different from simple random play, or creating a playlist, selecting a songs for x number of minutes, whatever algorithm they used for the one-click DJ was amazing, producing a perpetually evolving list that favored your higher rated songs, and seemed to uncannily make the song to song mix great, and even flow terrifically from genre to genre.

And the new "Genius Shuffle" (Controls > Genius Shuffle) stinks, creating a very narrow list in one genre of songs repeating 3 or 4 artists over and over... ridiculous.

In it's absence I've compensated with a couple of my own playlists and smart playlists, but they're not the same, as easy, or do the same good thing DJ did. Removing it might have had something to do with reducing and streamlining iTunes memory or processor usage, but regardless, it is the loss of truly great functionality and of a great feature.

My 2¢.

pbgiv wrote:

Chris,

You aren't getting the point at all.

No, you are rsponding to more than I wrote (playing all music randomly).

There actually is a huge difference between "open iTunes DJ" and "select Music". The former, with one click, gives you an amazingly well crafted perpetual playlist from your music

How is playing all music in iTunesDJ different than playing all music on shuffle? (Hint: It's not)

To your point, there is no difference.

If you have already created a playlist, it works the same. Instead of selecting Music, select the playlist.

If you have not created a playlist, you certainly cannot select it (the non-created playlist) in iTunesDJ.

All the other stuff you included is irrelevant to playing all music randomly (which is what I responded to).

Amen. Well said.

They got rid of iTunes DJ as an incentive for users to embrace iTunes Radio.

I, for one, am still running iTunes 10.6 and still enjoying DJ.

I'm with you. I went back to 10.7 (which is why I ALWAYS download and archive versions of itunes exe files). Worked great, and still does. I-tunes DJ is the best feature, and I also like the album cover showing in "Now playing." They could take everything away and I still wouldn't listen to iTunes radio. I don't listen to Pandora much either. I like high res sound and the squished mp3 sound on Pandora, Sirius XM, etc. *****. I listen to my music. Can't wait for my new Pono Music player to show up in October (www.ponomusic.com). It's the Neil Young project. I have a lot of hi res music already (Beatles USB set in FLAC 44.1/24 bit, Rolling Stones, Tom Petty, Death Cab for Cutie, Mumford & Sons, McCartney, and many others in FLAC bit rates as high as 192/24) (listened to through Media Monkey software as FLAC files won't play in iTunes). 😟

Back to the iTunes DJ related issues, challenge in not upgrading past 10.7 is that I can't use certain apps with my iphone on OS 6. I don't want to upgrade to OS 7 as it is incompatible with itunes 10.7. So it is ever-increasing that I am going to probably be forced to upgrade to the newer OS.

My plan is to use a second computer to keep 10.7 on and, like others in this thread have said, just connect my iphone to version 11. I hope the person who said iTunes would be back in version 12 is right. I never did allow anyone to "suggest songs" for my DJ thing, but otherwise it's such a great feature. And in 11 I know they have a way to "sort of" do some of this by using the player in the top right, but it only lists 20 songs as I recall. By the time I have fine-tuned the list, I might only have 10 left and then I find myself having to go back in again and again. That's why I reverted back to version 10.7.

Anyway, just thought I'd add my opinion to others - BRING BACK ITUNES D.J.!!!!

The other thing I love about DJ is being able to bring in a playlist and display up to the previous 100 and upcoming 100 songs and then selectively removing songs in the list to enjoy only the songs I'm in the mood for. Let's face it, no matter how good our playlist might be, your mood can change from time to time. So being able to select a song, hold the Ctrl key and click the other ones I want to remove from Itunes DJ makes for a great tool. And it doesn't remove it from the playlist itself, just from the session in itunes DJ (as most readers likely know).

Ohhhh Pllllleaaase bring Itunes DJ back. I Hate Shuffle and whats up next. It just doesnt mix it all up as itunes DJ did. It tries to "match" stuff. I dont want a match I want a random dolop of ALL my music.