Cannot change media kind in iTunes 11

Thanks very much. Works for me - but would have preferred itunes 11 to have worked!

Just adding another "this is not working and wrong" post to the mix... I commonly download "premium" versions of my favorite podcasts (higher bitrates), and manually import them and set them to type 'Podcast' within iTunes... this no longer working... the immediate impact is that I no longer get the forward/backward 15-second buttons, nor the 2x/halfspeed option button during playback on my iPod. Setting them to audiobook might give me those options back, I'll have to see - but that may screw up or at least add complexity to my use of playlists to pre-set my listening order of podcasts and music for my long commutes and travel... I think audiobooks will work on playlists as well, but the need to work around this change is stupid.

I'm having the same problem, I have to convert some of my favorite video podcasts in order to have them work on my older iPod. I used to be able to download, then "Convert to iPod", delete the original, then make the new one (put in Movies) a Podcast. I'm currently trying out editing the flags using http://www.mp3tag.de/en/download.html, which is something I've used before. Trial and error sadly, but at least it's free.

I've got all sorts of media now lumped in with Music, and they weren't before version 11. I cannot believe Apple let this slip past QA. But they did.

Seeing as items purchased from iTunes are already classified by Apple as being of that media type (music, podcast, movie, etc.), exactly what purpose is there in modifying the media type? Like, why would you want to classify a movie as a TV show, or vice versa?

Hi Doc411. When I upgraded to iTunes 11, a bunch of new songs, movies and TV shows appeared in my iTunes library. All the items had the little iCloud symbol next to their names. Upon examination, some of the items were free content (past "free songs of the week" - that kind of thing). In other cases, the items were things I had purchased from the Apple Store, but no longer wanted and had subsequently deleted from my own library. I guess Apple kept a record of these prior purchases and made them avaialble to me again in my iTunes 11 library.

I deleted all these unwanted items from my new iTunes 11 library and from iCloud, and now all seems to be ok. I am not sure if this is what you are experiencing ...

Hi xTorabu. I think it is just a matter of personal preference. In my case, I purchase content for my 5 year-old daughter from the Apple Store. Dora The Explorer is a TV show, but there also are Dora The Explorer movies. For the movies, I change the Media Kind to "TV Show", and I treat the movie as just another expisode of the TV show. This puts all the Dora The Explorer content in one place. It makes it easier for my daughter to navigate on the Apple TV or iPad to find her content. There are lots of cases like this, but again, it is just a matter of personal perference, and I hope Apple has not removed this preference in iTunes 11 ...

I agree, the issue is not limited to music and podcasts. Normally I purchase tv shows in itunes and change the media type to movies so that all the files show up under movies. That way, my son can easily locate the show he wants to watch without having to switch between movies and tv. I hope this issue get resolved.

Aha, that makes sense pomme4moi. I'm not entirely sure if it's an intended feature either, but I will say that my purchased iTunes content also has the media type disabled, so it's not like you're an edge case or anything.

Same issue. I like to save non-podcast audio files in podcast format, like a 'listening list', to track what I've listened to and enable the skip functionality. Although I'm warming to the new iTunes, I was very annoyed to find that the freedom to do this has been revoked.

I've already experienced trouble with the Podcasts app whereby non-subscribable/unlisted podcasts don't appear in their respective albums, which caused me to uninstall it.

I sincerely hope that this is a bug, and not a permanent limitation of iTunes. There's a wealth of audio out there that can't be subscribed to via the podcast directory, but Apple seems to be limiting our ability to take advantage of this.

Yes, similar problems with changing the media kind between podcast, audiobook, iTunes U, etc.

iTunes 11 wants to classify any file I change the media kind to "music" which is WRONG.

And I do not have iTunes Match activated in the Store, which someone suggested as a possible fix, so that is not the problem.

Wish I had stayed at iTunes 10.

Unfortunately this did not work for me. It still loads into Music and now the Media Kind is greyed out.

I didn't notice iTunes 11 updating the library when it launched first time, so perhaps a downgrade is possible. Does someone have a link to iTunes 10.7 I can download until they sort out all of these problems?

People say the old interface was clunky and horrible. I would say this new interface feels clunkier to me. What was wrong with having a left-hand column anyway?

EDIT: http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1576 - trying this now.

EDIT 2: Bit more involved: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4553695?answerId=20441475022#20441475022 or http://forums.macrumors.com/showpost.php?p=16400819&postcount=6 - I'll do it tomorrow 😉

Just wanted to add to the thread. Same thing here can't switch from music to podcast. Thanks for monkeying up the one custom feature I use.

This seems to be a winner!

Well, at least until Apple straightens it out for real.

Thanks so much for heavy lifting!

aloha and mahalo,

Timmy_B_Kona

I'm not happy with Apple about this. I used that function all the time. Apple, please fix this! Missing iTunes 10!