Is iTunes illogical or am I?

March 9, 2009 8:44 AM

I don't understand iTunes. Please explain these specifics to me if you can.

Okay, I like iTunes but it does many things that I don't find logical. Am I just misunderstanding the software? Here are my issues--can you explain what I'm doing wrong or if the software is fucked, do you have a workaround?

Note that I'm Leopard with the latest iTunes.

1. When sorting by Artist (how I usually sort my collection), compilations are of course broken up. Is there a way to sort by artist that ignores collections and keeps those album tracklists together?

2. I'd like a playlist that is made up of the last 20 albums I bought. For instance, if I buy 20 albums online today, I'd like a smart playlists that consists of those albums... until X days from now when I purchase new albums, which will then replace the albums I bought X days ago. In other words, I want a playlist of the last batch of music that I bought. Seems impossible to me. Or is it?

3. I often forget what albums I have ripped (I have 9000 or so CDs). If I put a CD in the drive and tell iTunes to rip it and iTunes finds I already have it it tells me, "Some of these tracks already exist." And gives me the option of Replace Existing, Cancel, and Don't Replace. I understand the first two options. The third, however, does not behave as expected. I assume it means that it will rip the tracks that are not already present. Instead, it just goes ahead and rips the whole album. WTF?

Note that I just verified this by ripping an album, ejecting the cd, and inserting it again, and choosing "Don't replace". It re-ripped the entire cd.

4. My music collection is huge. How can I keep it on multiple drives when the preferences section only allows me to set one location for my iTunes library.

4b. Is there a way to split genres across drives? For instance, have all my jazz cds on one drive, all my blues on another, all pop, rock, alternative on a third, etc? Or if #4 is possible (multiple drives on iTunes), does it just rip cds to the drive with the most space?

5. Because I haven't figured out #4, the times when I've had to move to a larger drive, I've done a move of the files (using the iTunes preferences to do it)... but the album art hasn't moved. Then, I tell it to get the art and it trolls the internet for it. Many covers that aren't there had previously been imported by me with a cut and paste from Allmusic. How can I avoid doing this all over again?

6. Sometimes iTunes splits tracks of an album across two entries... even though there is no difference between the data. I open each track and everything but track title is identical (artist, album, genre, etc.). Sometimes I confirm this by selecting all and retyping the data. It doesn't fix the problem. Why is it doing this?

7. Sometimes I find artists listed in two spellings (for instance, Belle and Sebastian and Belle & Sebastian). When I change one set to match the other, iTunes makes a copy of the mp3s and puts them in a new folder with the new proper name... but doesn't remove the other files from my drive--just from iTunes. Why on earth would it do this instead of just renaming the files? It makes an album take twice the space until I manually delete the files with Finder. Pain in the ass.

8. This isn't an iTunes question but an iPhone one. I do not want photos on my iPhone. I have not checked the box asking to import photos. However, ever time I plug in my iPhone, it launches iPhoto. How can I get it to stop?

Thanks!

posted by You Should See the Other Guy to computers & internet (34 comments total)

Ripping a pre-existing CD with Don't Replace will do just that - it will rip an entirely new copy of the entire thing, instead of replacing any existing parts of it.
posted by kingbenny at 8:46 AM on March 9, 2009

Of course, I thought of some more:

5b. Is there a way for me to submit album art to the iTunes database?

9. Sometimes when the wrong album art appears and I choose to delete it (either thru "Info" or "Remove album art"... it doesn't remove it. Even if I add the proper art, the old art still appears. How can I fix this?
posted by You Should See the Other Guy at 8:49 AM on March 9, 2009

6. I'm not quite sure what you mean by "entries", but I've found that I had a few albums that have "Sorting Artist/Album" set, which overrides the "real" artist/album when it sorts them. In my case, it made the tracks within an album appear out of order, because only a few tracks had these properties set, while others didn't. Using the "sorting" properties might also be an answer to your question in #1.
posted by ThyroidBob at 8:50 AM on March 9, 2009

kingbenny, ahh! Thanks. That makes sense but doesn't, if you know what I mean. I just confirmed that you're correct, however.

So, then, I guess if I insert a CD that the software already finds and I want to ensure that I have all of the tracks then I need to choose "Replace Existing" and still rerip the whole thing, right? There's no way to just have it import tracks that aren't there without manually checking or unchecking check boxes, correct?
posted by You Should See the Other Guy at 8:53 AM on March 9, 2009

Regarding #7:

iTunes doesn't care about the file names when determining the artist or title. It looks into the ID3 tag, which is a part of the MP3 file unrelated to the filename itself. If you want iTunes to behave properly regarding these names, you'll need to avoid manually changing any of the file names. This will confuse iTunes into thinking you now have a completely new file. The old file name will still be referenced.

When you right-click any song inside iTunes you can select Get Info to show which actual file is "behind" that iTunes record.
posted by odinsdream at 8:53 AM on March 9, 2009

ThyroidBob, by entries, I mean it lists the album as 2 albums with tracks 1 and 2 (or whatever) as being one album and 3 - 10 as the other album. When I select all tracks (1-10) and read get info, everything is identical except track names. I can never get iTunes to view the 10 tracks as one album.
posted by You Should See the Other Guy at 8:55 AM on March 9, 2009

odinsdream: If you want iTunes to behave properly regarding these names, you'll need to avoid manually changing any of the file names.

I never manually change the file names. What I do is open the Get Info box and change the artist name there.

My issue is that when I do this, iTunes copies the files to a new folder and leaves the old files there collecting dust.

So, if I have all but one of Belle & Sebastian's albums in a folder called Belle & Sebastian and the other album under Belle and Sebastian and then I change (with iTunes' Get Info) Belle and Sebastian to Belle & Sebastian, I end up with a Belle & Sebastian folder with all of their albums in it, which iTunes accesses, AND a Belle & Sebastian folder which iTunes does not access but which of course takes up space on my drive until I notice it and manually delete it.
posted by You Should See the Other Guy at 8:58 AM on March 9, 2009

That should read "...AND a Belle and Sebastian folder which iTunes does not access..."
posted by You Should See the Other Guy at 8:59 AM on March 9, 2009

Itunes doesn't really behave like other music software. So, people can explain to you how it works so that you can use it better, but in many cases there's not a "why" to how it works other than "because that's how it works"

1. Depends on the metadata for the compilation. On some of mine the artist name is in the Name field in which case you can sort by keyword. Otherwise you can make up a playlist for the Artist and play that.

2. You can make a smart playlist by date. What I do is make a list that is only "music added on $Date" and then change that date.

3. "Instead, it just goes ahead and rips the whole album. WTF?" It's easier if you see "don't replace" as "just recopy this music" Basically it knows you have the songs [or some of the songs] already and if you say "don't replace, it assumes you know this too and re-rips the CD. You can select certain songs to import if you know which ones you stil need.

4. "My music collection is huge.." I'll let other people speak to this. Basically you have a few options for how you keep your music organized. The main ones are "copy all the music to my Library" versus "just make pointers to my music where it is. This is nder the preferences in the advanced section. You *can* tell iTunes to sort of "play it as it lays" and access your music from multiple drives and then it maintains an index of where your music is. This is a huge PITA when one of your drives isn't on or otherwise conencted, otherwise it's just fine.

5. I don't know about album art. I remove mine.

6. "Sometimes iTunes splits tracks of an album across two entries... " I'm not sure I understand this question

7. This has been answered.

In short, iTunes behaves in a lot of strange ways because it's sort of trying to make the reality of the files not matter to people who just want a music player. To people like you [and me] who sort of care about where the files are and what they're called, this can be a pain.
posted by jessamyn at 9:02 AM on March 9, 2009 [1 favorite]

So have you checked out the Sorting pane for your tracks that aren't grouping correctly? It sounds close enough to my issue that it might be worth checking out, if you haven't already...
posted by ThyroidBob at 9:05 AM on March 9, 2009

5b. Is there a way for me to submit album art to the iTunes database?

I think they only have art for the things they sell in the store. So no. Sometimes you'll have a mismatch between your name and the store name which will cause it to not get the art.
posted by smackfu at 9:07 AM on March 9, 2009

I'm trying to figure out a solution for your "last 20 albums I bought" playlist. Under the View menu, select View Options. You'll see a bunch of optional fields that can be added to the Library window. "Date Added" displays (surprise) the date you added a particular track to your iTunes library. In the case of albums purchased from the iTunes Music Store, the Date Added information is identical for all tracks in a given album.

I feel like that should be useful somehow, although I'm not sure how to tell iTunes to fill a Smart Playlist with albums meeting certain criteria vs. tracks meeting certain criteria. Anyone else want to take a stab at it?
posted by emelenjr at 9:07 AM on March 9, 2009

6. Sometimes iTunes splits tracks of an album across two entries...

iTunes bug, as far as I can tell. I think it's caused by some fields being different, but even after you set all the fields to be the same, it will still treat them as two different albums sometimes. Only way I've found to fix it is to delete all the tracks from iTunes, and add the album again.
posted by smackfu at 9:11 AM on March 9, 2009

ThyroidBob, if I change all the tracks' "Sort Artist" data to be the same as the artist name of the first track on the comp, it works. Thanks!

Jess, yes, that's what I do for #2, I just find it a pain to keep changing the date. Plus, that just gives me the albums from that date. I'd like to find a way to have the last 20 albums I imported be in a playlist--so if I buy 5 albums today, it bumps the oldest 5 off and adds the new ones, keeping the 15 other newest. I assume it's impossible but thought I'd ask.

Thanks!
posted by You Should See the Other Guy at 9:14 AM on March 9, 2009

Here's another question: if I'm listening to music, and I'm scrolling through iTunes looking at other stuff, and it jumps to the next track, iTunes scrolls me back to display the new track. Anyway to stop this besides playing from a playlist?
posted by You Should See the Other Guy at 9:17 AM on March 9, 2009

2. I'd like a playlist that is made up of the last 20 albums I bought.

Poor man's solution:

Don't check any criteria.
Limit to "240 items" selected by "most recently added".

240 = 20 albums x 12 tracks, which is about as close as you can get in iTunes. Adjust track count as needed. Smart Playlists don't really work at the album level, except in certain special cases (like picking random albums).
posted by smackfu at 9:22 AM on March 9, 2009

This isn't quite what you want but in the smart playlist option you can

- have the smart playlist have only music from albums you've bought
- have the smart playlist have 200 songs
- have the smart playlist select the 200 songs by "most recently added"

I'm not sure if the album thing is an example or if you really mean to differentiate between albums you buy as opposed to songs you buy. You can have the playlist only select purchased music by choosing Kind: and then typing in "purchased" which will mean only stuff you bought.
posted by jessamyn at 9:23 AM on March 9, 2009

Add "Play Count is 0" to the Smart Playlist, and you might have a workable solution. Tracks will disappear off the list after you've played them, so you'll always have the freshest tracks in there.
posted by emelenjr at 9:28 AM on March 9, 2009

Awesome. Thanks smackfu and jessamyn!

emelenjr, your answer reminds me... does that playcount thing actually work? I find it to be extremely inaccurate. Or does that data not synch between the iPhone and iTunes?
posted by You Should See the Other Guy at 9:29 AM on March 9, 2009

2 is impossible, like you think. They need to add an "Album" option to the Limit to... dropdown menu, since this is one of the biggest issues.

For multiple drives, you simply uncheck "Copy files to iTunes Music folder when adding to library" under Preferences > Advanced. (This is on Windows, so the names may be slightly different...)

Then, simply add the folders to the library. The location you specify will hold the iTunes database, but not necessarily the music. For example, if you have Disk 1 and Disk 2, with music in both, specify Disk 1 as the location of the library, and have music in both Disk 1 and Disk 2. Add Disk 2 via, on Windows, sorry, File > Add Folder to Library. Perhaps on the Mac it's iTunes > Add Folder to Library. Then, if that box is unchecked, it will leave the music on the original Disk. Just make sure you don't Consolidate your library, as it would obviously not fit.

3 could be avoided by doing a search first. It'll only take two seconds and will save you the confusion.

7 doesn't happen to me, with the same artist, so I'm not sure what could be going on.

Anyway, I'd recommend iLounge as a good resource, particularly their tutorials, Ask iLounge series and forums.
posted by papayaninja at 9:38 AM on March 9, 2009

I don't know how to create a smart playlist containing the latest 20 albums, but you can create a smart playlist containing the last 20 tracks added to your library. Select "New Smart Playlist" from the File menu. Click the checkbox next to "Limit to" [20] [items] selected by [most recently added].
posted by Human Flesh at 9:46 AM on March 9, 2009

1. Sort "Album by Artist". Click the Album column to sort by album, click again to get Album by Artist, once more for Album by Year. If your albums featuring many artists are not marked as compilations, this won't work; iTunes will see each track as individual songs from separate, identically-named albums by separate artists. That's what the Compilations tag is for (look in Info page for song, or Options tab for multiple songs.) You can also mess around with the Sorting tab, specifying an album or artist or album artist name to use when sorting without specifying compilations.

2. jessamyn's answer is probably best here; unless you build some sophisticated conditional playlists I can't see how you'd do this automatically. (For example I have some playlists which include X number of tracks that are also listed in playlist Y that have not been played in Z number of days... you might be able to cobble something together using the "Recently Added" list as a starting point.)

3. is answered above.

4. Use multiple iTunes libraries, one for each location. This is a pain but it is doable. Hold down the Option key when opening iTunes and it will ask you which library you wish to open, and give you the option of creating a new one. This might also make #7 easier (see below).

5. Album art is kept in a subdirectory of the folder containing the iTunes library files, not in the folders containing the music. Art can be added to the individual tracks themselves, but iTunes does not embed the art in the audio file by default. You can do this manually if you want; copy the album art, select the files, get info, then paste the copied art into the Album Artwork field. If you have iTunes automatically download album art, it won't be embedded unless you actually do the copy-paste, even if all you are copying is the existing album artwork from the album art field below your playlists and then pasting it right back where you found it.

6. I've seen this. It's damn frustrating. I can't see any reason for it myself, but there is a workaround. Select all the songs, then add the group name to the "Album Artist" field. (you can remove this later if you desire.) Also, clear the Comments field and check the box next to it. This seems to force iTunes to re-write the tags, because it is adding new info. If this doesn't work, change the name of the group to something different, then change it back once iTunes has reorganized and rewritten everything. It worked for me for the several albums that were acting strangely in my library.

7. I haven't seen this. Do you have iTunes managing your library, renaming tracks etc.? Is your library consolidated in one place? If iTunes isn't handling music you import, it won't rename anything unless it sees it as new music - that is, music you are ripping and importing or music you are creating by copying things. I have iTunes manage my music (even though I never actually use iTunes for playback). When I rename a track or album, iTunes changes the name and path to reflect this. There's no "original file" detritus littering my hard drive. If you're using multiple libraries (see #4) having iTunes manage your music for you might not be as painful.

8. Can't help you there, I have a Nokia.
posted by caution live frogs at 9:47 AM on March 9, 2009

re: 8.

1. Make sure no cameras or your iPhone aren't connected to the computer
2. Open Applications > Image Capture
3. Go to Preferences, and change "When a camera is connected, open: " to "No application".
4. Close that, kick back and relax.

That should fix it, hopefully.
posted by sektah at 9:57 AM on March 9, 2009

8. Open up Image Capture. Set the "what happens when a camera is attached" option to "Nothing".

This will, of course, disable it for all digital cameras.
posted by mkultra at 9:58 AM on March 9, 2009

You Should See the Other Guy wrote "if I'm listening to music, and I'm scrolling through iTunes looking at other stuff, and it jumps to the next track, iTunes scrolls me back to display the new track. Anyway to stop this besides playing from a playlist?"

Yes. It's called VLC Media Player, which opens in seconds and will happily play anything in your iTunes library without getting in your way or "rebuilding" the library every damn time you open it. It's what I use for playback, just as I use Winamp for playback on my Windows box. iTunes is great for what it is, but it has too many frustrations for me to use it as my primary media player. If VLC had better library management I'd be all set.
posted by caution live frogs at 9:59 AM on March 9, 2009

Not a direct answer to your questions, but a tip:

I always use a mp3 tag editor before I add new mp3s to my library, ensuring that all the tags are correct. Controlling mp3 tags from within iTunes is not the best way to go, and when you add messy tags to your library some of them will always slip through into oblivion. I'm not on a mac, but maybe this is does the job.
posted by SurrenderMonkey at 10:06 AM on March 9, 2009

There is a checkbox in the song info for "Part of a compilation" and there is an option to group compilations. Then you just have 1 "artist" at the top of your artist list that is called "Compilations." It's like the Various Artists bin in a record store, except it isn't by the Van Morrison spacer.
posted by snofoam at 10:06 AM on March 9, 2009

3. I often forget what albums I have ripped (I have 9000 or so CDs).

The low-tech solution to this part of #3 [the one I used for importing my only 500 or so] is to mark the cases of the CDs you've imported with a sticker of some sort [I used the easily-removed "garage sale price stickers"]
posted by chazlarson at 10:48 AM on March 9, 2009

Smart Playlist: Date Added is in the last 2 weeks.

Preferences > Advanced > Group Compilations When Browsing

How To Use Multiple iTunes Libraries
posted by kirkaracha at 10:56 AM on March 9, 2009

#1 is one of my peeves about how people import things to CDDB. For the purposes of iTunes, a "compilation" is an album by multiple artists, like a movie soundtrack. People incorrectly flag "greatest hits" as compilations, which they're not. There's a flag in your tags/meta information you can set for compilation albums. I set all compilations to have the Album Artist "Various Artists" with the compilation flag checked and they all show up in order under "Various Artists" when I sort by artist/album.

#5 happens because album art is not embedded. If you're on a Mac, lay out for MPFreaker. It will show you in the album art column which art is embedded and which art is merely there in iTunes. Embedding art makes the MP3 larger, but it stays with the MP3 when you move it. You can embed art manually, but my album collection is 1/10 the size of yours and it's much easier to check in MPFreaker's database. If you're on Windows, I'd hit up the Musicbrainz tagger. It may also solve some of your problems with "Belle and Sebastian" vs "Belle & Sebastian"--but read up carefully before you go changing tags if you're picky about metadata.

#6 generally means you have some different track info between the two different sets of tracks. Changing some information (adding a date, adding CD 1 of 1, etc.) will fix it. You have to add information, though, because if you just retype the album name, it doesn't always change anything.

Hope this helps.
posted by immlass at 11:22 AM on March 9, 2009

My iTunes Protip #1 for organizing compliations: You need to be looking at the "Album Artist" field. As an example, I have all the songs I download from MeFi Music listed as one compliation "Album" called MeFi Music. The "Album Artist" for that "Album" is "MetaFilter". The "Artist" for each song is whatever user posted that specific song.

Protip #2: Note that, as far as iTunes is concerned "MetaFilter" is a different artist than "MetaFilter ". I almost pulled my hair out once before I realized that I had trailing spaces on some examples of one artist's stuff.

Protip #3: My understanding is that, for people with massive libraries and very fine-grained organizational needs, iTunes is an awful choice (and this is coming from a huge iTunes apologist). It would be like a professional photographer organizing their work in iPhoto or an author writing a novel in Word. You can do it, but you will be much better off with a more professional piece of software. I have no idea what that software is for music organization, but you might want to look into it.
posted by Rock Steady at 11:28 AM on March 9, 2009

Sometimes you'll have a mismatch between your name and the store name which will cause it to not get the art.

And sometimes it will go ahead and get the wrong art...I have an album by the band known in America for legal reasons as The London Suede, but the artwork is that of the lesser-known lounge singer (and source of the legal name-change) Suede. It's a glitch.
posted by kittyprecious at 1:26 PM on March 9, 2009

1. iTunes differentiates between Album Artist and Artist. This is how I manage and I do not have your problem.

2. This is indeed possible, the functionality you want is a smart playlist.

3. If you select not to replace the music, it will continue to rip it as you told it to, and not replace the tracks already ripped, thus giving you dupes. If you selected the replace option, it would rip the entire CD and just overwrite any tracks you previously ripped. This is probably your best bet.

4. Sure, uncheck the keep iTunes music folder organized box as well as the copy files to iTunes music library when adding to library. You'll have to manage the organization of your music, but you can put one track on each drive or oddly numbered tracks on one drive or anything you'd like. Assuming you're using OS X, I'd recommend some applescript or an automator script in conjunction with folder actions to automagically sort tracks and add them to iTunes. And yes, if you've got the genre metadata properly populated, this can be all automated.

5. I would just move the entire library folder and point iTunes at that, or at least that's what I did a long time ago when I finally had to move to an external 1 TB drive for my library. Sorry.

6. Never saw this, sorry. :(

7. Do you have iTunes managing your library and are you renaming things in iTunes?

8. I had that issue too, but since I'm an Aperture user, that would launch instead and it takes a while. Very annoying. You do not have to stop iPhoto from opening for all digital cameras if you don't want. Follow this tip over at 37signals: http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/873-tip-prevent-iphoto-from-opening-when-you-plug-in-your-iphone
posted by Brian Puccio at 3:27 PM on March 9, 2009

> change "When a camera is connected, open: " to "No application".

Thanks for that, by the way. It was a question I wanted the answer to, but which never got above the threshold of actually wanting to ask on MeFi.
posted by AmbroseChapel at 3:28 PM on March 9, 2009