do you use iTunes

[SubFunk]

i totally love it, especially the scripts that are available, total time savers.
my fave is 'add to prep list', i can listen to iTunes while working on other things and if a tune comes up i want to DJ with for example, i just hit a 'button' and it adds it to my prep list, FTW!
and i like the integration of it into other audio programs as well.

[supamonsta]

iTunes + traktor rocks!

just prep your set list in a new list... open traktor, and mix!

I'd like to know a bit more about your scripts, Sub, what's this?

For iTunes, I love it, but I have the feeling itunes 7 was the better I had. Now itunes 9... it sucks when an ipod is connected... when no ipod, really great still

(import : I never use this. Allways organise my folders myself, then use iTunes as a huge "link" library, having all by names, genre, albums.... and some playlists for special groups)

cheers

[SubFunk]

check out this site: a must for every iTunes user

http://www.dougscripts.com/itunes/

and here is the particular script, which is called "isavefave"

http://www.sendspace.com/file/gzw1bu

and exactly, i use iTune's integration as well for mainly traktor, and the script is ftw dope for prepping a dj set.

cheers

[Nav]

Oh yeah, I use the Traktor integration loads, love that!

[Nick the Zombie]

What are people complaints with it? Am I missing something I should be using but cant in iTunes?

Let me preface this by saying that I really want to be wrong about this program, and I'm probably just missing something really obvious. I have lots of music in my iTunes library and I'd like to avoid having to transfer it all over to something new, especially considering I stupidly invested lots of money in DRM'ed music from the iTunes store. I have since moved over to Amazon which has a great app to download your music and import it into iTunes.

That being said, I like to make a playlist for each album. I feel that iTunes should be doing this automatically when I import music into its library. Instead, I have to go to the library, track down the songs, and then drag them all into the playlists section in the left hand column. Most of the time it's not too hard to find the songs all next to one another in the library, but sometimes the metatag information in the mp3 files will make it so that one or two of the songs end up somewhere else in the library list and I have to go hunting for them. It would be so much easier if a playlist was just automatically created when you drag a directory of mp3s onto the iTunes interface.

Additionally, The lack of right-click contextual menus in iTunes is astounding to me. When I'm out the door to the gym, I want to quickly plug in my iPod and transfer some new playlists to the device. I SHOULD be able to right-click on a playlist in iTunes and have an option like "transfer this playlist to your iPod." I have found no such option. Instead, I have to awkwardly drag the playlist up to the iPod icon, and of course I run into the top of the screen while doing so.

There are other issues, too, but let's just start with the ones that I mentioned above. Even if I'm wrong and these options DO exist, they don't seem to be accessible in a way that makes them easy to find and use.

[sporkles]

I use it. It's got its quirks, and I learnt quickly that having iTunes "organising" your library is a no-no, but it's all
I use for listening to music now. It bugs the crap out of me that you can't synchronise your library on two computers, but
I've learnt to live with it and work around it.

[beats me]

What are people complaints with it? Am I missing something I should be using but cant in iTunes?

Let me preface this by saying that I really want to be wrong about this program, and I'm probably just missing something really obvious. I have lots of music in my iTunes library and I'd like to avoid having to transfer it all over to something new, especially considering I stupidly invested lots of money in DRM'ed music from the iTunes store. I have since moved over to Amazon which has a great app to download your music and import it into iTunes.

That being said, I like to make a playlist for each album. I feel that iTunes should be doing this automatically when I import music into its library. Instead, I have to go to the library, track down the songs, and then drag them all into the playlists section in the left hand column. Most of the time it's not too hard to find the songs all next to one another in the library, but sometimes the metatag information in the mp3 files will make it so that one or two of the songs end up somewhere else in the library list and I have to go hunting for them. It would be so much easier if a playlist was just automatically created when you drag a directory of mp3s onto the iTunes interface.

Additionally, The lack of right-click contextual menus in iTunes is astounding to me. When I'm out the door to the gym, I want to quickly plug in my iPod and transfer some new playlists to the device. I SHOULD be able to right-click on a playlist in iTunes and have an option like "transfer this playlist to your iPod." I have found no such option. Instead, I have to awkwardly drag the playlist up to the iPod icon, and of course I run into the top of the screen while doing so.

There are other issues, too, but let's just start with the ones that I mentioned above. Even if I'm wrong and these options DO exist, they don't seem to be accessible in a way that makes them easy to find and use.

I'm really not sure what you're talking about on the album issue. Sounds like the problem might be with whoever or whatever is tagging your albums. By default iTunes organizes your tracks into artist folders and then albums inside that and then tracks from that album in that folder. I don't know why people complain about this organizational structure that makes the most sense. On the iTunes interface itself you can choose many of the tags you want to it to show and album is one of those tags. Then just sort or search by that. iPods even let you search by album. Maybe I'm missing something here.

The only problem I have, and this has nothing to do with iTunes and everything to do with whatever idiot decided this should be standard tagging practices, is whenever a song has a "featuring ...." credit in it instead of putting the "featuring" text in the song title tag they put it in the artist name tag. This happens a lot in Hip Hop albums. So when using iTunes default organizing structure of making the artist folder the first stop in the structure it will make a new artist folder for every single artist name that has a "featuring....." in it. So one Hip Hop album could potentially have an artist folder for every single track because each has it's own unique "featuring ...." attached to it. Stupid. Put the goddamn "featuring" attached to the song title. I usually manually fix this by either moving that text to the song text or usually just deleting anything other than the just the artist name from the artist tag. Maybe this is part of the issue you are experiencing.

[beats me]

I use it. It's got its quirks, and I learnt quickly that having iTunes "organising" your library is a no-no, but it's all
I use for listening to music now. It bugs the crap out of me that you can't synchronise your library on two computers, but
I've learnt to live with it and work around it.

Kind of a new feature but you can sync your library on up to 5 computers on the same network. The only potential issue is that all of the computers have to be logged on using the same itunes login ID.

I've been using this feature a lot when transferring music, movies, and TVs back and forth between my bedroom computer and living room media server computer. If you don't need to transfer files and just want to listen to files on different computers throughout the house iTunes has been able to do that for a long time with the sharing function.

[Nav]

I just type the Album name in he search box and it filters out everything but that album, nice and quick. Not sure why you would need an album playlist when you can easily select an album to sync.

As for playlist sync you can just tick the playlist name in the ipod sync settings or as you say drag that play list over. Its super quick.

It's each to their own of course, I just find it really straight forward to do anything in iTunes.

The iTunes + seems to have got us over the DRM issues.

[Nick the Zombie]

Thanks for the replies, everyone.

I think my main problem is that I've been trying to use the program in the "wrong way" rather than adapting to its workflow. I really need to start filtering my library with the search box and listening to albums that way instead of using playlists, but I'll still run into the issue that Beatsme pointed out: If the the song features a guest artist, my ipod will create two separate album folders, and this is what I was referring to with the metatag information confusing itunes. When I create a playlist, I have ultimate control over what get included in the album rather than leaving it up to the program.

A related issue is that when I sync between my ipod and itunes, it syncs everything. That's why I've been manually dragging playlists to the iPod because I don't necessarily want everything in my library on the device. I'm just a control freak that way, I guess. Am I missing something here?

Anyway, thanks for the tips!

[3dot...]

I'm just guessing.. you itunes lovers are apple fans..
I'm willing to bet there's no PC user in your ranks..
this is why the mac fans went "ooooh" when Steve Jobbs said you can actually switch desktop backgrounds on the ipad...
as an actual reason to get it..

my reasons :
first of all it's functionality is very limited
2 it's slow compared to other players on the market...
3 it could make a mess without you even knowing about it...(like beat me said)
4.. ugly
5 ... takes more time to load files into the ipod than winamp or foobar...
6.. it keeps pushing the apple itunes store..
7...almost un customizable...closed software
8..and very unintuitive ..(which I thought was supposed to be Apples forte')

in the studio I use foobar mainly.. it's very lightweight..but can be expanded...
has vu/rms meters.. several views for your media.. asio support..totally customizable GUI..
plugins etc etc etc /

winamp can load vsts and it's media library and search are great...so much better than itunes actually ..

both very skinnable and customizable..
and 'scripts' are actually supported and hosted ..

in the living room I use the win7 Media center by msft..which is just smooth and beautiful graphically...works for network drives..

I've tried Itunes with every major release.. gave it a chance..
(got to install it for the ipod drivers.)
it's not for me I guess ...
imho ..
if it weren't Apple logo on this sw.. I doubt if it would be half as popular..

[beats me]

It sounds like PC users have more problems with it in general from it being unstable to not aligning the the PC "I want access to everything and source code" mentality. I'm not saying that as a diss.

It works well for me and my needs and as I have just about every device Apple makes it plays well with everything I have connected.

[Android Bishop]

itunes is way too bloated and unintuitive for what its supposed to do: play my damn music. I dont need a store, a device manager, and the steve jobs experience every time I double click on a goddamn mp3 file.

Foobar2000. Plays nearly every kind of audio file on the planet, supports plugins to do nearly everything else I would want the program to do, and it doesnt eat up all my system resources and screen real estate every time I run it.

winamp is also made of good

[LoopStationZebra]

yes!

[SubFunk]

I can't say that often enough, use scripts damn it, for making playlists automatically, etc.
iTunes is so powerfull once you understand it.