iTunes 12.2 - how to remove similar artists and influencers?

Allow me to play the role of Nerd Police, DeludedBrit... 😉

I am indeed frustrated with some elements with Apple, recently. The iTunes incursion being one of them. However, such rhetoric doesn't help the situation. You say 'Apple' needs to start thinking of its customers, which is of course anthropomorphizing the company. Granted, this doesn't change our frustration with certain elements of the company, but there isn't a big bad 'Apple Man' sitting in a chair smoking a cigar figuring out ways to screw us, that's just silly.

Apple is a rich company. Being a rich company isn't evil or bad, it's a sign of success. It means they do an incredible amount right. I would defend they also single-handedly saved the music industry. I also defend the reasons behind their need for growth. A company, no matter how rich, cannot sit still and stagnate. Think of RIM and the Blackberry. Apple must always seek new ways to grow. However, I believe we chose the Apple environment exactly because the Apple environment does not consist of invasive marketing and bloatware. As it stands, I see a recent trend toward this with Apple's new iTunes and the targeted advertising. I do not like it and I wish it gone.

And yes, the customer service is still incredible, setting the standard (at least in the US) that all other companies follow.

Apple is listening. Whether or not they take heed, that's another story.

Cheers.

Appreciate the reply.

I'd say Apple is a tad more than a rich company..it's now one of the worlds behemoths sitting on obscene amounts of cash reserves.

Moreover,just because something is successful does not mean it is "right"...think worlds biggest selling recording artists or top grossing motion pictures.These are usually a reflection of the bland easily satisfied tastes of the masses. So just because a product sells in vast quantities does not mean its a great product.

And despite what you post about its customer service, in my experience ( which sadly is quite extensive) this has dramatically declined,especially with regards to over the phone.

It should look at Amazon to see just how customers should be serviced.

<Edited by Host>

Thanks for the reply!

Amazon does have great customer service, from my experience with them. Agree totally. My experience with Apple has been medium to good, but not extensive.

Moreover,just because something is successful does not mean it is "right"...think worlds biggest selling recording artists or top grossing motion pictures.These are usually a reflection of the bland easily satisfied tastes of the masses. So just because a product sells in vast quantities does not mean its a great product.

I agree with the sentiment that success does not equal taste, but the problem with your argument in regards to Apple, is that they don't cater to the masses. On the whole, the Mac market share is less than 15% total. Their smart phone and music player MS is higher, indeed. Vast quantities? No, just good profit margins, carefully managed revenue streams, clever marketing, and good products. You can't get around that. Also, I'm saying they are doing something right (the aforementioned profit margins, managed revenue streams, marketing, and great products that people want to use) in the business sense, not in any moral sense.

[Apple is] now one of the worlds behemoths sitting on obscene amounts of cash reserves.

I'm not sure why being a big company is inherently bad, or why having large cash reserved is obscene. That's how I operate my own personal finances. Apple isn't even in the top ten richest companies in the world, which happen to be mostly banks and mostly Chinese. So it's a moot point.

What I hope to see in the future is a return to products that surprise and delight, and not a movement towards nickel and diming (penny pinching) customers with overblown advertising schemes. That includes spamming users on the iTunes interface.

Cheers,

There is a way to get 'hide' the bio/similar artists - if you make the side bar on the left (where you see all artists etc.) a little bigger (i.e. move it to the right) the bio/similar artists stop showing.

I know this doesn't disable it completely but at least it hides it from view. Hope that helps!

Alright, now I've been busy for awhile now. And I have figured it out. The method I use does indeed work but by the replies here, it was assumed that it doesn't work for a few of you. So I figured why it worked for me and I have a few songs bought off iTunes too and I got the same problem too. Well, I figured it out, all my music aside from the downloaded ones were from actual albums I went and bought at stores [i.e. Best Buy, Target, Wal-Mart, etc.] And they were in MP3 format. So I converted the downloaded ones into MP3 format and deleted the AAC format versions and voila, it's gone. If that doesn't work then I don't know what else to do. MP3 format is your last hope.

Somehow I don't think that - no matter how annoying it is - getting rid of the similar artists info is worth reducing the quality of the music in your library - something that converting between lossy formats always results in.

I really hate this artist column on iTunes.

I reduced the window of iTunes in width to hide this stupid thing. But this not a very good solution. Apple should add an hide option. Don't know why this is so difficult.

I'm not sure whether this is a change in 12.2.2, but it appears that as well as only being displayed for (some) artists where you have at least one iTunes Store purchase, the Biography section is only displayed in the "My Music" view, and not when you select Playlists (displaying the sidebar). When I actually go looking for this info (just to review its behavior) there is an odd symptom in that for the artists that satisfy the iTunes Store rule the Bio info is not always displayed - sometimes iTunes just leaves the space for it but nothing is actually shown.

Since I rarely, if even, interact with iTunes in My Music view this has become something of a non-issue, though I agree that for others the ability to turn the Bio on and off would be a benefit.

Nah didn't work for me either!

This thread nows says 'branched to a new discussion', but won't allow me access?

Apple, Apple, Apple!

Annoying, in the same way that I don't want to see lots of pictures of people I don't recognise and have zero interest in looking at. I'm not twelve.

I would like to see the album/song cover that I paid for, not a load of blurb and pictures in which I have absolutely zero interest, yet Apple think I should pay to have/see. Data and storage space cost money - mine.

Given the difference in sound quality of downloaded music over that of CD / Vinyl, plus the fact that the Apple experience is becoming increasingly frustrating and annoying - I'm going back and will not be buying music from Apple anymore.

I came to this discussion because today I noticed this annoying clutter for an artist that I hadn't played in quite some time. I've scrolled through my entire music library and didn't find any other occurrence. And, sure enough, there is one single song from this artist that I purchased on iTunes -- the only song I've ever purchased from iTunes! ...and the only song I will ever purchase from iTunes.

I found something that seemed to work for me. I noticed that it seems to only show the show similar artists/influences when the file format is Purchased AAC. If you go to "Preferences" and then "Import Settings" on the General tab, you can change it to import using MP3 encoding. Then you just have to highlight all the files that are Purchased AAC format, select "File", then "Create New Version" and "Create MP3 Version". This will create duplicates of all your files in MP3 format. Then just delete all of your AAC files, and the similar artists/influences section will disappear from your Artists when you have just the MP3 formatted files in there.

That totally worked, thank you!

One detail to mention: I noticed that when switching from AAC to MP3 the default bit rate was pretty low (160 kbps). In fact, without choosing "custom", the highest rate offered was 192kbps. I ended up choosing "custom", and then I was given many more options, and I just chose the same rate (256kbps) that I usually use.

perfect. thanks!

Several people have mentioned converting files to mp3 format. Yes, this will work, but there is a way to keep your files in ACC format. To fix the issue, select a song (or songs) that you have purchased from iTunes. Left-click with your mouse to find this option, or go to File > Create New Version > Create ACC Version. This will make a duplicate of your file and it will keep all of your metadata intact with one exception. The "kind" field will change from "Purchased AAC audio file" to "AAC audio file."

iTunes will no longer recognize this song as a purchase, and, once all of the purchased songs are eliminated from each artist's catalog within your library, the column in question will vanish.

A restart may be necessary.

I only had 460 purchased songs to deal with, so this did not take too long for me. I created a smart playlist that found all purchased music, and, afterward, I went to the main music library, added a "kind" column, sorted by that, and deleted all of the pruchased files.

I hope this helps.

N.