Series: App improvement discussion - App: iTunes

[Mechcozmo]

How about a one-click way to play songs within a particular genre, say "jazz", without having to use the keyboard? I'm constantly ripping CDs, so it's inconvenient to have to put each genre in its own playlist.

Like a smart playlist where the Genre="Jazz"? Press tab to get to the sidebar shmangy and then the arrow keys to move to your "Jazz" or "Pop" or "Rock" playlist. Then tab again to songs. Voila! And if you could nest the playlists... but that would be 4.8, right?

 

[Diatribe]

How about a one-click way to play songs within a particular genre, say "jazz", without having to use the keyboard? I'm constantly ripping CDs, so it's inconvenient to have to put each genre in its own playlist.

If you don't want to create a smart playlist you can do it the way I do it.
I always have the browser on in the library and let it show the genres that way I can play genres fast.
A better way, and something I requested often lately from Apple, would be to be able to choose genres in the Party Shuffle. Because this way I could Of course nested, collapsable playlists would take care of both problems.

Just keep bugging Apple about all that. They have to react eventually. 😀

 

[BWhaler]

1. Ability to group playlists

2. Different user accounts should be able to see the same library for families who have a shared music collection on a single computer but different log-in accounts.

3. AAC2 support, and the ability to convert AAC files into AAC2.

4. Widget to control the visualizer...who the hell remembers all the crazy key strokes?

5. Way to export and backup individual songs or playlists.

That's all I can think of for now.

 

[dontmatter]

Well, first off, I want something revolutionary that I'd never thought of, like the sharing music stuff, etc.

But, of the things I don't need apple's genius to invent-

Better radio support. Maybe it's just that real and wma have the formats, and it's not apple I need to complain to, but internet audio sucks, itunes wise, and the mixing/seperation of radio and songs is messy. maybe they could pull a harmony move right back at real?

Second, I'd like something to tell me the quality of the song. No, not just bitrate. I'd like some kind of overall score-i've got lots of songs from scratched cd's, bad recordings, low bitrate, etc. and I'd like to replace them, without all the effort of listeing and keeping track of which are bad. Also, I'm disorganized, and when I do replace them, or otherwise get multiple copies of a song, I'd like to be able to throw away the bad one, and keep the good. But currently, that's a bit hard.

I'd like a cleaner itms interface, and as big a catalog as they can possibly get. Particularly, it would be AWESOME if you could have it integrated with radio playback, so it would try and identify the song you were listening to on the radio (either from the radiostation or just powerful software), and show it to you to buy/the album it's in.

One more itms thing-suggestions should be based not on what is currently in your shopping cart, but everything you've bought. C'mon apple, that's such a good way to get people to buy more....

 

[Mustafa]

I couldn't find it in my macworld's, but I checked online and found a site that gave instructions for doing this (google bookmark m4a to find such sites). Basically convert the file to aac (.m4a) then change the extension to .m4b (book) and reimport into itunes. I haven't really tried working with it yet, so report back if you get it to work.

Great, I'll give it a try. My suggestion for an improvement to iTunes then would be a 'Convert file to Audible format' option.

 

[kylos]

I read an article in a MacAddict, and I thought I outlined it there... maybe you just need to create an alias or symbolic link to the file on the server? Would that work?

Yup, you need to copy the library file to a shared location and then replace the original file in each user account with an alias to that file. I've included a foolproof (i think) set of step by step instructions on how to do this earlier in the thread. And if people want to do this on a networked machine, they can mix it with your instructions.

 

[wordmunger]

Like a smart playlist where the Genre="Jazz"? Press tab to get to the sidebar shmangy and then the arrow keys to move to your "Jazz" or "Pop" or "Rock" playlist. Then tab again to songs. Voila! And if you could nest the playlists... but that would be 4.8, right?

Okay, I'm an idiot. I didn't realize that's how smart playlists worked. I'm fairly new to this iTunes thing. That's actually very cool!

 

[kylos]

Great, I'll give it a try. My suggestion for an improvement to iTunes then would be a 'Convert file to Audible format' option.

yeah, that would be very useful.

 

[fossicker]

Great, I'll give it a try. My suggestion for an improvement to iTunes then would be a 'Convert file to Audible format' option.

I don't think making workarounds easier is enough of an improvement.

I'd like to see better support for listening to spoken word material, particularly when that material spans many files. I'm thinking of something like a special kind of playlist that remembers where you left off -- not just the point in the track, but which track it was. This functionality should be available for any iTunes supported format -- you shouldn't have to convert mp3s to m4b.

If Apple did it right, it would benefit not just book listeners, but also people who listen to longer pieces of music, e.g. an opera or a musical. It might even be useful to people who prefer to listen to rock and pop music by album rather than by song.

There are workarounds with converting to m4b and making smart playlists so that the current track is always the first track in the playlist, but I'm really not that interested in doing so much processing to get the desired effect. I think that iTunes should accommodate my needs rather than me accommodating it.

 

[Raid]

Hopefully this hasn't been addressed, if it has ...um add another vote for it!

I'd like to see the ability to have something like tabbed browsing of play lists, and the abiltiy to see multiple play lists at the same time. I'm constantly reviewing and adding things to my play lists and find it frustrating to constantly click back and forth between them. Sometimes I even drag the song and drop it into the wrong playlist... and when you drop Rob Zombie into one called 'Smooth Jazz'... it tends to stick out. 😱

 

[Mechcozmo]

Hopefully this hasn't been addressed, if it has ...um add another vote for it!

I'd like to see the ability to have something like tabbed browsing of play lists, and the abiltiy to see multiple play lists at the same time. I'm constantly reviewing and adding things to my play lists and find it frustrating to constantly click back and forth between them. Sometimes I even drag the song and drop it into the wrong playlist... and when you drop Rob Zombie into one called 'Smooth Jazz'... it tends to stick out. 😱

You can double-click on a play list to open it in a new window... but not a tab. Expose helps with that, though. Click a song, press F10, move to the other window, let go of F10, and voila! Insta-drag!

 

[chameeeleon]

Not sure why these threads stopped (I have some serious Safari suggestions to share), but I just came up with some new iTunes features I'd be interested in, leaning towards the store:
1. Smart iMixes for the music store - being able to pull together all songs by a specific artist, excluding the files currently in the user's iTunes library for example. These could be stored in a more friendly user control center that tracks iMixes, Purchased Songs, Song Suggestions and Artist alerts in a more music-store style interface.
2. As I've said before, it would be great if Apple took the music videos section to the next level, namely by pooling all of the videos on all of the stores together into one big video database with additions from pre-2004 tunes (does it require licensing for music videos?) that could be searched, organized into genre/artist, listed in a Top 10, and purchased and downloaded to the iPod photo (a stretch, but would still be wicked).
3. As much as iMixes are quick to fulfill this, it would be tremendously cool if iTunes could add a "TV Soundtracks" sort of deal to its Movie Trailers section, featuring the music played on a show's last episode available for purchase, as well as the preview for the upcoming episode. *Cough* The O.C. and Alias *Cough* Would probably sell a hell of a lot more songs this way then with the current movie trailer/soundtrack deal.
4. Clean up the iTunes Essentials interface. It was fine when there were ten. Now it's a mess to get through.
I might have more come to me, but that's it for now.

 

[Diatribe]

Not sure why these threads stopped (I have some serious Safari suggestions to share)

You're right, I will be doing the next one today, I just have been awefully busy the last couple of weeks.

 

[yukon8170]

New iTunes Features

There are two more things I'd like to see added to iTunes other than all the others mentioned

1. The ability to search through comments, years, genres, etc. Why not give all the song information the ability to be found. It would be alot easier to search for "Rock 1985." They could even have certain key words (similar to the new search field in the System Preferences Panel for Tiger). EX. "Rock from 1985 that does not include Bon Jovi).

2. The ability to lock playlists to keep them from being deleted accidentally. I have, on more than one occasion found myself rebuilding a playlist from my iPod because I accidentally pushed the wrong button. That would be a great easy feature to add.

I have already sent my recommendations to Apple. Help everyone else out and send yours too. 😀

 

[Diatribe]

There are two more things I'd like to see added to iTunes other than all the others mentioned

1. The ability to search through comments, years, genres, etc. Why not give all the song information the ability to be found. It would be alot easier to search for "Rock 1985." They could even have certain key words (similar to the new search field in the System Preferences Panel for Tiger). EX. "Rock from 1985 that does not include Bon Jovi).

2. The ability to lock playlists to keep them from being deleted accidentally. I have, on more than one occasion found myself rebuilding a playlist from my iPod because I accidentally pushed the wrong button. That would be a great easy feature to add.

I have already sent my recommendations to Apple. Help everyone else out and send yours too. 😀

The search has been restricted to the visible columns/fields now. So if you activate the columns you want to search it will do so.

I totally agree with you on the lock for the playlists, that'd be great.

 

[Diatribe]

Another thing I'd really like to be able to do would be stream to an Aiport Express BS and have it still go through the headphone jack.
I don't know if this'd be possible but this way I could listen in two rooms to the music.
Of course it would have to be synchronized because of the Airport lag, which is I guess the tricky part but it'd be cool nevertheless.
With the new Airport specification, n it is I believe, we might even see streaming to two Aiport Express BS.

 

[altair]

2. The ability to lock playlists to keep them from being deleted accidentally. I have, on more than one occasion found myself rebuilding a playlist from my iPod because I accidentally pushed the wrong button. That would be a great easy feature to add.

I dont know how to get it back, but originally when you run itunes, it prompts you before you delete a playlist. First time i just checked 'dont show me this again" or whatever, and accidentally deleted all my playlists in about 2 seconds 🙁

So now i just always have that prompt come up to delete a playlist, sadly i dont know how you would uncheck that box. Mabey someone else does.

 

[chameeeleon]

Good news - as of this morning, the iTunes Essentials interface is now MUCH more organized (and stylish - what's the font they're using?) despite still being without a search bar. I think they're actually find-able now.
Plus once you do find them, they have each iMix broken down into "The Basics", "Next Steps", "Deep Cuts" and a list of all of them, to ease you into the type of music and get rid of the whole "iTunes Essentials: Bob Dylan vol. 5" thing. It's a very cool approach to mix/greatest hits albums.
Actually, now it seems that they've replaced where "Top Rated iMixes" used to be with a list of the iTunes Essentials the artist is featured in, and moved the iMixes over to below "Listeners Also Bought" (which fits better - they're both "listener" things). It seems like they're really pushing the Essentials thing now.
A nice pre-Macworld surprise.

 

[Fredstar]

The new itunes essential section is a really wikid idea, so many more songs and artists that i have forgotten about to add to my collection - i mean everyone's gotta love Frank Sinatra..right?!😛
But don't you think the complete sets should be offered at some kinda of discount rather than 79p a track?