Itunes 8 and still no way to get a few simple things right...

[jackfrost123]

I hate nagging, but here I am complaining because apple's forcing me to yet again. Itunes has slowly evolved over the years from a very mediocre product to a decent one, but still has some glaring ommisions that can either make one scratch their head in amazement or get seriously irritated with the guys over at cupertino.

Case in poin 1:
So you buy or import an album, say a soundtrack, with different artists, and set the album artist as various, and each track has it's own artist. Now these artist DO NOT APPEAR under the artists view in itunes, BUT, THEY DO surprisingly appear in the artists view in the iphone. Now surely apple get some kid over at cupertino fix this, I mean, damn it itunes has half a decade on it's back, and people can't view their artists category if these same artists are part of a compilation? Unless I am making a mistake and I take what I said back with an apology, such a moronic buy (design feature?????) to not be able in itunes to categorize artists if they are part of a compilation is inexcusable. We are talking here about by far the most used music management software and it doesn't list compilation artists as well as artists "propre". JESUS APPLE, GET YOUR ... TOGETHER AND FIX THIS....


Case in point 2:
Where is the original album field, huh? I make myself a compilation album, but I still want to keep the data of the original album the track appears on, AS WITH EVERY OTHER MUSIC MANAGEMENT APP DOES, how do I do that in itunes apple? Do I just wipe all the original apple data out my compilation "cd" just to have it appear properly in cover flow?

 

[jackfrost123]

What about it boys and gals, doesn't this bother anyone else, you all got 100 tunes in your libraries or something? Isn't it time we put some pressure on apple to turn this bloatware that is itunes into a decent media management suite? Heck it took them to v. 8 to let us mark our mp3 files as audiobooks and separate them thus without having to go through the oh so cumbersome conversions to their custom format...jesus...

 

[c-Row]

Case in point 2:
Where is the original album field, huh? I make myself a compilation album, but I still want to keep the data of the original album the track appears on, AS WITH EVERY OTHER MUSIC MANAGEMENT APP DOES, how do I do that in itunes apple? Do I just wipe all the original apple data out my compilation "cd" just to have it appear properly in cover flow?

I think that's what playlists are for.

 

[jackfrost123]

No you are wrong smarty pants, playlists don't appear in cover flow or as an album as I would like my compilation to appear when I browse through it, so that's reason ONE why this is NOT what playlists are for.

Almost all other media management software has original album as a field, itunes does not, yet everyone has playlists, that's reason TWO smarty pants why this not what playlists are for.

Albums with one or a couple of songs are now commonplace with the ability to download separate songs from itunes store, the ability to lump this up in self made compilations so you don't get about 1000 albums showing up with about 700 songs in total, but instead you only get complete albums or mostly complete, and that's reason no. THREE smarty pants why this not what playlists are for.

Finally, smarty pants, almost all compilations you can shop in a store or via itunes mention in their tags the original album from which they were compiled, lacking this feature, itunes cannot show what all compilations have as a default field, original album information, and that is reason no. FOUR.

Smarty pants.

 

[defender]

Case in point 2:
Where is the original album field, huh? I make myself a compilation album, but I still want to keep the data of the original album the track appears on, AS WITH EVERY OTHER MUSIC MANAGEMENT APP DOES, how do I do that in itunes apple? Do I just wipe all the original apple data out my compilation "cd" just to have it appear properly in cover flow?

Not trying to be a smarty pants here or anything, but I think thats what playlists are for.

 

[garybUK]

I agree, it'd be great to make a compilation album name with a Source or Original Album Name

Either that or they should make Playlists appear in Coverflow.

The other thing that annoys me, is when in the proper list view with the browser open the Artists in compilations don't appear in the artist list.... grrrr (they will only appear if you have the artist there as a non-compilation track also).

That and CDDB should work for any file, not just those imported by CD (they do this for Artwork, so why not track data).

Also it'd be sweet if you could 'tag' songs with certain information: e.g; 'Classical Guitar' or 'Classic Rock' or 'Jazz flute' or 'Easy listening' & 'Romantic Music' etc. etc.

also give it a mysql / SQL Lite engine

 

[jackfrost123]

Not trying to be a smarty pants here or anything, but I think thats what playlists are for.

I let that slip smarty because I am elated with macworld about to begin.

I agree, it'd be great to make a compilation album name with a Source or Original Album Name

Either that or they should make Playlists appear in Coverflow.

The other thing that annoys me, is when in the proper list view with the browser open the Artists in compilations don't appear in the artist list.... grrrr (they will only appear if you have the artist there as a non-compilation track also).

That and CDDB should work for any file, not just those imported by CD (they do this for Artwork, so why not track data).

Also it'd be sweet if you could 'tag' songs with certain information: e.g; 'Classical Guitar' or 'Classic Rock' or 'Jazz flute' or 'Easy listening' & 'Romantic Music' etc. etc.

also give it a mysql / SQL Lite engine

Amen brother. I've been toying with songbird for an itunes replacement and although it seems promising it does have a lot of work to be done on it for it to be a contender of any sort.

 

[TheNightPhoenix]

That and CDDB should work for any file, not just those imported by CD (they do this for Artwork, so why not track data).

This wouldn't really work due to the way CDDB data is fetched compared to artwork. The CD is scanned and a unique id is created and that is used to fetch the correct CDDB info, and turned into tags.

Artwork is fetched by matching up these tag with the info on iTunes server.

To fetch CDDB data for files which don't already have the right tags would mean searching for all files which have similar tags are trying to give you several options to choose from.

The CDDB database isn't designed for this so it would have to be iTunes server, even then i think it would be used by a small amount of people

 

[garybUK]

This wouldn't really work due to the way CDDB data is fetched compared to artwork. The CD is scanned and a unique id is created and that is used to fetch the correct CDDB info, and turned into tags.

Artwork is fetched by matching up these tag with the info on iTunes server.

To fetch CDDB data for files which don't already have the right tags would mean searching for all files which have similar tags are trying to give you several options to choose from.

The CDDB database isn't designed for this so it would have to be iTunes server, even then i think it would be used by a small amount of people

Other programs have done it, why not just try the id3 tags and look up track numbers to names and if it can't find id3 tags then prompt for the album: it wouldn't be difficult to do at all.

 

[c-Row]

[...] Smarty pants.

Yeah, whatever. I guess it's your standard procedure to respond to a simple answer with a smart ass comment and getting personal?

 

[bettykoyle]

thats why you check compliations