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iTunes 7 OCD

quigleybc

quigleybc

macrumors 68030
Original poster
Jun 17, 2005
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Beautiful Vancouver British Columbia, Canada
Has iTunes 7 's new cover flow view increased your obsessive compulsiveness with your iTunes library?

It has for me, now I can't stand seeing an album without cover art, or not properly tagged.

I was fairly obsessive before, but still had some odds and ends that were not perfect. As a result, I've been trashing anything that isn't a complete album, or doesn't have cover art after searching..

Anyone else experiencing an increase in iTunes OCD?

:)
 
Abso-freaking-lutely. I spent two and a half hours pulling up album art for all my unadorned music. Happily, the tagging was all in pretty good shape to begin with. God knows how long that might have taken.
 
quigleybc said:
It has for me, now I can't stand seeing an album without cover art, or not properly tagged.
Click to expand...
Oh yes, to the point that I've started slapping together little covers for tracks that never had any.
 
i downloaded iTunes7 as soon as i could (about 2200 uk time) and was up till 0200 sorting out gapless albums, and darn album art, the batteries in my mouse gave up 1/2 way through, so i had 2 find an old usb one so i could finish. i did it though. iTunes auto album art grabby thing and google pics.
 
iMeowbot said:
Oh yes, to the point that I've started slapping together little covers for tracks that never had any.
Click to expand...
Haha, I did that once, I made it very Apple-looking with the Apple logo and font and all. Maybe I'll try it again. I don't do that anymore and it's actually gotten to the point that if there's no iTunes cover or I can't find it bigger than 600x600 online and I don't listen to it much, it gets deleted from my library.

I've always been extremely OCD about my music though.

It's really freaking me out that iTunes won't find artwork for some of the stuff I bought from iTunes and then it gets the wrong covers for a lot of things (sometimes it gets covers that aren't even in the iTMS?! i.e. Keane's "Hopes And Fears").

iTunes is probably going to hear from my lawyers when it causes me to have a complete mental breakdown.

Daniel.
 
What sucks is I'm realizing that these new covers aren't embedded in the files. Meaning some of your files will have embedded art, and some of them won't, and you probably won't remember which ones are which. Then when you go to move them, the art won't come along.... this also has the side effect of completely breaking the album art screensaver.
 
decksnap said:
What sucks is I'm realizing that these new covers aren't embedded in the files. Meaning some of your files will have embedded art, and some of them won't, and you probably won't remember which ones are which. Then when you go to move them, the art won't come along.... this also has the side effect of completely breaking the album art screensaver.
Click to expand...
Damnit why aren't the embedded? All that work for nothing!?!?
 
I decided to do that today in my free afternoon, and while I was going through, I noticed that the Artwork for My Humps and all of the other songs on that album have different work. Slightly, but when you are going through them fast as I was, I could notice it. Just something I noticed.

Also I noticed when they released iTunes 7, the top 100 list was much different than the day before :rolleyes:

Thanks for reminding me to do this now when I have so much free time!
 
decksnap said:
What sucks is I'm realizing that these new covers aren't embedded in the files. Meaning some of your files will have embedded art, and some of them won't, and you probably won't remember which ones are which. Then when you go to move them, the art won't come along.... this also has the side effect of completely breaking the album art screensaver.
Click to expand...

WHAAAAAAAATT?????

*goes and fumes in the corner*
 
quigleybc said:
ya, 7 makes all the time I spent collecting artwork, and tagging stuff in version 6 seem so worth it..!!
Click to expand...

Likewise...I used to wonder why I was bothering since I didn't have an iPod that could view album art at that point :eek:

I'd been using Synergy for a while so I used its cache file of albums to get most of my album art. Now there's a tiny % that don't have any - and I use the album art widget if needed.

iTunes OCD can get silly. I had to smack myself when I found myself creating a pivot table to compare length of time in library with number of times played.
 
I've always been OCD about tagging and album art, every track I have is properly tagged and has art, iTunes 7 just makes all the effort in keeping it that way all worth it :D
 
quigleybc said:
Ya, that's something that would have been nice to know before people started using that feature....:rolleyes:
Click to expand...

My OCD really burned me on this one- I specifically deleted ALL of my album art because I wanted a fresh start with all pristine iTunes versions...I added them, and now my album art screensaver literally shows 0 albums.

I expect a mini OS update in about a week fixing this one. And an explanation of what happens with the album art when you try to move music around.
 
decksnap said:
My OCD really burned me on this one- I specifically deleted ALL of my album art because I wanted a fresh start with all pristine iTunes versions...I added them, and now my album art screensaver literally shows 0 albums.

I expect a mini OS update in about a week fixing this one. And an explanation of what happens with the album art when you try to move music around.
Click to expand...


Damn, that hurts....

....I guess, you probably wouldn't want to go back and use clutter now huh?
 
I just want to know what the story is.. presumeably they have a plan/future for this method or they wouldn't have done it. Initially I thought they were just dupes for use in coverflow... but I don't think so.
 
quigleybc said:
Anyone else experiencing an increase in iTunes OCD?
:)
Click to expand...

Ha, yes, totally. Before I was missing quite a lot of artwork that just wouldn't load, but now I'm obsessively seeking it out. Seeing those blank covers in the shuffle drove me nuts.
 
I dunno, I was pretty obsessive about this stuff long before iTunes 7.

  • For every one of my 500+ CDs, I always meticulously checked the CDDB info for accuracy before importing. I updated anything that wasn't exactly like the listing on the physical CD case/booklet, from completely wrong info and spelling mistakes, right down to punctuation and the capitalization of words. Many are listed in all caps, in which case I give them title case; otherwise I replicate the exact case used. It's actually been pretty rare to get CDDB info that was exactly right.

    On a tangent, I remember years ago (long before iTunes) that the original CDDB allowed you to submit corrected info and that would go into the database. While iTunes does have a "Send info to CDDB" menu item, I have never seen my changes take effect. It's always the same incorrect info later when I re-check it. So what's the point?

    On another tangent, it amazes me how many listings in iTMS differ significantly from what's printed with the physical CDs. No doubt these were entered in by interns at the record companies who didn't give a damn about attention to detail.

  • I've used Clutter for a few years now to get album artwork. The very few albums in my collection that still don't have artwork were so obscure that none could be found, even with a Google search. Now that I have a scanner (free with Macbook + rebate), I may scan them in one of these weekends.

    When the artwork found by Clutter was not up to my standards, I'd use Google to find the best looking, highest resolution image of it on the internet. If that image wasn't the right aspect ratio or had extraneous stuff in it, I edited it in Photoshop or Gimp before adding to the iTunes library.

So yeah, I don't think the new stuff in iTunes 7 has increased my obsessiveness. If anything, it's now allowing me to really enjoy the fruits of my past labor. Getting everything perfect up front has finally paid off. ;)
 
decksnap said:
My OCD really burned me on this one- I specifically deleted ALL of my album art because I wanted a fresh start with all pristine iTunes versions...I added them, and now my album art screensaver literally shows 0 albums.
Click to expand...

Doh! See, I resisted doing this because I've seen several album covers in iTMS where the colors were completely off. Look at Joe Satriani's "Is There Love in Space?" and compare it with the cover images on Amazon or satriani.com. The iTMS version is waaay too purple. I'm much happier keeping the version I have, which looks just like the actual CD.

And an explanation of what happens with the album art when you try to move music around.
Click to expand...

The art should be embedded in each song file, so it moves with the music.

[edit] Ah, I see your previous comment about new art not being embedded in the files. Well, that's interesting. I'll have to play with it and see for myself, then.
 
bankshot said:
I dunno, I was pretty obsessive about this stuff long before iTunes 7.
Click to expand...


Ya me too, but now I'm worse.

For example, I collect a ton of live concerts from E Tree via Bit torrent (legal)

These are concerts, so of course there's no and never will be artwork for these concerts, and I have a lot of them...

SO, now I'm just picking approriate pics of the band live on stage, or making my own artwork in photoshop...
 
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