News
iTunes 4.2 and new ‘Grouping’ feature
By Dennis Lloyd
Publisher, iLoungeGoogle+
Published: Saturday, December 20, 2003
News Categories: iTunes
In the latest release of iTunes appears a new feature called ‘Grouping.’ Grouping is another field you can edit and search on. Grouping is useful for Classical music, where a “work” or “piece” of music is multiple tracks but not the whole CD. It shows up in Get Info, View Options, and when you right click on column headers,” as explained by ‘iTunes Mike’ in the Apple Discussions forums.
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1
would this work with Live concerts as well?
whats this most-practical for?
Posted by Anvilman on December 20, 2003 at 9:12 AM (PST)
2
As much as I’m getting tired of MusicMatch, I still use it because it groups artists/albums/whatever together with little plus signs to expand/contract your list. I’ve got 7,000+ songs, and it’s a pain in the arse to scroll for hours to find one song.
And I’m waiting for an “import from MusicMatch” feature. Just hit a button, and all of your MusicMatch library information, playlists, and related iTunes features are copied over. You spend hours making playlists (er..I do), and you get double songs if you try to add those playlists into iTunes? Hello?! Talk about basic features…
Also, I think a great iPod feature would be to allow the expansion/contraction of certain elements in a playlist. So you could add an artist to the “On-The-Go,” and it wouldn’t add each song individually but grouped together.
Sorry..Living in a dream world, I guess.
Posted by Ryan on December 20, 2003 at 9:19 AM (PST)
3
I can’t even say a-r-s-e? Wow..that’s pathetic…
Posted by Ryan on December 20, 2003 at 9:19 AM (PST)
4
Ehh… even if I don’t use it for tagging my classical music, it will still give me options for more creative smart playlists. I’ll have to think about that for a little bit
Posted by Jerrod H. in TX on December 20, 2003 at 9:30 AM (PST)
5
Hmm, never tried to type “arse” in this group. Are you saying that “arse” is censored out with *‘s after you type your comment? I always assumed that the *‘s were intentionally added by the commenter. Funny stuff here.
Posted by splitpea on December 20, 2003 at 9:34 AM (PST)
6
Ryan,
iTunes has had that sort of grouping from day one. Click on the “Browse” button on the top right of the app and the browse pane opens with Genre, Artist, and Album lists appearing from your entire library. You can scroll through either of the three lists, select any item in either, and then the songs for that Genre, Artist, or Album appear in the main pane below. I find it much more flexible than MusicMatch in that respect.
Posted by Atomic Bomb in Mid-Atlantic on December 20, 2003 at 9:53 AM (PST)
7
Thanks Atomic.
I’m still hoping for it to be more/better implemented. As much as I don’t like MusicMatch, I like the library window.
...but I’ll most definitely use that whenever I’m in iTunes.
Posted by Ryan on December 20, 2003 at 9:58 AM (PST)
8
it might be a video player that is going to really jack up the price. I prefer they keep it music oriented
Posted by v4 on December 20, 2003 at 12:58 PM (PST)
9
If you are into club/house/electronica etc., you can use the grouping feature for the remixer of a particular song, while keeping the genre. That’s what I think I’ll start using it for…
Posted by Scott on December 20, 2003 at 7:50 PM (PST)
10
I tried to use it to create a Smart Playlist…I added a keyword to the grouping field, the songs showed up in the playlist, I synced and the playlist was blank.
Every time.
I’d say that’s buggy or am I doing something wrong? ALl of my other smart playlists are fine.
Posted by stark23x on December 20, 2003 at 11:05 PM (PST)
11
Does that mean that when you use the random function it could play the whole group together?
I have quite a few longer songs which are divided into tracks, and when I use random I just get fragments of the song rather than the whole thing.
Posted by Speckled Jim on December 21, 2003 at 12:54 AM (PST)
12
stark23x - I used to run into that problem if I added something to the comment field and didn’t change anything anywhere else. The iPod wouldn’t recognize a change if it was only made in the comment box.
I saw in one of the other posts here somewhere that comment field problem has been fixed with this release (4.2) but it sounds like while they fixed the problem on the comment box, the forgot it again on the new grouping field.
Try making an update to one of the other fields on those tracks and see if that picks up the tracks when you sync your iPod…
Posted by me on December 21, 2003 at 12:23 PM (PST)
13
The ID3v2 tag format actually supports custom fields. I wish they’d add in an interface for that!
Currently I’m using Grouping for keywords because I use Comments for “liner notes.” I’d love to see custom fields so I can define my most common keywords into Yes/No or open text fields… like Remixer, EP Yes/No, Import Yes/No, Original Performer (for covers), etc.
http://www.id3.org/frames.html
Posted by soybomb on December 22, 2003 at 4:44 AM (PST)
14
I played with the “Groupings” stuff on some of my classical CDs. In particular, one CD has 2 Mendelssohn symphonies on it. I grouped the tracks for each symphony.
But I didn’t see any changes to the .mp3 files themselves, so I question the previous post that said that establishing/changing grouping information is updated in the .mp3 files themselves.
dave
Posted by David Emery on December 22, 2003 at 9:56 AM (PST)
15
Too bad we can’t simply import a homemade or commercially available APPLICATION that allows us to use the iTunes HARDWARE in conjunction with the music organier program of our choice (eg, MusicMatch ITSELF running the show on my iPod).
Posted by CliffWalkinFool on March 25, 2011 at 6:29 PM (PST)