What are your thoughts on the New iTunes 11?

Hi Paul,

Got your reply. BIG PROBLEM...I don't own a Mac. I have a Windows XP.....I did follow your instructions about finding my music, but I had already done that about 3 days ago. I want to move my music back to Itunes. I purchased 1 album and 3 songs from Itunes Fri & wanted to make a CD with that music and a few others I had in my music folder....that is when all the problems started....I am a PC novice and my PC seems to have a mind of it's own...like Hal!!!!

I've not used itunes before but having just got an ipod I have been forced to. And now I know why I've not used it before!

In my usual player, I can move tracks if they have been mislocated, by dragging them onto the correct album. I can edit and rename the tags on the track. I can copy and paste album art. I can sort tracks by date they were recorded. I have all my tracks (over 43 gigs of music) dated, categorised and rated in the way I want.

iTunes has recategorised my music to something it prefers. My ratings have vanished. I cant seem to move the tracks back to where I wanted them so I have musicals and operas where most of the tracks are in the right place but one track has mysteriously been identified by iTunes as belonging in a different album. I can't seem to edit the artist, so some of my classical tracks have the performer as artist and others the composer (which is what I want for my classical music). If iTunes can't find the album art - which it won't be able to for my LPs which have been converted to digital format - I can't copy and paste the art I want, it has to be blank. It doesn't seem to have picked up the track recording dates or classical composing dates.

Am I supposed to spend the next few months re-rating everything and adding the missing data because iTunes hasn't done it? This program is so out of date, it is unbelievable.

Apple, please can I have my options back to what I want rather than what you think I should want? Alternatively, give me the option to use a different music playback program. One that actually works.

cowandgit wrote:

I've not used itunes before but having just got an ipod I have been forced to. And now I know why I've not used it before!

In my usual player, I can move tracks if they have been mislocated, by dragging them onto the correct album.

What was your old app? I'd like to try it. Since this thread is in the "iTunes for Mac" discussions, I assume you're on a Mac. (And, of course, there are several alternatives to iTunes if you're running Windows.)

Is it possible that the metadata of some of your old tracks has problems that you overlooked because your old app allowed you drag tracks onto albums rather than fix the metadata itself, as is necessary in iTunes? I recommend that you spend an hour learning about how iTunes works. The "Take Control" series of books are great if you can spend a little money on the iTunes 11 book. Otherwise the iTunes manual is OK. http://www.takecontrolbooks.com/itunes-11

Many thanks for your prompt response and advice. Although I can't at the moment justify paying for a manual, I did manage to find useful online help through following your link and working my way onwards from that and have now found the well hidden way to edit tags and import artwork which will help enormously.

I am new to apple devices so please forgive my finding the interface non-intuitive. I've never had to access a manual to use a program before and I've been using computers for 20 years on a daily basis at home and before that for a some time at work so it was rather a culture shock to find a simple music player difficult to customise. Perhaps there is a tutorial buried in iTunes somewhere, but I haven't found it.

Anyway, I shall spend tomorrow tweaking and messing about and see if I can improve the setup it has defaulted to.

Still not very happy about having to add dates and ratings which iTunes didn't pick up from my music library, however. I loathe most things Microsoft but it has to be said that wmp has always managed to do that when I've been forced to use it (I have used a few different programs but am currently using J River Music Jukebox on my laptop whilst I get used to how ipod and Mac work.

Er.... now to work out how to tag this so you get some points.......

Get info should help for editing tags. Right click or use the File menu > Get Info.

The info dialog will show the file kind in the summary tab. You may find that certain tags can't be changed on certain file types, I think WAV/AIFF's don't allow artwork, you can use the 'Advanced menu > Create xxx version' to make one that is editable based on your current encoder settings (in the iTunes preferences).

You can also bulk edit tags if you select multiple items, which is good for setting album names or making the artist name the same case or spelling etc.

You should also consider asking iTunes to get artwork for the items that were on LP, many have been released on other formats. There are apps like Tagalicoius or Music Brainz Picard that can help getting the artwork & tags etc. Just have backups before making major library changes, the files get updated, so that may effect any other apps that use them too.

I'd also use the popup menu to reveal files in the Finder/ Windows explorer, check the permissions are correct, if you don't have editing permission you won't be able to edit the metadata. I'd select a specific song, find the file, copy it somewhere else, delete it in iTunes and then reimport the file into iTunes to see if it becomes editable, check the permissions again.

The things you describe don't seem normal, iTunes can do many of the things that seemed locked for you. Are you using iCloud or a network disk for the library?

Another question is what did you migrate from? Does that app save the metadata into the files? Ratings are usually stored by the app not the files so you normally have to be carefull with how you import. I think you can create playlists of the 1 star, 2 star, 3 start… songs & then import that playlist to iTunes then batch change the ratings via get info.

For tips on linking albums together in iTunes and on your iPod see Grouping tracks into albums. The images are for the previous version but the advice is the same.

tt2

A few thoughts:

- If you look at the little screengrab video I did ealier this week (previous page of this thread), you might pick up a few pointers about how album metadata gets messed up in the first place, and what to do about it. Here's the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HheulVpNX0c

- On all Mac apps, check the Help pulldown. For iTunes, there's a manual, tutorials, quick answers to questions, etc. I agree with you that iTunes is not intuitive enough and shouldn't require the learning curve it does, but the answers to most questions are in the Help pulldown. BTW, I also agree with you that iTunes 11 seems out-of-date. The iTunes app needs a re-think, and 11 is not it, since in some ways iTunes 10 was better.

- I disagree that editing metadata is "hidden" in iTunes. Because I've used a Mac for a long time, it seems second nature to me to hit command-i or to right-click (to see all options) whenever I need to do anything. Also, when you're in what Apple now calls the Songs view (a list view), so can edit all the tags directly in that view.

I don't understand why it is that Apple hardware can be so great, but iTunes keeps getting worse and worse each version. I really hate the version that is out now. I just want a simple music player. I want to sort, filter, and play just the music I want. I don't really want it grouping things on its own. I don't really care about cover art and sorting into albums. I wish I could go back to the previous version but likely something would get messed up and I would be worse off than I am now.

Apple, I hope you are listening. Can't you build a simple interface option?

Did you say you were new to iTunes?

When you view your list of songs, right-click on the 'info-bar' above your song list. That should give you the list of available info that can be put onto your computer screen in column form. Make sure 'rating' and 'date' are checked. And you can jumble around the 'info' columns by left-clicking and moving them to the order that you want. You can 'size them' also.

I think the new version of iTunes is horrible and a sign of more things to come with the passing of Steve Jobs. The user interface is cumbersome and not intuitive. Seems to follow the complex and confusing design of Windows and Android programs not Apple.

Many thanks to all the people who have responded - I've been busy working through your tips and am starting to get the hang of this a bit more, although it did take me a while to suss some of it out! It's unlikely either iTunes or any other program would have the artwork for my old vinyl music as most of it is over half a century old and a fair bit is from live concerts we did in the good old days! However, I have now found out how to import the artwork through 'get data'. I had misinterpreted this as getting data from an online source rather than being the editing interface. Think I have a slight Mac language barrier there!

There's no problem with permissions or understanding the metdata - I've been doing that for years with other programs. iTunes seems to be one of those programs that does loads of stuff if you know how to use it and appears not to do much if you don't!

I think there must have been some faults in the install as well as I didn't originally have the help tab. Having uninstalled and reinstalled it suddenly appeared, which helps a lot. I still find that my ipod doesn't always connect wirelessly, though it's fine when it's wired up. The settings say that it is connecting wirelessly, but it just doesn't. Not a major problem as I can leave the lightning connector in one of the spare sockets on my hub and just plug it in as needed.

I also still have a problem with dates. On the selections of things to display I can check 'release date' however I can find no place to edit this in the metdata; there is a 'date' field there but this is a different field. I don't know if there is something else I need to do to edit this.

Again, many thanks to all of you for your help. Can anyone tell me how I can give you the credit points on the site for your assistance?

I will carry on editing and messing about over the next week or so - I already have all the music saved in two different external drives as there is no way I want to have to digitalise it all again.

I don't think you can give points if you didn't create the initial post.

I think the release date is a cruel joke on Apple's part - another tag that you can see but not edit, like the hidden podcasts tags that fragment the feeds into separate lists.

You'll probably need AtomicParsley or another tag editor to set those dates. I think http://mp3tag.de/en/index.html is powerful on Windows (mostly a Mac user, accept when iTunes forces me to fix it's mistakes in a VM :^) )

You may want to check formatting guidelines on http://code.google.com/p/mp4v2/wiki/iTunesMetadata, incase iTunes decides to 'make tags up'.

I'm guessing you know about id3 tag versions, you may want to upgrade them to get extra fields, the mp3tag forums had lots of info IIRC. iTunes does it via the context menu, right click a track.

Oh & I forgot to mention, the release date doesn't seem to be available as a Smart playlist filter, so once you have it set there is little you can do with it other than manual sorting (at least on iTunes 10.7).

cowandgit wrote:

...

There's no problem with permissions or understanding the metdata - I've been doing that for years with other programs. iTunes seems to be one of those programs that does loads of stuff if you know how to use it and appears not to do much if you don't!

I think there must have been some faults in the install as well as I didn't originally have the help tab....

I also still have a problem with dates. On the selections of things to display I can check 'release date' however I can find no place to edit this in the metdata; there is a 'date' field there but this is a different field. I don't know if there is something else I need to do to edit this.

- I like your summation of the iTunes UI philosophy. Apple design is all about simplicity, sometimes to a fault. Apple tries to make programs (and iGadgets) seem simple and intuitive for the average user by hiding all the under-the-hood stuff. I was reading a think-piece yesterday that quoted philosopher Alfred North Whitehead from 1911: "Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them." That's certainly Apple's goal. The underlying Apple message: "Don't think, do." But thinking is sometimes important, and even fun.

- Incomplete or corrupt installations account for many of the "bug" reports and complaints about iTunes (and other bloated, complex applications, too, for that matter).

- Drew nailed it with his comment about the Release Date field being a cruel joke. It gets filled in automatically for Podcasts and Movie purchases, but it doesn't seem to be something we can edit. For now the best you can do is use the Year field.

- As I said before, I recommend Album Artwork Assistant for adding artwork. Easier and faster than doing it manually. And of course, if the album name and artist agrees with something in the iTunes Store, you can get the artwork with a right-click.

Biggest piece of ****! OMG itunes is so fustrating and slow.