Where is iTunes DJ in iTunes 11?

I too used iTunes DJ each and every time I listened to music on the computer. I had it use playlists I made up, so I could go back to the original playlist, but...'go back'? Why?

However, as my iTunes isn't now up-dating playlist numbers and my playlist going to iTunes DJ was based on a song removing itself from that list once played.

If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

They will be getting a strongly worded missive from me post haste.

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Ok thanks i've done that .. even without enabling Home Sharing.

It works fine and i could add another iPhone.

the only missing feature is now the ability for friends to vote only instead of getting full power on the playlist

imagine having a big party with 20 people. Everyone was able to change music without pluging the iphone on the computer first and with the ability to vote for the next song instead of switching promptly..

too bad they have removed that

One of the biggest dissapointments for me is that iTunes DJ would appear to use it's Genius data on the music in my library to cluster music in a very natural way. That may be my imagination at work, but I always felt that stylistically DJ would have similar styles of songs and similar tempos grouped together. It was surprisingly good at actually feeling like someone DJing my library, not just playing music at random.

Also, I never had to pick a song to start with if I didn't feel like it, and now it appears I need to make a conscious decision before starting my daily music playback.

Others have mentioned many other important missing features of DJ, but I think the biggest (for me) is that it wasn't just "random".

Off to complain with little expectation of resolution on the feedback page...

Tom Cassel wrote:

That may be my imagination at work, but I always felt that stylistically DJ would have similar styles of songs and similar tempos grouped together. It was surprisingly good at actually feeling like someone DJing my library, not just playing music at random.

Good point - iTunes DJ did have a "randomness" setting, and that's gone now. But it didn't match tempos, all it did was prevent a recently-played artist from coming up again too soon. There are some 3rd-party tools to build playlists based on tempo - iTunes never did that on its own. So yes, that was your imagination (a natural tendency to find patterns).

Also, I never had to pick a song to start with if I didn't feel like it, and now it appears I need to make a conscious decision before starting my daily music playback.

Turn on the "Column Browser" in the "songs" view. Double click anywhere that you see the word "All..." No more conscious decisions needed.

Joseph Delaney wrote:

Good point - iTunes DJ did have a "randomness" setting, and that's gone now.

That was removed years ago (iTunes 8, January 2009).

Yeah, the biggest omission for me is the lack of "guests" being able to vote songs up in the playlist, and to request songs. That was useful not only for parties, but for the workplace if you have a single iTunes library set up to play throughout the entire office.

The good news is that the featues still exist in the new Remote app version 3.0 that was released today... IF you connect to iTunes 10... so it seems they could add these features back into iTunes 11 at some point and at least not have to re-do the Remote app... yay?

For those that haven't used the feature, here's a pretty good tutorial that goes into all the details:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JGb0h_yiDxQ

Joseph Delaney wrote:

Good point - iTunes DJ did have a "randomness" setting, and that's gone now. But it didn't match tempos, all it did was prevent a recently-played artist from coming up again too soon. There are some 3rd-party tools to build playlists based on tempo - iTunes never did that on its own. So yes, that was your imagination (a natural tendency to find patterns).

Not so much 'match tempos' as use Genius data to group complimentary songs together. It could have been blind luck, but as someone with 2+ decades producing music I feel confident in finding many examples of stylistically similar songs being grouped together to think it was an algorithm at work.

Joseph Delaney wrote:

Turn on the "Column Browser" in the "songs" view. Double click anywhere that you see the word "All..." No more conscious decisions needed.

Yes, that works.

I created a Smart Playlist with Live Updating and criteria of Media Type = Music and that seems to be working fine for me for now. Clunky to have to press a button to see history, but it's better than nothing.

I just wish Apple would simply create some tutorials to say "hey, we replaced this feature with a different one so if you miss the old stuff here are some tips". Somewhat related, but I can't count the number of people I deal with who have no idea the Preview app is an extremely versatile PDF editor simply because Apple doesn't promote the features to "Joe User".

Jason Sims wrote:

That was removed years ago (iTunes 8, January 2009).

Which shows how much I used it. But I only misremembered the function - the iTunes 10 version would play higher-rated songs more frequently (I just double-checked 😉 )

However, as my iTunes isn't now up-dating playlist numbers and my playlist going to iTunes DJ was based on a song removing itself from that list once played.

If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

What makes you say that? iTunes updates play counts same as it always did. And even if it didn't, what does that have to do with this conversation?

If it ain't broke, don't complain.

There is an issue with play counts and last played not updating. I turned off cross-fade and that seems to have temporarily fixed that issue.

The suggestion to turn off cross-fade came from this thread: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4553609?tstart=0

Up next is nice in places, but is no substitute for iTunes dj. I should've learned a lesson after iOS 6 maps, instead I'm updating to see if home sharing is usable again, and now I'm left without iTunes DJ.

No Steve Jobs is starting to look like no Apple I'm afraid.

I have playlists labeled 5-6PM 6-7PM 7-8PM etc. During the party in iTunes DJ I would simply change the playlist and the next song would pull from the right playlist on the fly. I also could do this WITHOUT interrupting the song currently playing. I am not sure how to replicate this functionality in iTunes 11.

The interface seems to work ok but please bring back the Party Shuffle / iTunes DJ playlist.

Thanks.

First of all, iTunes 11 is everything we wanted from a rewritten iTunes, simplicity and speed. You managed all that without sacrificing advanced functionality. Save for One. Glaring. Thing.

iTunes DJ? Where is it? We rely on it for our parties. For our guests to vote on tracks. To randomly select a playlist based on criteria, with weighting towards higher ranked songs. I don't think I can stress this enough: We created parties revolving around one single feature of iTunes. The one that set it miles apart from other music players. That made our Android friends feel envious and left out when they couldn't participate. The feature we could point to and say: Look how far Apple is ahead. Look how pathetically Google is trying to copy it with the Nexus Q (hah)!

And now it is gone. No more parties. No more voting. Devastating.

Please let Apple know that Up Next is NOT an adequate replacement for iTunes DJ. Not even close.

You can implement an Itunes DJ system kind of using the Up Next feature.

First play a song and shuffle the song, this will instantly put a bunch of shuffled songs in your Up Next. You can "Vote" songs by right clicking the song and pushing play next. You can queue up a bunch of songs like this using play next, and the songs you didn't queue up remain but it still adds new songs to the queue.

Unlike Itunes DJ you cannot refresh the list. If you want to refresh the list you can use the up next feature, add a bunch of songs you don't want to hear to the up next and press clear. This will refresh the list kind of like Itunes DJ. If you do this it clears songs you want and don't want so make sure if there are songs you don't want to only do this songs that you don't want.

So now you can queue up random songs you want like old Itunes DJ, and add albums to up next like Itunes DJ. (This is kind of the way I had done it previously)

A bit more complicated but I think it's probably the best way to do it now.

Right clicking a song? From any iPhone? I think you completely misunderstood what I was saying.

Guests would bring their iPhones, fire up remote and instantly start voting songs up and down as they were playing in iTunes DJ. THIS is the functionality that's missing. And it cannot be replaced with any other solution.