iTunes 11 organization question (HELP!)

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iTunes 11 organization question (HELP!)

I recently upgraded to iTunes 11 and I feel like I made a big mistake. It feels like all of the work I have put into organizing my music in previous versions has been undone.

However, I am trying to keep an open mind and see if I can learn what I need to do to get back to where I was with my music organization.

First, I will say that I probably have a lot of unconventional music and use it in an unconventional manner. A huge chunk of my music is used for tabletop RPG gaming, where I play music that is appropriate to whatever is happening in the game. For example, one of my Genres is "Combat" and another is "Background". Both Genres have "Artists" called "Video Games", which contain music taken from various video games I have owned (further sorted by "Album" further down the heirarchy). A LOT of this music was either never part of a conventional album or has since been renamed by myself to better suit what I am using it for.

Rather than getting into what iTunes has done to how my music is displayed on my iPhone, let me explain what I want out of iTunes and see if someone can help me use iTunes 11 to get there.

I want to set up iTunes 11 so that on my iPhone I can go to "Music", select "Genres", select a genre, and have it display Artists IN THAT GENRE *ONLY* in alphabetical order. Then I want to be able to select one of the Artists and have my iPhone display ONLY the Albums BY THAT ARTIST, IN THAT GENRE, in alphabetical order. I do NOT want to see Albums by that Artist that are in another Genre, for example.

I want to see the Album titles ONLY, *NOT* each Album displayed as some kind of header followed by every song that Album contains. I want to have to click on an Album in order to see all of the music it contains.

Finally, I want my iPhone to stop playing music once the last song from an Album has been played, NOT skip ahead to the next Album and start playing music from it.

Right now, if I go to "Music" on my iPhone, and choose to view Genres, it displays them all well enough and in alphabetical order. Once I select a Genre, however, things go wonky. Say I select "Background" -- it will display a list of Artists in seemingly random order, many of which are repeated one or more times. Many of these Artists (such as "Video Games") have a different Genre than the one I selected, but do have the same name as an Artist in the Genre I DID select.

iTunes 11 SEEMS to be trying to display EVERY instance of EVERY Artist saved in the iTunes library, even if it that instance isn't part of the Genre I selected. This is not what I want.

Any advice?

iPhone 5, Windows Vista

Posted on Jan 19, 2014 9:32 AM

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Answer 1

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turingtest2

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Jan 19, 2014 10:24 AM in response to Werebat

The main differences between iTunes 11 and earlier versions are the loss of coverflow and ability to have multiple windows open.

In Windows, you can restore much of the look & feel of iTunes 10.7 with these shortcuts:

ALT to temporarily display the menu bar
CTRL+B to show or hide the menu bar
CTRL+S to show or hide the sidebar
CTRL+/ to show or hide the status bar (won't hide for me on Win XP)
Click the magnifying glass top right and untick Search Entire Library to restore the old search behaviour
Use View > Hide <Media Kind> in the cloud or Edit > Preferences > Store and untick Show iTunes in the cloud purchases to hide the cloud items. The second method eliminates the cloud status column (and may let iTunes start up more quickly)
If you don't like having different coloured background & text in the Album (Grid) view use Edit > Preferences > General and untick Use custom colours for open albums, movies, etc.
With iTunes 11.0.3 and later you can enable artwork in the Songs view from View > Show View Options (CTRL+J) making it more like the old Album List view
View > Show View Options (CTRL+J) also contains options to change the sorting of grid based views

iTunes doesn't provide any customization over and above what is already there, though some of the existing options are well hidden. Explore them thoroughly and you should be able to find something useful.

tt2

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Answer 2

Werebat Author

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Jan 19, 2014 10:56 AM in response to turingtest2

turingtest2, none of this addressed my original questions, but it was really good information that has made my iTunes look a lot better -- so thanks a lot!

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Answer 3

turingtest2

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Jan 19, 2014 11:23 AM in response to Werebat

Hmm, I sure I meant to mention the Songs and List views as ways of narrowing down the display of content. I suspect that you can't get exactly what you want, but if iTunes 10.7 was working reasonably well then you should be able to get back to something that looks similar.

There's more stuff on logical organization of the iTunes library at Grouping tracks into albums. It doesn't address your main concerns in the original post but might prove useful when it comes to listings with repeated artists.

tt2

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Answer 4

the fiend

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Jan 19, 2014 11:33 AM in response to Werebat

Werebat wrote:

turingtest2, none of this addressed my original questions, but it was really good information that has made my iTunes look a lot better -- so thanks a lot!

Not quite sure why you think that, and having re-read your post three times, I cannot understand what you are doing that causes you to have all this trouble

Let's start with your iTunes Library.

You said:

I want to set up iTunes 11 so that on my iPhone I can go to "Music", select "Genres", select a genre, and have it display Artists IN THAT GENRE *ONLY* in alphabetical order.

Look at the screenshot below (I'm in Songs View, looking at one particular genre - Alternative):

I'm looking at the Alternative genre, and this shows only artists who have music in the genre, alphabetically. In the third column, are the albums on which music in that genre appears. In the bottom window is a list of songs in that genre only. Does that not do what you asked?

You also said:

Then I want to be able to select one of the Artists and have my iPhone display ONLY the Albums BY THAT ARTIST, IN THAT GENRE, in alphabetical order. I do NOT want to see Albums by that Artist that are in another Genre

Now on my ancient iPod Touch (which is basically the same as an iPhone), I can go into the Genre heading and find a list of artists, who have music in my chosen genre. If I then drill down into that artist I see only songs by that artist of that genre. Nothing else. Have I misunderstood what you are trying to do?

Furthermore, you also went on about:

I want to see the Album titles ONLY, *NOT* each Album displayed as some kind of header followed by every song that Album contains. I want to have to click on an Album in order to see all of the music it contains.

I have to confess, I don't understand this one. Surely, if you look under Genre on the iPhone, you see a list of artists. Drilling down into that artist will show a list of their albums (unless you have only one album perhaps) and drilling down into that album will show only songs on that album, in that genre?

and finally...

Finally, I want my iPhone to stop playing music once the last song from an Album has been played, NOT skip ahead to the next Album and start playing music from it.

Okay - so having gone into Genre/Artist/Album and selecting the first track, in normal (not shuffle) mode, all the songs of that genre by that artist on that album will play. Nothing else. Once they have, nothing else will play!

Sorry, but I can't see why you are having issues with this.

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Answer 5

Werebat Author

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Jan 19, 2014 1:13 PM in response to the fiend

the fiend, what you describe is more or less exactly how my iPhone (and before that, my iPad) operated. After installing iTunes 11, that is no longer the case.

If I look in the column browser on iTunes as you suggest, I get something similar to what you describe, although there is an odd duplication of artist names and not everything is alphabetized. For example, if I select the genre "Background", I see 22 artists in this order (top to bottom):

Creepy/Alien, Bleak, Spooky/Undead, Other, City, Creepy/Alien, Cult, Dungeon, Spooky/Undead, City, Inspirational, Other, Dungeon, Mystical, Other, Spooky/Undead, Tech, Tension/Suspense, Terrain, Travel, Tribal, Spooky/Undead

That's right, there's a lot of duplication there. The different artists with the same name all have different tracks, although some share the same album (for example, three of the four artists labeled "Spooky/Undead" have one identical album each, "Scratches Original Soundtrack", but each of them has different SONGS from that album).

When I use my iPhone, rhyme and reason seem to completely leave the building. Say I go into the "Background" genre. I see 25 artists (not 22) in this order (top to bottom):

Creepy/Alien, Bleak, Spooky/Undead, Tension/Suspense, Dungeon, Other, City, Creepy/Alien, Cult, Dungeon, Spooky/Undead, City, Inspirational, Spooky/Undead, Other, Dungeon, Mystical, Other, Spooky/Undead, Tech, Tension/Suspense, Terrain, Travel, Spooky/Undead

So, there is an additional artist named "Spooky/Undead" and another artist named "Dungeon" when I look under the genre "Background" on my iPhone.

It is worth mentioning that, unlike in iTunes, on my iPhone all of these duplicates appear to have the same songs in them!

Now let's say I go back to the genres menu and select the "Combat" genre. One of the artists there is called "Video Games". I have another genre called "Quips" that also has an artist in it called "Video Games". Prior to iTunes 11, if I selected the genre "Combat" on my iPhone and then the artist "Video Games", I would see all of the albums in "Video Games" that were also in "Combat". Now, I see all of the albums in "Video Games" in "Combat" and ALSO all of the albums in "Video Games" that are in "Quips". This completely screws up my track organization.

Once I "drill down" (as you say) to the Album level, I see albums listed in some order other than alphabetical (randomly?), with a big square to the left where I assume an album cover is supposed to be, and every track in that album listed below. For example, if I go to genre "Background" and select the artist at the top of the list ("Creepy/Alien"), the first album I see is "X-Files" with a big square next to it with the words "X-Files" and "Creepy/Alien" inside of it, and the song "X-Files Theme" (a track) underneath that. Then below THAT is another album, "Alien Resurrection", with the same sort of square to its left and all of the songs from that album that are under the artist "Creepy/Alien" underneath it. Note that "X-Files" should be AFTER "Alien Resurrection" if one were to sort alphabetically. For what it's worth, the next album in the list is "Xena: Warrior Princess" and the one after THAT is "The Sixth Sense".

Also note that all of the above albums were purchased as physical discs by me and installed in iTunes years ago. None of them were pirated in any way and none of this goofiness was happening before I installed iTunes 11.

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Answer 6

Werebat Author

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Jan 19, 2014 1:36 PM in response to Werebat

Now this is curious -- I just noticed that at least one of my albums in the Songs view is not in alphabetical order. Curiously, if I select all of the albums with the same artist in its genre, and then click CTRL-I to edit them all, and rename all of their artists to the same artist they were (Movies), that one album is STILL out of alphabetical order -- at the top of the list of albums.

???

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Answer 7

turingtest2

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Jan 19, 2014 1:44 PM in response to Werebat

Sorting in Songs and List views depends on the active sort column. Values in sort fields can be used to override the standard sort order.

tt2

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Answer 8

Werebat Author

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Jan 19, 2014 1:45 PM in response to Werebat

turingtest2, I read the article you sent along. I think part of my problem is this:

* * * * *

"The iPod (and iTunes to a lesser extent) conflates two or more albums with the same title, most obviously with Greatest Hits. On the iPod this can result in one album acting as a combination of two or more. Selecting any cover gives all the tracks of all albums with the same title. See below how selecting either of two distinct albums with the same title gives a track listing which is a combination of both albums The workaround for this "Greatest Hits" bug is to give each album a unique title - I tend to go for Album - Album Artist as this reads clearly in the iTunes browser. Alternatively you could use the wording as it appears on the cover or append different numbers of spaces for each different album. Somewhat oddly, setting different values for Sort Album doesn't work."

(Screenshot Cut Out)

"N.b. The images above are for the V3.x firmware - iOS 4 actually manages to discriminate between the two albums and lists only the tracks of the selected album when using the Albums menu. However all the tracks will still be returned if you access the album via search, including voice. So, until Apple roll out a complete fix for the iPhone, similar fixes for older devices, and indeed iTunes itself, the workaround given may still present the best approach and will still be needed if an album name has been reused by the same artist, e.g. different "Greatest Hits" albums released for a band by different labels."

* * * * *

Could this explain albums with the same name popping up under every genre that has at least ONE of those albums contained within it? If this is the case, could it be that iTunes 11 is simply not for me?

Reverting to iTunes 10 is going to take me hours of work, in part because I made the mistake of doing a major reorganization right before upgrading and THEN backing everything up. As I understand it, you cannot convert iTunes 11 playlists to iTunes 10.

Do I have any other options? This is very, very frustrating.

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Answer 9

Werebat Author

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Jan 19, 2014 1:48 PM in response to turingtest2

turingtest2, I really appreciate your help on this. Forgive me, but I am having a hard time wrapping my head around what you mean by this:

"Sorting in Songs and List views depends on the active sort column. Values in sort fields can be used to override the standard sort order."

Can you give me an example of what you are talking about? I'd really prefer to go forward and adapt to the new iTunes rather than try to convert back, if possible.

Thanks again.

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Answer 10

turingtest2

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272,725 points

Jan 19, 2014 2:27 PM in response to Werebat

The "standard" view of an album is the tracks listed in track number order. In the songs view this is best achieved by selecting the heading of the Album column rather than say Name. I normally go for Album by Artist which you get if you tap the heading of the Album column again. A third tap cycles to Album By Artist/Year, another back to Album..

For various properties, i.e. Name, Artist, Album Artist, Album, Composer & Show (Programme) there are corresponding sort fields that modify the order. The Beatles gets an automatic sort value of Beatles which makes them sort under B instead of T. Inconsistencies in the use of these fields across different tracks by the same artist, or within the same album can, for example, make the same artist appear more than once in a list of artists, and in different places in the list than might otherwise be expected.

In general the rules governing organization within iTunes haven't really changed with iTunes 11. It might be the case that your use (or otherwise) of the Album Artist and Part of a compilation properties and the related column browser options cloud explain why things seem so different.

Each of my albums has a distinct album title and a consistent genre. and I don't seem to have any expected issues with the various views of my library. Can you show me a screen shot of the issue you are having?

tt2

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Answer 11

Werebat Author

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Jan 19, 2014 3:03 PM in response to turingtest2

turingtest2, it would seem that my library has been corrupted somehow, as when I look at the "sorting artists" and "sorting albums", some of them make no sense. For example, some tracks from the Resident Evil soundtrack had a "sorting album" that was a collection of 1920s music (that I do own). When I erased these, things seemed to calm down on iTunes at least (I have been able to consolidate a couple of albums that had previously been mysteriously separated).

I'm going to tinker with this a bit more and get back to this thread. Thanks a lot for the help you have provided so far!

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Answer 12

turingtest2

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272,725 points

Jan 19, 2014 3:14 PM in response to Werebat

Try this technique from the grouping article:

For rapidly scanning through the albums to see which may need attention use the Songs view, sorted as Album by Artist and enable the Column Browser from the View menu. Make sure the Albums column is enabled in the browser, select the first album, then use the down arrow key to select each album in turn looking for albums which need tweaking with one of the techniques below, such as albums with more than one artist, or where the tracks are out of sequence.

... or where the sort fields don't make sense.

Make sure all the fields of interest are visible.

tt2

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Answer 13

Werebat Author

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Jan 20, 2014 2:04 PM in response to turingtest2

OK, I spent a good amount of time fiddling with this last night and made some real progress. A couple of things I noticed:

As I said, some of my tracks had bizarre sorting tags. All of these came from other tracks that I do own, but I have no idea how they ended up on the wrong songs. Very weird.

Also, I noticed that some tracks (or maybe their albums) were being sorted by year. These were generally purchased albums.

I ended up selecting ALL of my songs and pressing "Control-I" to enter the "Info" area, where I deleted all sorting tags by clicking the squares to the left of them. This seemed to work in general, although there seem to be some holdouts who refuse to lose their sorting tags (again, generally these are purchased albums, but there are exceptions -- for example, a collection of songs ripped directly from an old video game that I later burned to CD).

Things do look a lot neater but the job isn't done.

First question -- how can I get my iPhone to stop sorting albums by date? It seems like I can't remove the dates from some albums.

Second question -- is there ANY way to make it so I HAVE to "drill down" into an album on my iPhone before I can see the songs on that album? I do NOT like the default view where I see all of the tracks under every album by a given artist right after I select the artist. It seriously messes with my ability to locate albums quickly and effeciently on the fly, which is important to me (note that some of my "artists" may have dozens of "albums" each, possibly over 100).

Third question -- what can I do about the situation where, when I select a genre on my iPhone, and then select an artist, it shows me ALL albums by that artist (even if they are in a different genre)? I do NOT want this to happen. I can think of a possible kludge where I could go through and rename some of my "artists" to, say, "Video Games B" and "Video Games C", but that's ugly and time consuming and I'd rather not.

Fourth question -- I am noticing that when I select a large group (such as the artist "Other" in my "Combat" genre, which has over 150 albums), it takes my iPhone QUITE A WHILE before it opens the group. It's only several seconds but it's very noticeable and was not happening in iTunes 10. Is this normal?

Finally -- I am getting some strange readings from my iPhone when I select some "artists". For example, in my "Backgrounds" genre, I see all artists in alphabetical order now -- Bleak, City, Creepy/Alien, Cult, Dungeon, Inspirational, Mystical, Other, Spooky/Undead, Tech, Tension/Suspense, Terrain, Travel, and Tribal. But when I select some of these, I get a header at the top of the screen that does not match. For example, if I were to choose the artist "City", my iPhone will bring me to the list of albums under "City" but the header at the top of the screen says "Spooky/Undead". It's only cosmetic because the list of albums is right, but it's weird. Why is this happening?

I have been trying to avoid ranting about this but I have to say that for all of the trouble I am having to deal with I am just not seeing any improvements in this new version of iTunes. Lots of cost for no benefit.

Anyway, thanks for helping make the cost less painful. Any info or advice would be appreciated!

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Answer 14

turingtest2

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272,725 points

Jan 20, 2014 3:29 PM in response to Werebat

Werebat wrote:

OK, I spent a good amount of time fiddling with this last night and made some real progress. A couple of things I noticed:

As I said, some of my tracks had bizarre sorting tags. All of these came from other tracks that I do own, but I have no idea how they ended up on the wrong songs. Very weird.

Also, I noticed that some tracks (or maybe their albums) were being sorted by year. These were generally purchased albums.

If using the standard sort column of Album by Artist year shouldn't come into it. The same sort order should be gernerally reflected within the iPhone menus. Again a screenshot of what you think is wrong might help.

I ended up selecting ALL of my songs and pressing "Control-I" to enter the "Info" area, where I deleted all sorting tags by clicking the squares to the left of them. This seemed to work in general, although there seem to be some holdouts who refuse to lose their sorting tags (again, generally these are purchased albums, but there are exceptions -- for example, a collection of songs ripped directly from an old video game that I later burned to CD).

Anything beginning with an article (a/an/the) will get a greyed out auto-sort value that omits the article and any following spaces. Anything that won't otherwise delete indicates issues with locked files or possibly multiple embedded tags.

Things do look a lot neater but the job isn't done.

First question -- how can I get my iPhone to stop sorting albums by date? It seems like I can't remove the dates from some albums.

Still not sure what you mean? Screenshot please.

Second question -- is there ANY way to make it so I HAVE to "drill down" into an album on my iPhone before I can see the songs on that album? I do NOT like the default view where I see all of the tracks under every album by a given artist right after I select the artist. It seriously messes with my ability to locate albums quickly and effeciently on the fly, which is important to me (note that some of my "artists" may have dozens of "albums" each, possibly over 100).

No, the only customizations are Group By Album Artist and Show All Music (iTunes in the Cloud). What you could do is use the search tool to find what you're after.

Third question -- what can I do about the situation where, when I select a genre on my iPhone, and then select an artist, it shows me ALL albums by that artist (even if they are in a different genre)? I do NOT want this to happen. I can think of a possible kludge where I could go through and rename some of my "artists" to, say, "Video Games B" and "Video Games C", but that's ugly and time consuming and I'd rather not.

Again I think whatever you see is just the way it works, though I'm trying to find a parallel in my library and don't seem to be able to. Perhaps it is simply that I tend to use genre reasonably consistentenly for artists and don't have any "jarring" instance of them showing up out of context.

Fourth question -- I am noticing that when I select a large group (such as the artist "Other" in my "Combat" genre, which has over 150 albums), it takes my iPhone QUITE A WHILE before it opens the group. It's only several seconds but it's very noticeable and was not happening in iTunes 10. Is this normal?

Are you accessing the library remotely here? If on the phone then I can't see that moving from iTunes 10 to 11 would affect that. Whatever the details I have a large library and a slow computer so I'm not one for noticing such issues.

Finally -- I am getting some strange readings from my iPhone when I select some "artists". For example, in my "Backgrounds" genre, I see all artists in alphabetical order now -- Bleak, City, Creepy/Alien, Cult, Dungeon, Inspirational, Mystical, Other, Spooky/Undead, Tech, Tension/Suspense, Terrain, Travel, and Tribal. But when I select some of these, I get a header at the top of the screen that does not match. For example, if I were to choose the artist "City", my iPhone will bring me to the list of albums under "City" but the header at the top of the screen says "Spooky/Undead". It's only cosmetic because the list of albums is right, but it's weird. Why is this happening?

Not sure, but it might be related to the "Greatest Hits" type of issue. Again I've not noticed the issue so I migth have to experiement to recreate it. I'm not aware of it being a problem on iOS devices, but I do recall that inconsistent capitalizations and/or improper use of sort fields to attempt to merge disparate values could confuse the way the device indexed items. There may be a similar explanation.

I have been trying to avoid ranting about this but I have to say that for all of the trouble I am having to deal with I am just not seeing any improvements in this new version of iTunes. Lots of cost for no benefit.

I still miss cover flow a little, but much prefer the new version of the grid layout.

Anyway, thanks for helping make the cost less painful. Any info or advice would be appreciated!

You're welcome. 🙂

tt2

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Answer 15

Werebat Author

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Jan 20, 2014 5:11 PM in response to turingtest2

Second question -- is there ANY way to make it so I HAVE to "drill down" into an album on my iPhone before I can see the songs on that album? I do NOT like the default view where I see all of the tracks under every album by a given artist right after I select the artist. It seriously messes with my ability to locate albums quickly and effeciently on the fly, which is important to me (note that some of my "artists" may have dozens of "albums" each, possibly over 100).

No, the only customizations are Group By Album Artist and Show All Music (iTunes in the Cloud). What you could do is use the search tool to find what you're after.

I was afraid of that. What you are basically telling me is that any amount of work I spend on "fixing up" iTunes is essentially putting lipstick on a pig. I'll be polite and say that this version of iTunes is not for me.

For anyone else reading this, there is a nice app called Picky available in the app store that takes care of many of the issues I have brought up. It uses all of your iTunes info; you don't even lose your playlists. It isn't quite perfect yet, but the author has been very responsive in several venues and did a recent update that incorporated some people's suggestions. It's only 99 cents, and much worth the price.

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