ITMS search doesn't work

[wordmunger]

Has anyone else had this problem: the ITMS search doesn't return all available results. For example, my daughter is a big fan of broadway music. However, since "broadway" isn't a genre on ITMS, we have to do searches to find the music. Many Broadway albums have the words "original cast" or "original broadway cast" in the album title, so it seemed like a good way to view all available Broadway albums would be to search on those terms under album title. But it doesn't work. For example, a search on "original cast" doesn't return any results for "Annie Get Your Gun (original cast)"--it simply doesn't show up in the list. There are other albums in the list, but clearly ITMS isn't displaying all the albums it has available. VERY FRUSTRATING, as my daughter would be BUYING THIS MUSIC if she could find it.

 

[Ugg]

Has anyone else had this problem: the ITMS search doesn't return all available results. For example, my daughter is a big fan of broadway music. However, since "broadway" isn't a genre on ITMS, we have to do searches to find the music. Many Broadway albums have the words "original cast" or "original broadway cast" in the album title, so it seemed like a good way to view all available Broadway albums would be to search on those terms under album title. But it doesn't work. For example, a search on "original cast" doesn't return any results for "Annie Get Your Gun (original cast)"--it simply doesn't show up in the list. There are other albums in the list, but clearly ITMS isn't displaying all the albums it has available. VERY FRUSTRATING, as my daughter would be BUYING THIS MUSIC if she could find it.

I wish there were more search options like Google has. Sometimes I find that it is better to search for just a single word than a string of words. You end up with way too many choices but at the same time it seems to get more of what you want. I did searches using broadway, musical, cast and original they all came back with hundreds of options and Annie Get Your Gun also brought up quite a few.

I've written Apple to tell them that they need to add composer to their album profile as classical music searches are much easier that way and I would think that Broadway musicals would be easier to browse as well. It would be great if they could offer label and CDDB info searches as well.

 

[Doctor Q]

Could it be that your search on "original cast" returned multiple screenfuls, and you gave up when "Annie Get Your Gun (original cast)" didn't show up in the first such screenful? When I search on "original" (just one word), I get 250 hits, sorted from A to Z, not including Annie. If I click "More Results", I get another 250, sorted from A to Z. And again and again. I checked up to 2000 and didn't see Annie, but I have no idea how many total hits I had. Maybe I'd find it after more clicks.

Did you check if there were more screenfuls to look through?

In the retrieval lingo, one would say that iTMS has high recall and low precision.

And I saw Annie Get Your Gun on Broadway, so it was worth helping you!

 

[wordmunger]

Could it be that your search on "original cast" returned multiple screenfuls, and you gave up when "Annie Get Your Gun (original cast)" didn't show up in the first such screenful? When I search on "original" (just one word), I get 250 hits, sorted from A to Z, not including Annie. If I click "More Results", I get another 250, sorted from A to Z. And again and again. I checked up to 2000 and didn't see Annie, but I have no idea how many total hits I had. Maybe I'd find it after more clicks.

Did you check if there were more screenfuls to look through?

In the retrieval lingo, one would say that iTMS has high recall and low precision.

And I saw Annie Get Your Gun on Broadway, so it was worth helping you!

I did check, and there were no more screenfuls--it's simply not giving all the results from the search. The fact that ITMS sputters on two-word searches is a little sad. They'd be making quite a few more sales if people could actually find what they're looking for.