iTunes 5: Our Top Ten Requests

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iTunes 5: Our Top Ten Requests

It’s undeniable that iTunes is a best-of-show program: it does pretty much everything you need to do with music, and makes managing your music library and your iPod a snap. Recently, Apple even added video management and playback to its feature list.

But all is not perfect in the world of iTunes; while most users are delighted with iTunes’ feature set, some believe that iTunes is lacking certain newly essential functions. Steve Jobs has already demonstrated podcasting support, which will be included in the next version of iTunes, but what else does the program need? In cooperation with our readers, we’ve looked closely at what’s missing in iTunes 4, so here are ten ideas for new features in iTunes 5.

1. Multiple libraries. As the iPod’s popularity increases, more and more homes have multiple iPods - iLounge staff aside, we actually know someone who owns 14 iPods! Unfortunately, managing music for more than one iPod is a hassle: you can create separate user accounts, but then you must copy your music files to each account, taking up disk space. You can also manually sync one or more iPod, but that’s time-consuming. Multiple libraries would allow several iPods to contain different subsets of an overall music library, but allow automatic syncing.

Users would be free to create several libraries (there would probably be a limit), and when you create a second library, the Library item in the source list would change to a plural, and would have a disclosure triangle allowing you to expand the Libraries item and select specific libraries. You would then be able to link one library to each iPod, or even use multiple libraries for one iPod, changing when you want to listen to different music. This would be especially useful for the iPod mini, with its limited capacity.

2. Universal album art downloads. Some competing digital music management software, such as Musicmatch Jukebox 10, automatically downloads album art when you import music from your CDs. With iTunes, you have to fetch it yourself, except when you buy music from the iTunes Music Store. Apple should be able to easily provide album art, either through a link to graphics on the iTunes Music Store, or by creating or licensing a library of album art, so that when you rip a CD, the art is added automatically.

While there are third-party programs that do this, both for Windows and for Mac, it would be nice to have this as a built-in feature.

3. Separate groupings for videos and PDFs in the Source list. Now that iTunes can handle PDF files - including but not limited to those included with purchases from the iTunes Music Store - and videos, these files tend to either get lost in your library, or get filed with the album you bought them with. While there are special icons to indicate their file types, these icons can be hard to see when you are scrolling through a big library.

You can tag PDFs or videos to belong to a certain album, and you can create smart playlists to organize them, but it would make more sense to create specific groupings in the Source list.

4. Better organization for tracks by multiple artists. In the current version of iTunes, you have listings for each artist, as well as for each combination of artists. For example, if you import Johnny Cash’s Unearthed box set, you’ll find lots of tracks by Johnny Cash, but you’ll also find six other combinations: “Johnny Cash & Carl Perkins” and “Joe Strummer & Fiona Apple,” etc. Each of these combinations is listed as a separate artist, rather than all of them being listed as Johnny Cash, and each collaboration is listed under the other artist’s name as well.

Admittedly, this type of organization could take some getting used to, but it would make more sense; if you want to find all your Johnny Cash songs, you don’t want to scroll through a list of multiple artists. This would create duplicate entries in the iTunes library, but since iTunes is just a database, this is not hard to implement.

5. Bug fixes: guarantee the stability of the iPod-to-iTunes connection under all circumstances. Though some of these issues are “driver-related” or “iPod-related” as opposed to “iTunes-related,” we have heard about from our readers (and ourselves experienced) many connectivity glitches with both the PC and Mac versions of iTunes 4. Users sometimes find that iTunes will not recognize their iPods even when their computers can, and there are occasional problems - mostly with the iPod shuffle - in random disconnection of the iPod during synchronization. Next to hardware defects, these types of problems are the most frustrating ones iPod owners are dealing with today - and the ones that most remind them of their bad experiences with other companies’ products. Apple should make guaranteeing a stable connection between iTunes and the iPod a top priority in iTunes 5, and work to both improve and simplify their integration.

6. Allow iTunes “works.” Classical music fans know that playlists of their favorite music in shuffle mode sound like a drunken DJs took control of their music. Classical music, with its multi-movement works, does not lend itself to this type of playback. As iTunes works today, each movement of a work is a separate track, and is not in any way linked to other tracks. You can join tracks when ripping CDs, but that eliminates the information that you have for each movement.

The iTunes Music Store already uses the concept of “works:” a work being an entire symphony, sonata, or string quartet. As you can see here, each work is linked, and a disclosure triangle lets you collapse or expand the individual movements:

If the iTunes Music Store can do this, then iTunes and the iPod should as well. (Note that while you see music like this on the iTunes Music Store, purchasing the music downloads the tracks without these “links”.) This would help classical music listeners join the fold of iTunes and iPod users, since it would lead to organizing entire multi-movement works as single units, creating playlists with them, and playing them back without worrying about the different movements getting separated. If this were possible, you could create a smart playlist that plays all the string quartets in your library, and you wouldn’t have to worry about their movements getting out of order (you certainly don’t want one movement of Schubert followed by an Ives scherzo). You could even use the Shuffle Songs feature on your iPod to listen to classical music.

7. Nested playlists. This is a simple one: just give iTunes the ability to add folders to its Source list, where you name each folder (say by genre or artist), and move playlists into that folder. We’ve got multiple playlists for some artists, so it would be practical - and save space - if they could be grouped in such a way.

8. Improved smart playlists. Smart playlists are great; but they are limited. They only offer All or Any as selections. For example, you can create a playlist of music you’ve rated with 5 stars that is in the Jazz genre, but you can’t create one that gets 5-star music in the Jazz or Blues genre. There’s a workaround: create a first playlist that gets all your music from the Jazz or Blues genres, then create a smart playlist that looks for 5-star songs in that playlist. But that’s a hack, and an inelegant one. iTunes needs to provide more power to smart playlists: as users have more and more music in their libraries, they want finer control over it.

9. Provide an alternate browsing interface. The column interface of iTunes’ Browse mode is nice, but why not go further and provide an icon-based interface (using folders, or even album art to indicate specific albums) and a list-based interface as well? Or why not offer additional columns other than simply Genre, Artist and Album? Classical music might like to be able to use a Composer column in Browse mode, and DJs might like to browse by BPM.

10. An alert when burning CDs telling you what type of CD you are burning. iTunes lets you burn three types of CD: audio, MP3 and data. Unfortunately, there is no alert when you click the Burn CD button; a simple dialog telling you which type of CD you’re burning, with an option to change it, would be easy to implement and save on coasters.

Do you have other suggestions or requests for iTunes 5? Share them with us in the comments thread below. We’re looking forward to seeing your ideas.

Kirk McElhearn is the author of several books including iPod & iTunes Garage. His blog, Kirkville features articles about the iPod, iTunes, Mac OS X and much more. Thanks to iLounge reader Richardthomas78 for the fifth (concept) picture.

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Comments

101

Improve Organization

- Instead of just grouping by “Compilation” how about being able to organize in folders like “Movie Soundtrack”, “Video Game Soundtrack”, “Singles”, and “EPs”.

- Enable “Compilation” view on iPod.

Posted by Cyantre on June 21, 2005 at 12:05 AM (PDT)

102

if yu can’t deside what to rate a song, you should be able to scan the itunes libery to see what other users rated it and pick out the averige. i can’t deside most of my ratings you see .

Posted by slasher_65 on June 21, 2005 at 11:39 AM (PDT)

103

My Ultimate iTunes 5.0 Wishlist

•Easily remove files that appear to be missing.

•Specify an artist’s last name in order to properly sort alphabetically without entering names as “Last name, First”.

•Delete originals after conversion. I would like to be prompted during file conversion with the option to delete or keep originals.

•Ability to move new files into the library folders instead of copying them. I would like to be prompted during file moves with the option to copy or move originals.

•Ability to play tracks the user types into the search box (song, artist, etc.) by simply pressing the enter key. This would save one extra step and be pretty cool for playing songs on the fly.

•Auto clip silence off of specified tracks. ITunes should be able to automatically trim the silence from the beginning or ending parts of a track.

•Ability to lock down song tag information against accidental change or deletion. Once your song info is complete and correct you can select a check box that keeps the data from being changed, removed, or deleted.

•The ability to have songs play without gaps, not including the merge song feature during CD importing.

•Individual control over “Gaps Between Songs�? for each track when burning a CD.

•Ability to select the format for CD importing on a case-by-case basis without having to change the universal preference.

•Playlist subfolders or “nested�? folders. You could create a 90’s playlists and inside that place other folders like Alternative, Pop, Rock, etc.

•Ability to sort playlists in any order by dragging, instead of just alphabetically - including the ability to mingle smart and normal playlists.

•Double entries for album TITLES and DATES. Some songs appear on multiple albums and released at different dates.

•Section for song lyrics.

•Track name management: Auto remove extra spaces and change case options (UPPER CASE, lower case, Sentence case, Title Case, etc.)

•Currently when importing, iTunes opens a window that says: “some of these songs are in your library, would you like to replace existing, import or cancel�?. There’s no option to skip all duplicates and continue importing.

•iTunes should automatically search for tracks recently added to the iTunes folder and update the library. When new files are added to the iTunes folder, they automatically appear in the library and playlists.

•Allow the downloading of album art from iTunes Music Store for albums that have been imported from CD.

•More Album art: back covers, inside covers, album jacket covers, etc.

•The ability to have iTunes alert you if you are about to buy a song that you already have in your iTunes library.

Posted by The Toecutter on June 22, 2005 at 8:05 AM (PDT)

104

I’d love to be able to change genres on tracks from the ipod itself, without having to wait until I get back home to my computer, remember what I was thinking about and what song(s) I wanted to change, etc. Couldn’t it be as easy as changing the star rating on a song?

also, what about doing that with playlists? I know it’s a little more complicated, but what if we could add a song to an already existing playlist while we were riding the train? a fourth or fifth option after track position and star rating could be something like a menu for which playlists it’s included in…

my third suggestion is already in the top five or whatever-- the thing about a song with more than one artist getting listed under any artist that’s had a part of it…

Posted by justducky on June 22, 2005 at 8:25 AM (PDT)

105

i cannot believe that no one has brought this up. i think it is ridiculous that to change the encoding format you wish to use when importing a song requires a trip to the preferences dialogue.

for certain people, jobs, and various reasons i need to encode in different formats quite often. it seems so windows-ish to have to work so backwards that i must go to a preferences dialogue, click on the import pane, choose my setting, close the dialogue box, encode, reopen the prefs dialogue, click on import and return my setting to my default so i don’t have to remember where i left it last. all of that just to encode a song!

a contextual menu? scripts? a drop down from the import button? anything!?!

this has been a ridiculous oversight that with each new version of itunes i foolishly think, “surely they’ve done it this time!” and then… no, they haven’t.

Posted by stuntman on June 22, 2005 at 9:01 AM (PDT)

106

The way Apple has things set up, it should be trivial to link your .Mac account to what you’ve purchased at the iTMS.

It’s probably a problem with their contracts with music folks, but there should be a pseudo directory in your iDisk (like the Apple Software dir, etc.) that contains links to the songs you’ve purchased, so you can download them again.

It would make ITMS and dot-Mac both much more useful.

Posted by jwlvs on June 22, 2005 at 11:15 AM (PDT)

107

have iTunes automatically make the album folders have the art work as their icon.

Posted by alternapop on June 22, 2005 at 1:25 PM (PDT)

108

A classical music “works” feature would slve many of my problems with iTunes.
And this is an iPod rather than an iTunes problem, but if Apple could PLEASE update the firmware to allow you to tyrun off the pause function whenever the headphones are (or more usually, when the iPod thinks they have been) removed. Apple’s hardware support on this issue has been hopeless...they could sole it with a minot firmware adjustment.

Posted by ppfournier on June 22, 2005 at 6:36 PM (PDT)

109

I’m mostly repeating what others are saying here, but I would like to see:

Smarter “Smart playlists” - the ability to apply more boolean logic.
Easier on the fly generation of smart playlists, so you can just select songs to listen to without having to physically create another playlist.

Sub playlists for normal and smart playlists so you can browse to a playlist and then go down and get all songs with a certain star rating etc (more for ipod).

Tighter album art integration, something like iArt would be cool.

Something similar to moodlogic so you can listen to songs with a certain style/feel or similar to a song you are currently listening to.

Sub/mulitple genres, sick of how many similarly named genres I have in my list

Greater integration for developers through SDK. The SDK is good so far but it isnt possible to integrate your “great ideas” into the app. You always have to have another window open somewhere else. If you could easily make the new app open whenever iTunes opens (like a plugin) or add items to context menus people would be able to come up with much better extensions.

Posted by robroe in Manchester, UK on June 23, 2005 at 4:17 AM (PDT)

110

I think that Apple has declared its hand in deciding for us that users of iLife type software are dunderheads. They have decided that, for instance, things like proper boolean searches etc are beyond our limited capabilities.
But this is not the case for all of Apple’s software, witness FCPro, Logic, Motion etc which are triumphs in software engineering in being more than full featured, yet somehow not turning into M$ style bloatware.

So...the only way I can see it for us to get what we want is to pay for it. [I know, I know].
But, say, iTunes Express continues to be free, pretty much featured as it is now. And iTunes Pro which is $19.99 and basically offers ALL of the cool stuff that you guys have dreamed up already.

I would pay $19.99 for all of this. Now that would be a toons manager that would rock my world.

PS extra feature -since before Apple’s PartList feature I had a much better idea for a Party Jukebox feature. Someone commented on it earlier. I agree and would go further...allow fine control, in terms of password authentication to enter the mode which then requires pw again to exit from it. Then authenticate to setup various options, like how many tracks can be entered in one drag, how many to be entered in one minute, allowing how many tracks from one album can be entered in one go etc. Password to delete tracks from jukebox list and pw to reorder tracks.

Posted by Negative GhostRider on June 23, 2005 at 6:16 AM (PDT)

111

Kirk said “-- How about supporting multiple Airport Expresses??? Rather than an individual choice like “Living Room�? or “Office�? or “Den�? the drop down could have a check box so you could select “Living Room�? and “Office�? and “Den�?

Probably because most people won’t want the same music playing in every room… “

What are you talking about, that would be a great feature. If most people dont want that OPTION then most people are idiots. I would love to be able to walk around the house or office and be able to listen to the same stuff wherever I go. I have often had several radios in the house on at the same time so that I can listen to a program as I move around, without having to crank up the volume.
This would be perfect for listening to podcasts where you dont want to miss anything important while you’re out of the room.

Posted by turpie on June 23, 2005 at 5:51 PM (PDT)

112

These comments refer to publishing of metadata tags for CDs.

Our preferred method of data entry is to use iTunes—because it’s easier, faster, intuitive, and fingerprinting is much faster. We then submit the tags to the CDDB. We find data entry in GraceNote to be cumbersome. Try it–very mainframe-ish. CDDB is geared for commercial CDs by single artist/single-record companies. This data structure is not flexible enough for our compilation style publishing needs.

Our goal – translate the data into iTunes fields to GraceNote’s CDDB. We want this data available to all users.

Here is what we would like from both Apple and GraceNote.

• Flexible metadata tags between iTunes and CDDB (especially genre and subgenre; notes; composers; performers; copyrights; type).

• CDDB and Apple should use the same fields and accept all data entry from either source. When a user pops in a CD, ALL the data gets populated. Users can hide the fields that they don’t need just like in View Options.

• Genres: CDDB should accept all flexible and user-entered genres and subgenres. GraceNote rejects any custom genres that do not match their preset lists. They also set up their genres as a predetermined subgenre. For example their genre is “Pop/Teen” and their subgenre is also “Pop/Teen” as well. It should be Genre=Pop, Subgenre = Teen. We realize that this is an attempt to categorize genres so that there are not an infinite number of them on retrieval. But we really need some flexibility.

• CDDB, GraceNote, and Apple need to work together—allow user flexibility of data entry, custom fields.

• Should Apple should look elsewhere or develop their own lookup database?

• Here is an example of inflexibility. Why can’t the iTunes’ Comments field translate into the CDDB Notes field? (Come on!)

• Groupings field in CDDB would be nice. We need a copyright notice field on every track, not just one for the entire album.

• It might be better to rename the Artist field as Performer. People are confusing Artists with Composers. For example, people type in Beethoven into the Artist field. But he’s been dead quite a while and probably didn’t perform on the recording.

• Should there be an Author field for Audiobooks?

• As MP3s, iTunes, and metadata uses expand, we may need a Type field that defines the broadest category— music, radio, audiobook, streaming, podcasts, video, album art, pdfs.

• Adding user-defined fields would be nice (Custom 1, Custom 2 with an option to title them and have them transfer between databases)

• In iTunes, turn its database into a fully-featured database with flexible AND/OR searches on every criteria.

There are many great suggestions on this thread (lyrics, album art, pdfs, videos, backups, multiple libraries). Some of them will be “killed” by the spectre of music, lyrics, and recording permissions from print publishers and the record companies. It is basically a nightmare process that takes forever and is very expensive. For example, copyrighted lyrics on web sites are notorious for being taken down by threats of legal action. The record companies could assist in this but even they don’t control the copyrights they publish. A nightmare.

Because if this It’s TRULY AMAZING that Apple started the “legal” download revolution with iTunes, iTMS, and the iPod. That they got the record companies to go along with it deserves some kind of prize.

I hope that the record companiesand music publishers will learn to be good partners in this new age. After all, it’s to their benefit.

Posted by jon2u on June 24, 2005 at 8:17 AM (PDT)

113

Though I am so far at the end of the list I doubt anyone will ready this, here I go…
I’d like to see:
1) Album Art - When playing songs, I’d like for the album art to keep up with the song playing. Fading in and out for each new album. If you “look” at another album, the art can “pop” into the panel, but then fade back to the album art playing after a few seconds.
2) Make a mini player that minimizes to the taskbar - Ok, this is a Windows Media Player featue that few know about. You can set WMP to be a mini player in the taskbar (when minimized). Why is this cool? You can easily go to the next song, etc. without actually pulling WMP back up. Quick and easy.

Posted by ScoopMichael on June 24, 2005 at 2:12 PM (PDT)

114

I want to add a comment to the multiple library feature request. Someone mentioned multiple computers sharing the same library, but I want to put that feature into the same computer. If you have multiple users on a computer that listens to the same music you should be able to share the songs between users (not necessarily the whole library, but the parts you want). This not only free’s up disc space, but also to not have to record the same CD five times. And if you share an iPod in the family as a replacement for a stereo, you can easily put different users music on the same iPod. This should also work between computers. There would maybe be a problem with copyrightprotected iTMS bought music, but apple wont have a hard time to find a workaround, I’m sure
It would also be cool if iTunes scanned different users libraries and if it found exactly matching songs it would delete one and make an alias to it, to automatically save disc space.

Posted by iPontus on June 25, 2005 at 10:29 AM (PDT)

115

What about some way to synchronise playcounts/ratings between two PC’s you have running iTunes? I have a work PC and a hoem PC and I’d like to know when I actually last listened to a song, not when I last listened to it on that PC.

Also I’d like some way of overwriting last played, ratings etc, for when you reimport a CD at a different bitrate and iTunes doesnt pick up the fact that it already exists in the library due to a slightly different title.

Posted by robroe in Manchester, UK on June 28, 2005 at 4:35 AM (PDT)

116

I agree with multiple libraries, nested playlists, smart playlists, and better multiple artist handling.

I would also like to see a refresh feature so that I can manipulate my collection outside of iTunes. like with mp3tag, and be able to have iTunes pick up the id3 tag differences or notice when I’ve moved songs. I know that I can delete the songs from iTunes and rescan the folder but that loses all the iTunes stats.

Posted by David Mulligan on June 29, 2005 at 7:40 AM (PDT)

117

I want to be able to see what’s playing when iTunes is minimized to a toolbar. Windows Media Player does this, make iTunes do it. I want to see a pop-up of some sort when the track changes and it could show album art too.

Posted by specialb on June 29, 2005 at 7:46 AM (PDT)

118

There are work-arounds for having multiple libraries which use a single file repository. The one we use is multiple accounts (on same or diff computers) with individual libraries but a single shared music folder. This way my wife and I have our own ratings, playlists, stats etc. but don’t need to duplicate many gigs of files. The key is the music folder should be RW for owner+group with gid bit set. This makes all new folders and files in the music folder RW for owner+GROUP. This way, when I add a cd say “13 songs” by “fugazi”, itunes creates a “fugazi” folder, with a “13 songs” subfolder, but both are R+W for owner+group. Now my wife adds a cd “repeater+3songs” by “fugazi”, and itunes can make a “repeater+3songs” to the “fugazi” folder, even though it is owned by me, it is R+W for the group. Without the gid bit, wife would get a “access denied” error, since she can’t write to my “fugazi” folder.

A couple things to keep in mind though:
1. In order for music that was added by wife to appear in my library, I need to occasionally “add to library” and select the root folder which contains all our music. iTunes will take a while to scan the folder and add music which I don’t already have to my library, but it shouldn’t muck anthing up.
2. Be careful not to change any of the tags for shared music, if it could change the file name (eg, artist, name, album, track #). It will create broken links in others libraries. Shouldn’t be a problem if “keep organized” is not enabled.
3. If you add music from files (as opposed to ripping from CD, or iTMS) make sure the tags are well set, and you have “keep organized” and “copy to folder” options enabled. This means you have to be careful with #2.
4. if you use a server volume, make sure the volume is available before you start itunes.

Alternatively, there is a script over at Doug’s applescripts which allows you to switch between iTunes libraries for a single user. I use this on my laptop, since I keep a local library (for travel) and a much larger library on the server (when home).

iTunes 5.0 should have a client/server arch that would make this work much mo better.

Posted by mrgibbysworth on June 29, 2005 at 7:48 AM (PDT)

119

I have my whole music-library stored as Apple Lossless. It would be nice if iTunes had an option to convert the songs to a lossy format when transferred to the iPod.

I know I can convert the songs before transferring and create a playlist that excludes my lossless songs. However, this isn’t a good solution for several reasons.
1. My library contains 2 versions of every song I have
2. The rating/playcount etc. is not syncronized between the two versions of the song.

It would just be so much easier if this could be done automatically, so that I could fit all my music on the iPod and still be able to rip/store it lossless on my computer.

Posted by wirrum on June 29, 2005 at 4:54 PM (PDT)

120

I think that iTunes should havea a download section where you can get games for free or for a price on the iPod that would be really cool and the option to change the overall look of iTunes.

Posted by Dan the Mac Man on June 30, 2005 at 8:26 AM (PDT)

121

It would be cool if aacPlus (including the ability to play 5.1 multichannel) was integrated so that one can listen to streams in that format (for example at http://www.tuner2.com/).

Posted by DecaDance on July 5, 2005 at 3:37 PM (PDT)

122

This may seem like an insignificant thing to some but I want to be able to move the damn Song Title column! Why does it need to be locked left?

‘Artist - Album - Song’ is my preference and I’m sure anybody with some ability for logical thinking would agree this should be allowed.

Gapless playback is my #1 request though. That’s something that HAS to be there.

Posted by weemies on July 5, 2005 at 6:05 PM (PDT)

123

The latest iTunes has been released and, although I’ve been looking forward to the Podcast feature, I’m disappointed because I’m used to iPodderX and it’s ability to place podcasts in separate Playlist folders.

I don’t want to leave my “Playlists” menu to go into “Podcasts” to listen to my podcasts. I like being able to go from playlist to playlist to listen to my content.

<<Mods, I check the box to “Subscribe” to the discussion, but I never get emailed when new comments are added.>>

Posted by Pride Of Lions on July 6, 2005 at 2:31 PM (PDT)

124

well. u know how they have a podcast section. and how podcasts don’t get added to the library because if u did a party huffle it would be abit strange if the news or something came up blasting threw ur speakers at a party. they should have that with audio books. i cannot name how many times i have had a party and evanescence has just finished playing then my lemony snicket audiobook starts playing.

Posted by alexackack on July 7, 2005 at 3:23 AM (PDT)

125

I think the PDF feature is showing a lack of imagination. I mean, it’s a computer, why not have a flash based booklet that works more like a website. Yeah, and load it up in iTunes itself. I think that iTunes isn’t that visually easy to manage… I’d like to see a better visual representation of hte music, more like the front page of iTMS but customised for your own library..

Posted by Ketha on July 12, 2005 at 8:20 AM (PDT)

126

Being able to rip with the LAME encoder would be great; AAC is such a horrible format and the current iTunes version of mp3 VBR is incredibly ####. Bring on the -aps, whoo.

Also, it seems a lot of you *realy* don’t understand the fundamental basics of tagging (with ID3, at least). Apple can’t miraculously say ‘Here, now you can put inside album art in, and here’s your multiple artists for one track feature =D’. They’d have to make a concerted move with other mp3 player software developers to implement a new, more thorough version of ID3.

That said, they can do what they want with AAC, as it’s their format to do with what they will. If you take the (better) mp3 route for your ripping though, don’t expect any changes on the level you’re asking them. It just can’t happen.

Also: If Apple implements an automatic ‘download art’ feature, please make it optional.

Posted by DeadSeraphim on July 26, 2005 at 5:00 PM (PDT)

127

These are the features I think itunes is sorely lacking in. If they were added, it would make my day. Perhaps there are workarounds for some of these.

A directory/path column for sorting - for those of us who like our music to live where we want it to, or just have messy hard drives. It would help for sorting dupes as well.

Check selected songs only - Why the heck can’t I just hold down the shft or option ket to check/uncheck highlighted songs?

Add to library but not to ipod - just cause i want it in my library doesn’t me i want it on the ipod

Grouping duplicates by location /same album stuff - just better dupe management in general

Detect tags changed by other proggies - this one annoys me. If I change the tags using a different program. I have to first remove it form the lib. then add it again for the changes to show up. In general there out to be a way for resyncing your library database to reflect changes in files or location. If you move a folder it should be smarter about finding the songs. I hate having to delete my entire 15,000 song library and then re adding to itunes jhust because I made a ton of tag changes or move a bunch of songs on the drive.

Ipod prefs without plugging in ipod - how about letting us change the prefernces without have the ipod plugged in. So I can changes which playlists i want to update manually etc.

Deleting from disk /recycler through lib - more disk managment tools through itunes. I think this works only your music is “organized” thru itunes.

converting bitrates while going into ipod - let me shrink that 360 kbs miles davis to 192 on they fly while I sync, without have to have multiple copies on my drive. That way I can fit a few more tunes in the ipod. Great for audio books.

show all songs that cannot ber played on ipod - instead of coming back from a long lunch on to find that annoying message
and my ipod load has been hanging the whole time. Tell me all ofem up front and let me take care of em.

A plugin for letting you append rather than overwrite multiple tag fields would be fantastic. i.e. I could grab 600 songs and add “rainy day” to the comment field without having to erase the comments already there.

ANy thoughts, comments, suggestions? Any Apple developers listening?

I would love to have only 1 or 2 programs to manage EVERYTHING.

Posted by evilcartmanspod on August 25, 2005 at 12:32 AM (PDT)

128

I can’t believe you didn’t mention this: Add the ability to have iTunes regularly scan your music folders and add/remove files that have been added/changed/deleted. If there was also some function to try to detect if a file’s been moved to a different directory (so that you don’t have to click “browse” as you do currently), that would be icing on the cake.

Some of us don’t think iTunes should be the one app to rule our entire computer. I move around music files via windows explorer, and access them with winamp, SageTV, Xbox Media Center, etc., and want to have them organized on disk MY way. If iTunes could allow for customizeation of the way it organized when you select “allow itunes to reoganize my music library”, such as GENRE\ARTIST\ALBUM\TRACK, then I might consider using it to manage my files, and I might not be asking for the automatic library update feature.

I have many one-hit-wonder songs, and only one track by that artist. If I reorganize according to itunes, I end up with a gazillion folders, each with one song. Also I really think you should be able to group your music folders according to genre.

Sorry for the rant.

Posted by goatmonger on August 27, 2005 at 10:59 PM (PDT)

129

Well, one thing we’ve recently learned is that Apple doesn’t read these boards.

Posted by Pride Of Lions on September 16, 2005 at 8:11 PM (PDT)

130

Wow… Interesting list, especially since we’re now on iTunes 7 which has incorporated most of these ideas.

Posted by TommyWIllB on June 13, 2008 at 8:50 AM (PDT)

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