Hatrack River Forum: iTunes

This is topic iTunes in forum Books, Films, Food and Culture at Hatrack River Forum.

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Posted by Speed (Member # 5162) on :

I listen to all my music at home from a computer, so it's important to me to have a good jukebox program. I used RealOne player for a while, then I found MusicMatch a couple years ago and liked it much better, so I've been using that. But last week a friend of mine convinced me to download iTunes. It's nice... just about everything that I liked about MusicMatch is on iTunes, plus there are plenty of things I didn't like about MusicMatch that are fixed with this program. However, there are a few things about iTunes that are bugging me. It may be that I haven't found out how to do these things yet, or maybe iTunes just doesn't do them. In any case, I thought I'd ask the Mac-o-philes on the board just in case I'm missing something obvious.

1) The main problem I have with iTunes is how difficult it is to change track tags. MusicMatch was excellent for this. You could change one field for multiple tracks quickly and simultaneously, and even change file names to conform to track tag changes. On iTunes, if you want to change an artist name or album title for example, you have to individually change it for each track. And there are many fields, like year and track number, that I can't change at all. I don't know why they would do that.

2) A less serious problem that I have is that it doesn't give me the option of saving a playlist as a .m3u file. There are things I like about the .txt format of playlists, but my mp3-CD player reads .m3u files. Not that I use it that much, but it would be nice to have the option.

3) I don't understand why it only has a pause button instead of a stop button. I've got a bit of the OCD, and the thought of perpetually paused music bothers me a little.

4) One of my favorite things about MusicMatch was the fact that it would scroll the name of the currently playing track/album/artist in the toolbar so that I didn't have to maximize the player when I wanted to see what it was playing. I suspect that this is a feature I'll just have to learn to live without if I make the change, but I will miss it.

If I could solve these four problems, I'd un-install MusicMatch right now and never think of it again. As it is, I'm still having reservations about making the switch entirely. Are any of these problems due to my ignorance, or are they all just iTunes shortcomings? Are there any other jukebox programs that are superior to Real, MusicMatch or iTunes that I'm unaware of?

Posted by Desdemona (Member # 7100) on :

Are you on a Mac or Windows?

Posted by Speed (Member # 5162) on :

Windows

Posted by Rappin' Ronnie Reagan (Member # 5626) on :

quote:
1) The main problem I have with iTunes is how difficult it is to change track tags. MusicMatch was excellent for this. You could change one field for multiple tracks quickly and simultaneously, and even change file names to conform to track tag changes. On iTunes, if you want to change an artist name or album title for example, you have to individually change it for each track. And there are many fields, like year and track number, that I can't change at all. I don't know why they would do that.

In order to change information for multiple tracks at once, just select all the tracks you want to change and then select Get Info.

quote:
3) I don't understand why it only has a pause button instead of a stop button. I've got a bit of the OCD, and the thought of perpetually paused music bothers me a little.

If you're looking at a different playlist than the one the song currently playing is in, the pause button changes to a stop button.

quote:
4) One of my favorite things about MusicMatch was the fact that it would scroll the name of the currently playing track/album/artist in the toolbar so that I didn't have to maximize the player when I wanted to see what it was playing. I suspect that this is a feature I'll just have to learn to live without if I make the change, but I will miss it.

I'm pretty sure there are third-party programs that will display info like that. Have you looked on versiontracker.com?

edit: I found this program that converts iTunes playlists to .m3u.

Posted by Desdemona (Member # 7100) on :

Well, #1 can be solved if you're on a mac, but I'm not sure about Windows.

Posted by Speed (Member # 5162) on :

Hey, that works. Thanks, RRR. Seems like a really odd thing to call a manual tag editor, but as long as I know, I'm happy. [Smile]

I'll have to try that versiontracker. If that works, iTunes will be the shiz-nit. [Big Grin]

Posted by Annie (Member # 295) on :

RRR is actually a computer.

Posted by Just another Dharma bum (Member # 6879) on :

Anyone know why in some Libraries, I can't change the order of the songs??

Posted by Speed (Member # 5162) on :

That's the problem. I have everything the way I want it, and I want very tight control over how they're organized, named and tagged. I like having an easy way to make changes in bulk, but I have to be able to control exactly what changes are made. In fact, I'm not even too happy to have that option; it kind of scares me that if I pushed the wrong button all my files would be re-organized. I messed with iTunes once at someone else's house once and I noticed that, and that's one of the things that kept me from trying it before now.