iTunes 5 new features? What should apple do?

[WildCowboy]

I'd like iTunes to have the ability to show what it last Autofilled my Shuffle with. For instance, I'm sitting in front of my PowerBook right now listening to my Shuffle (unshuffled). An unfamiliar song comes on and I want to know what it is. I should be able to open up iTunes and look at a playlist of what I last uploaded to the Shuffle, figure out where in the playlist the unknown song was, and learn the song's name! AFAIK, the only way to see what's on the Shuffle is to plug it in. iTunes should remember what it put on the Shuffle.

 

[chameeeleon]

Actually WildCowboy, in the iPod shuffle prefrences, there's a "Keep iPod in source list" button. Checking it does just that - and would show the last songs autofilled on.

 

[sacear]

I'd like iTunes to have the ability to show what it last Autofilled my Shuffle with. For instance, I'm sitting in front of my PowerBook right now listening to my Shuffle (unshuffled). An unfamiliar song comes on and I want to know what it is. I should be able to open up iTunes and look at a playlist of what I last uploaded to the Shuffle, figure out where in the playlist the unknown song was, and learn the song's name! AFAIK, the only way to see what's on the Shuffle is to plug it in. iTunes should remember what it put on the Shuffle.

Very good suggestion, the best one so far! iTunes ought to create an actual "iPod Shuffle" Playlist in the Source pane during the Autofill process that lists all the songs from the recent Autofill download.

Edit:
Okay, well, chameeeleon beat me to the punch and provided the answer. That's good stuff.

 

[WildCowboy]

Actually WildCowboy, in the iPod shuffle prefrences, there's a "Keep iPod in source list" button. Checking it does just that - and would show the last songs autofilled on.

Thanks...brilliant!! I've had my Shuffle for several weeks, but just started seriously using it for tunes after getting my new PB last week and ripping a couple of thousand songs over the weekend.

 

[Mitthrawnuruodo]

I see what you mean, yet iTunes is not a true database, and for the purposes of iTunes each instance of a song object (each album) is a different object. Even though each song file sounds alike, even note for note, it is considered a different object, even if it came from the same album. I have many CDs of demo tracks and re-mixes of the same song, some have sub-titles and some don't, just the same song name. If iTunes were to take some action and "merge" or "delete" some of those songs, I'd be super angry. To do a search and then delete the songs myself that I definetely know are duplicates is much better, easier, and secure.

No, no, no, no, no... nothing automatic... this has to be a strictly manual function...

I was thinking along the lines that if you mark three identical songs you get some sort of "merge" option, if only one of them is checked it merges into that, replacing the other two with alias/links to that original, if more than one is checked then you get asked what to do...

This could also go the other way. That you could have two or more instances of the same tune: one apple lossless (for home use, archiving), one aac@128 (for your iPod) and a mp3@128 (for your little brother/sisters non Apple mp3 player and/or mp3 cds for your car).

And, generally I would love if iTunes got better DB capabilities, like treating artists as objects...

So, the crossfade feature currently only functions for playback and not on recorded CDs?

Nor on the iPod...

 

[sacear]

No, no, no, no, no... nothing automatic... this has to be a strictly manual function...

I was thinking along the lines that if you mark three identical songs you get some sort of "merge" option, if only one of them is checked it merges into that, replacing the other two with alias/links to that original, if more than one is checked then you get asked what to do...

Oh, okay, that sounds much better. In a sense this can already be done to a degree with playlists. For instance a song appears on an album of original release and then the exact same song unaltered also appears on a Greatest Hits album. A playlist of each album can be created, one of the original album and one of the Greatest Hits album and placing the song in each playlist using only one song file. The limitation being that the ID tag info pertains only to the one album. The Comments field could be used for additional info.

This could also go the other way. That you could have two or more instances of the same tune: one apple lossless (for home use, archiving), one aac@128 (for your iPod) and a mp3@128 (for your little brother/sisters non Apple mp3 player and/or mp3 cds for your car).

Right, I have this situation myself. Again, organized and separated using playlists.

And, generally I would love if iTunes got better DB capabilities, like treating artists as objects...

Yes, at this point rewriting iTunes to be a song file database with a song player on top or on the side would be better than the current song player with a spreadsheet on the side.

 

[rdas7]

iTunes 5: new features

1. expanded Auto-Fill functionality to support other devices (eg. USB disks for filling your phone with songs - including "convert to 128kbps MP3"). Dock via bluetooth also useful (since speed is about the same as USB anyways)

2. Enhanced Digital Booklets - you can already hold multiple jpg/png data in the "artwork" tag of a song. Let's put Flash or PDF in there as well. At it's most basic, it would enable you to click on the artwork and flip through multiple images (like turning the pages of a booklet), but more advanced would be if artists developed their own "enhanced booklets" much like "enhanced-CD's" have multimedia content on them.

3. Auto-download album artwork (if the album is in the iTMS, can we have its artwork please? An act of goodwill?) I'm sick of amazon'ing all the artwork. And don't talk to me about Clutter.

4. iTMS Streaming Account - kind of an extension of the .Mac service, wouldn't it be cool if you could have your own secure webspace from which you could listen to all your iTMS purchases in streaming quicktime? I'm thinking: listening to your music collection from work yet still track playcounts, recently played and rating modifications.

5. Multiple Tag Support - if you have the same song that appears on several different albums, then maintain one data file (with common ratings, playcounts, etc.) but have it show up under the various different albums with corresponding multiple artwork. (Eg. if you play "Discotheque" from the U2 single, then the data for track one on the U2 album "Pop" will increase playcount by 1 also).

 

[sacear]

3. Auto-download album artwork (if the album is in the iTMS, can we have its artwork please? An act of goodwill?) I'm sick of amazon'ing all the artwork. And don't talk to me about Clutter.

Hmm, I have artwork for every album and song I've ever purchased from iTMS. To my knowledge iTMS provides artwork for every song purchased.

4. iTMS Streaming Account - kind of an extension of the .Mac service, wouldn't it be cool if you could have your own secure webspace from which you could listen to all your iTMS purchases in streaming quicktime? I'm thinking: listening to your music collection from work yet still track playcounts, recently played and rating modifications.

That would be and is cool and is already possible, if one has a .Mac account and sets up the iTunes Music folder there. I do this myself. If you want Apple employees to set it up for you and do the maintenance, then how are they going to be paid and who is going to pay their wages. Not everyone would want this. This would have to be a subscription service apart from iTMS.

5. Multiple Tag Support - if you have the same song that appears on several different albums, then maintain one data file (with common ratings, playcounts, etc.) but have it show up under the various different albums with corresponding multiple artwork. (Eg. if you play "Discotheque" from the U2 single, then the data for track one on the U2 album "Pop" will increase playcount by 1 also).

More sophisticated database functions seems to be a popular request.

 

[GMGQ]

1) Support for non-iPod MP3 players

2) Enable the ability to add Shared songs to local play lists (and subsequently the ability to burn it). Right now I can only listen to music shared from another computer, but I cant copy them to my local playlists.

 

[wrldwzrd89]

1) Support for non-iPod MP3 players

2) Enable the ability to add Shared songs to local play lists (and subsequently the ability to burn it). Right now I can only listen to music shared from another computer, but I cant copy them to my local playlists.

1) Won't happen without AAC support.
2) Will never happen - will make the RIAA mad.

 

[gopher]

1) Support for non-iPod MP3 players

2) Enable the ability to add Shared songs to local play lists (and subsequently the ability to burn it). Right now I can only listen to music shared from another computer, but I cant copy them to my local playlists.

1) already exists for these players:

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=93548

If others want to add that access, they'll have to get demand from their buyers to support those features.

 

[Diomedes]

Nested Playlists

I would like to see something like nested playlists. For example, I (and many other music lovers I know) usually have a "Top 10" of current favorites. So you create a playlist for the top 10, create a shuffled playlist for other music , and nest the shuffled playlist in the top 10. That way you'd have your currentl list with other random selections.

And while on the topic of shuffling...I'd like to see more options for shuffling, and a more "random" suffling algorithm.

 

[bankshot]

I would like to see something like nested playlists. For example, I (and many other music lovers I know) usually have a "Top 10" of current favorites. So you create a playlist for the top 10, create a shuffled playlist for other music , and nest the shuffled playlist in the top 10. That way you'd have your currentl list with other random selections.

You can do this now. Just create the two playlists ("Top 10" and "Shuffled"), plus a third smart playlist. In the smart playlist, add two criteria and have it match on Any:

• Playlist is Top 10
• Playlist is Shuffled

They added this capability to smart playlists in a recent update (4.6 or 4.7). I'd been requesting it for a long time, as you can nest playlists to create the most complex logical criteria you can think of. The sky's really the limit with this capability.

 

[Floyd WHO]

Libraries on another drive

I have two drives it would be nice if I could keep my library not on the drive my operating system is on.

An automated way to back-up your library to CD (in condensed format)

More liner notes not just the front artwork

 

[bankshot]

I have two drives it would be nice if I could keep my library not on the drive my operating system is on.

Easy. Copy your Music folder to the other drive, rename Music in your home directory to something else, make an alias to the copy on the other drive and name it Music in your home folder.

An automated way to back-up your library to CD (in condensed format)

Apple's Backup software will do this very easily, though I suppose it might be nice to have directly in iTunes.

 

[Floyd WHO]

Thanks that makes sense

Easy. Copy your Music folder to the other drive, rename Music in your home directory to something else, make an alias to the copy on the other drive and name it Music in your home folder.

Apple's Backup software will do this very easily, though I suppose it might be nice to have directly in iTunes.

Thanks this works and was pretty easy.
Sometime the most obvious things escape your cerebral cortex

 

[Mechcozmo]

1. expanded Auto-Fill functionality to support other devices (eg. USB disks for filling your phone with songs - including "convert to 128kbps MP3"). Dock via bluetooth also useful (since speed is about the same as USB anyways)

Bluetooth is far slower than Firewire. ~1 Mbps vs. 400 Mbps
Bluetooth is far slower than Firewire. ~1 Mbps vs. ~480 Mbps (less than that actual)

Bluetooth may be good for updating how many times a song has been played, but syncing a 3 MB song file takes a long time. A 20 MB video once took me 30 minutes to sync. You can kiss a week goodbye as you sync your iPod Photo.

I have two drives it would be nice if I could keep my library not on the drive my operating system is on.

Look at your iTunes preferences... you can change where the library is. And an alias will cause issues. You need a symbolic link eventually.

 

[Diomedes]

You can do this now. Just create the two playlists ("Top 10" and "Shuffled"), plus a third smart playlist. In the smart playlist, add two criteria and have it match on Any:

• Playlist is Top 10
• Playlist is Shuffled

They added this capability to smart playlists in a recent update (4.6 or 4.7). I'd been requesting it for a long time, as you can nest playlists to create the most complex logical criteria you can think of. The sky's really the limit with this capability.

Doesn't work. Creating the Smart Playlist from those two sorts them alphabetically by artist, not in the play order.

 

[rdas7]

Quote:
Originally Posted by rdas7
1. expanded Auto-Fill functionality to support other devices (eg. USB disks for filling your phone with songs - including "convert to 128kbps MP3"). Dock via bluetooth also useful (since speed is about the same as USB anyways)

Bluetooth is far slower than Firewire. ~1 Mbps vs. 400 Mbps
Bluetooth is far slower than Firewire. ~1 Mbps vs. ~480 Mbps (less than that actual)

Bluetooth may be good for updating how many times a song has been played, but syncing a 3 MB song file takes a long time. A 20 MB video once took me 30 minutes to sync. You can kiss a week goodbye as you sync your iPod Photo.

Let me clarify:

1. When you connect a Shuffle to iTunes you have the option of auto-filling it, and automatically re-encoding any file to 128kbps AAC. My suggestion was to be able to change this encoding preference to, say 128kbps MP3 (or any other format supported by iTunes, based on user preference?) - this is because not all devices yet support AAC encoding.

2. For the Source menu to display paired devices (eg. phones over bluetooth), not just mounted disks (eg. USB or Firewire).

The formatting issue (1) would address the fact that not all devices offer AAC playback (and I assume than unless a device specifically supports Apple's DRM, then m4p files are just completely exempt from this discussion).

The source issue (2) would enable you to easily manage the contents of your phone or mobile device. BT2.0 is much faster than BT1, granted, but in this instance I was talking about my phone which has BT1 and USB1, both of which are roughly 768kbps (realworld), 1Mbps (rated) which means that loading *anything* onto it takes a while...

For the record, I believe that this iTunes Mobile thing that's due in "Spring 2005" will most likely be software based, rather than hardware. Think: free download of iTunes J2ME java app for your phone. The release of iTunes 5 will most likely be related to this.

 

[bennetsaysargh]

hmm, would AACPlus come into play if bluetooth were to be enabled? i don't know much about it, but it's smaller sized files with the same quality (or at least comprable quality).

 

[redeye be]

party mode

screen shows:
party shuffle: upcomming songs
full library (with playlist capabilitys)

A single click will add the song to the end of the party shuffle playlist.

 

[wrldwzrd89]

hmm, would AACPlus come into play if bluetooth were to be enabled? i don't know much about it, but it's smaller sized files with the same quality (or at least comprable quality).

Everyone (that supports AAC) will benefit from HE-AAC (the accepted name for what you call AACPlus). It delivers equivalent quality to AAC at half the bitrate - even better than that if the bitrate gets low enough.

 

[bankshot]

Doesn't work. Creating the Smart Playlist from those two sorts them alphabetically by artist, not in the play order.

That's because you have it set to sort by artist (it may default to that, I'm not sure). Just click on the leftmost column header (the one with the numbers) and it will sort in your order. Then you can rearrange tracks however you want, in just the order you like.

All playlists and smart playlists work this way - click on any column header to sort by that column, and click it again to sort in the reverse order. The leftmost column is for your own custom order.

 

[wrldwzrd89]

That's because you have it set to sort by artist (it may default to that, I'm not sure). Just click on the leftmost column header (the one with the numbers) and it will sort in your order. Then you can rearrange tracks however you want, in just the order you like.

All playlists and smart playlists work this way - click on any column header to sort by that column, and click it again to sort in the reverse order. The leftmost column is for your own custom order.

For some strange reason, you can't do that to your entire music library - it won't show the numbers nor let you click the leftmost (empty) column. I wonder why this is.

 

[Diomedes]

That's because you have it set to sort by artist (it may default to that, I'm not sure). Just click on the leftmost column header (the one with the numbers) and it will sort in your order. Then you can rearrange tracks however you want, in just the order you like.

All playlists and smart playlists work this way - click on any column header to sort by that column, and click it again to sort in the reverse order. The leftmost column is for your own custom order.

Which playlist are you referring to - the source ones or the destination?