How do I stop i-tunes from changing the genres for my songs without my consent?

To clarify, I've been running i-tunes for nearly 5 years now. This only started happening after itunes 11 came out. Other than the too-small cover art view, I actually like many of the changes- I've been trying to get a static "show what's playing" cover art thing since they took that option away from me a few versions back, and now it defaults to that. I like a lot of the other elements of the new interface. But a program repeatedly changing my genres without my consent is a deal breaker if there is no fix.

I like organizing my collection my way and took time over the years to get it done- itunes is acting like the equivalent of a bully coming in and knocking down a kid's ornate sand castle over and over again. This is BS. Again, a computer is supposed to do what *I* tell it to, not the other way around.

What's next? Changing album titles? Album artwork? Song names? Playlists? Maybe it'll decide what music I should or shouldn't listen to at any given time, or start going in and deleting anything I bought from Amazon or Google or imported from CD.

This all reeks of Apple arrogance.

It doesn't make me want to make the sacrifices required to get another i-pod classic, that's for sure. Just the other day I was mentioning it'd make a great gift (In a theoretical discussion- No one is likely to get me a gift that that's pricey). Now I am wondering if I need to find something else.

I've always loved itunes and my ipod. If I wasn't so poor, I'd probably have an Apple computer and an iphone. The only thing that's traditionally bothered me about Apple is how expensive everything is. But I always said "You know, itunes is free, I only need the one music player, I love music, it's worth the sacrifice". If apple is going to treat us like we're they're thralls and not let us manage our own music collections, I'm out.

Sorry if that was a bit over the top. I just love my music and my music collection, and want to be able to keep it organized in the way I prefer to organize it (and took a lot of time to get "right").

Anyone else noticing genre listings changing on their songs? Anyone know of a way to stop this behavior?

I love itunes in most respects, so I'd like to be able to find a way to fix this so I can continue with it. I hate the idea of giving up a music player that I for the most part love over one issue and go to a new music player that might have have other issues (Plus, the ipod classic is really the only thing that'll hold my whole collection). It seems like there should be a work-around somewhere.

Ugh. I thought I was exagerating when I said song name changes were next. Apparently, I was literally correct. I haven't seen it yet personally, but Tooltomus says he has.

I thought the genre changes had stopped, only to see that they'd started up again a few minutes ago. This is getting really old really fast.

Again, why does Apple seem to think it can do whatever it wants to our bought and paid for music without our permission? This isn't about interface changes or whatever, which are all well within their rights, but to actually alter our files themselves without asking or even notifying us. They've got to be kidding... Isn't there some way to turn this off?

Why are they doing this? What's the point of it? Is it intentional or some kind of bug? Is anyone from Apple going to bother to even tell us?

I feel like I had some great music software and a great music player. I've used them for hours every day for years. I really love smart playlists and a whole bunch of features. It's very upsetting to see them go in this direction.

You know, record companies and music sellers have been pushing the idea of legally purchased files for years, saying it's just the same as CDs or whatever. And I've been dutifully buying my files this whole time from various legal sellers instead of pirating them. And now they're basically doing the equivalent of breaking into my home and messing around with my CDs- scrobbling all over the covers and album booklets, etc..

Why even have a genre setting the user can change if the program is going to keep overriding it and change genres? Why even have a song setting the user can change if the program is going to keep overriding it and change song titles? What happens when the program gets something wrong?

Anyone know how to turn this off? Would going back to itunes 10 help or is this coming from the server to every version of itunes? Is there other music player software that will leave my music alone that will preserve my playcounts, ratings, playlists, last played, and so on and so forth, and support syncing to my ipod? Can I somehow cut itunes off from contacting apple's servers to look up information and make these changes?

Also noting some tracks being changed from, for example, track "1 of 13" simply to "1", often right after playing them. Keep having to reset that also. Another example of the software seeming to fight me over how I've chosen to organize my music. It makes no sense to have these fields be user editable and then override the user's edits repeatedly.

Please everyone use this link to complain directly to Apple as well as posting in the thread:

Apple - iTunes - Feedback

Let's make sure that they understand that this is a major issue for many of us and that it isn't lost in sea of other itunes 11 complaints.

I don't have itunes match and have selected the option to hide songs in the cloud (past purchases from itunes) from day one with itunes 11.

This is changing the genre on my *local copies* of these songs. And manually changing the genre back does little good (Though I do it anyway), because Apple keeps flipping the genre back to what it wants after some time passes.

And, no, I am not redownloading the songs, unless Apple is doing it in the background over and over again without telling me, and I don't see why it would, because I've always had local copies of all my songs on this hard drive. It wouldn't be filling in the blanks. This is my entire music collection.