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iTunes built, and then broke, my meticulous music-listening system
- everyone 10y agoTake this as a lesson in not using or relying on proprietary systems like that.
- shp0ngle 10y agoThe thing is, iTunes - the music organizer part - is still one of the best ways to organize your music collection, make automated playlists, make them to sync. Apple bought iTunes and then developed it back when they made iPods and needed people to manage copying the music to their players easily, and there were some great design decisions made back then that are still present now. However, they also piled tons of crap on the core functionality. Which sucks. But I haven't seen an application that is as good as iTunes for music library. Anyway I switched to Spotify too, but the UI is frankly pretty terrible, especially on desktop.
- exergy 10y agoWait, Spotify UI is terrible? How would you alter it? I ask because I find it to be really good, especially since I came from playing my music on Windows Media Player and occasionally VLC(!).
- k-mcgrady 10y agoNot OP but take playlists in Spotify for a start. They push playlists like crazy and then have this silly little side bar for them that requires me to scroll if I have more than 10-15 playlists and is narrow so I can't see the full playlist names.
- jedikv 10y agowell it's a JS app firstly so it's kind of laggy and a bit of a memory hog.
- mcguire 10y agoThere is a certain amount of truth to the old joke, "Where does Microsoft want you to go today?"
- vermooten 10y agoUse WALTR no need for iTunes, end of.
- SyneRyder 10y agoUnless I've missed something, WALTR doesn't solve the author's smart playlist / generate a "new playlist of the day" problem.
- k-mcgrady 10y agoI don't really get the complaint. The author acknowledges they are a tiny edge case and Apple has clearly been trying to get away from syncing and make the devices work without computers for years now. The music industry has changed and streaming is now what most people are doing with these devices. I think, in hindsight, investing a lot of time in any music delivery mechanism is wasteful. It changes much too often.
- soneca 10y agoWell, you do get the complaint. You just think it is useless to make it. I think that too. And I think the author thinks that too and being useful was not the reason he made it.
- jsperson 10y agoIt's not just music though. Stream if you will/want. I think it's a good model. But that doesn't work for pictures. I know - iCloud, but it's not even as reliable as iTunes. No way am I trusting it for the only backup of videos of my kids. This may be a HN edge case, but out there in the RW, folks are taking pictures at soccer practice that they want to keep forever. It's a real PITA if you can't sync reliably.
- k-mcgrady 10y agoHave you used iCloud Photo Library? Syncs between your devices and you can have it store local copies on your Mac so you have cloud and local copies (and you can backup the local copies with your usual solution). Much safer than sync IMO because the photos are synced and backed up before you can get to a computer (useful if you're on vacation and without a computer for a couple of weeks).
- jsperson 10y agoI haven't found iCloud to be entirely reliable. The total lack of feedback in sync progress and errors when something goes wrong drive me crazy. More importantly, Apple charges a lot for storage and it can't be shared so each account needs it's own storage - and enough of it to store all pictures/videos or it won't sync at all. Basically it comes down to I don't want to pay Apple four times for storage (2 phones and 2 iCloud accounts) just so that I can have my pictures fully backed up and synced.
- danesparza 10y agoWhy are you eulogizing an existing product? Build something better or use something else.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- jankotek 10y agoIt simply can not be done! Apple is worth $ 750,000,000,000 and it spend last 16 years trying to build file synchronization tool.
- danesparza 10y agoWell not with that attitude it can't. Have you even looked at other tools like Plex https://www.plex.tv/ https://www.plex.tv/, Foobar2000 http://www.foobar2000.org/ http://www.foobar2000.org/, Clementine https://www.clementine-player.org/ https://www.clementine-player.org/, iSyncr http://www.jrtstudio.com/iSyncr-iTunes-for-Android http://www.jrtstudio.com/iSyncr-iTunes-for-Android, or DoubleTwist Sync?
- jankotek 10y agoSarcasm? I used rsync for past 20 years...
- srslack 10y agoSyncing is broken on all phones, practically. MTP is a disaster. These days I just use Syncthing on Android. What works best for me on my desktop is Rhythmbox and a bindfs mounted to the Syncthing directory, which contains a file named ".is_audio_player". https://almost-a-technocrat.blogspot.com/2010/11/isaudioplayer.htm https://almost-a-technocrat.blogspot.com/2010/11/isaudioplay... After that, multiple playlists, podcasts, transcoded or not: it can handle it all wirelessly.
- dmix 10y agoI used to obsessively manage my music like this on external HDs, syncing apps, and `beets` [1] to clean up the tags/album covers. But I've recently given this up in favour of Google Music and I'm in love. I haven't stopped raving about the service since I started using it two months ago. Just having your entire collection (and it has 99% of the music I'm looking for, something like 35 million full albums... just a simple search and button click away from adding to my library) and for stuff it doesn't have you can upload 50k songs, even stuff your pirate off private torrent trackers or w/e. Getting new phones each year, new tablets, new laptops, etc I always ended up with a half-baked collection of music. I never set up a NAS to solve this unfortunately but now I don't feel the need to. It's helped me rediscover so much music I've forgotten over the years and lost from my collection during various moves. Now I'm in the process of building playlists, rating songs, and rebuilding the playcounts. Not having to worry about ever losing them again is very reassuring! I got a 90-day trial with my Nexus phone and it's only $9/month after that... but you can also use it for free with ads which includes the 50k songs. [1] https://github.com/beetbox/beets https://github.com/beetbox/beets
- employee8000 10y agoiTunes is the single worst piece of software I'm still forced to use. I would pay $100 for a better piece of software but Apple has their walled "garden". And they have billions but can't hire PMs and engineers that can build a better piece of software. So fuck them. Anyone foolish enough to build a music listening system on top of them unfortunately deserves whatever they get. I don't have much sympathy.
- mcintyre1994 10y agoWhy are you forced to use it? The only time I see it is when it comes up on my macbook when I plug my phone in, then I just close it - and I could probably stop it showing up then too.
- enzanki_ars 10y agoYou can only transfer music via USB onto an iPhone via iTunes.
- Arizhel 10y agoThat's a good reason not to own an iPhone. Android may have its (many) faults, but at least I can transfer music onto it from my Linux command line with "adb push". Or I can take out the SDcard and just pop it into my computer and transfer it like I copy any other files.
- hfsktr 10y agoIs there another way to get music onto an i(device)?
- j_s 10y agoI believe it is the only tool sanctioned to create local backups of iOS devices. There is a real market opportunity for someone to do just this cleanly on Windows; Apple works hard to make things more secure (aka changes the software & hardware interface for backups) all the time though. Top priority: getting media (pics+videos) off the device. Any suggestions would be appreciated!
- wowvou 10y agoVLC
- kalleboo 10y agoHow do you use VLC to sync a subset of star-ranked songs that haven't been played in X months to a device with a limited amount of storage?
- damontal 10y agoI'm on Spotify and Pandora despite having a huge music collection in iTunes. I dread having to launch it and have basically given up buying and managing my own music.
- baldfat 10y agoJust use Google Play music and upload your music to them. You get 50,000 songs. Plus if you just listen to your music its free.
- msabalau 10y agoAnd you can listen offline on your mobile.
- LaSombra 10y agoYes, you can. It pre-downloads two or four songs, I don't recall, from your current playlist and you can also choose to download playlists, albums and songs for offline usage.
- baldfat 10y agoMy favorite money spent is on Google Play Music Family. I get my son, daughter and wife on it cost $15 and it includes ad free YouTube and the ability to play in background (Awesome for Podcast like content) and download videos (If I am going on a trip I down load a ton of stuff)
- flyinghamster 10y agoAlso, the ad-supported version of Google Play streaming isn't bad, indeed, I consider it far, far better than commercial FM stations.
- chadgeidel 10y agoDid not know I could do this! Thanks!
- 10y ago
- _jal 10y agoWanting an application to work is not an edge case. iTunes is an atrocity. That old joke about emacs? iTunes is not a great operating system, and it still needs a decent MP3 player.
- leppr 10y agoYou mean a FLAC player :^)
- bartl 10y agoDoes iTunes even play FLAC files? Apple developers have one serious problem: the "not invented here" syndrome. As everybody was using mp3, Apple wanted AAC. FLAC? Apple didn't invent it. So they just support their own rubbish instead [1]. [1] https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3002052?tstart=0 https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3002052?tstart=0)
- Arizhel 10y agoAnother good reason not to buy or use Apple devices.
- robinhoodexe 10y ago>just support their own rubbish They support ALAC, a lossless format. Sure, converting is a slight hassle, but doesn't take long. The quality is the same as in FLAC.
- SippinLean 10y agoAny great replacements for Windows? * foobar is the most feature-rich, but requires a lot of customization and the auto-move functionality is not on par with iTunes file organization tool * MediaMonkey is nice but the interface is lacking in simplicity compared to iTunes
- ue_ 10y agoI personally use Clementine, which I think is excellent, especially how it lets you browse by album rather than just Artist like some other programs.
- Notre1 10y agoI've been using Clementine for the past few years, too. It's really a nice "simple" interface.
- junkblocker 10y agoI tried to use Clementine every few months for a while but had SQLite crashes every time.
- flyinghamster 10y agoFor me, foobar's killer feature is the tree view that can be sorted by any tag, even user-defined tags. I wish there was something like that for Linux. Unfortunately, any time I've tried to run foobar on WINE it has sucked. Maybe I should write my own, but I don't have that kind of spare time. The Android version of foobar doesn't have the organizing abilities, either.
- jedikv 10y agoI really like MusicBee - seems to fill my winamp hole for the most part https://getmusicbee.com/ https://getmusicbee.com/
- danielhooper 10y agoThe problems with iTunes extends beyond iTunes. I just want to drag and drop MP3s to my iPhone!!!
- virtuabhi 10y agoThis! And no automatic syncing. I have no idea why deleted songs keep showing on my iphone and added songs keep disappearing from my iphone.
- nix0n 10y agoIs it possible to get mp3s onto an iPhone SE without using iTunes? Either Windows or Linux is fine.
- dijit 10y agoUpvoting in the hope that someone has an answer. As a linux user, my macbook died and no I basically cannot backup my music that I buy from iTunes. I don't want to stream, I really enjoy owning my music. and given that they've caused me to lose music before[0] I'd rather keep this.. so, how do we sync without itunes? And how can I load the music I bought on CDs years ago onto my phone without iTunes? [0]: https://blog.dijit.sh/importance-of-self-hosted-backups https://blog.dijit.sh/importance-of-self-hosted-backups
- spython 10y agoYou can use Tiny Player, which is a simple player for iOS: http://www.catnapgames.com/tiny-player/ http://www.catnapgames.com/tiny-player/
- nix0n 10y agoThanks!
- RodrigoT 10y agoVLC allows downloading audio/video files from an UPNP/DLNA source. Only reason why I have not ditched the ipad mini yet.
- baldfat 10y agoUse CMUS is a small, fast and powerful console music player for Unix-like operating systems. https://cmus.github.io/ https://cmus.github.io/ Anyone wanting to program and hack their music should use this gem. It is the best music player I have ever used. Installation instructions http://macappstore.org/cmus/ http://macappstore.org/cmus/
- thebiglebrewski 10y agoAnybody have a good Mac alternative to iTunes? I found myself using VLC the other day on a plane because it is SO SLOW with big libraries.
- joezydeco 10y agoIs this where I can complain about Apple Music completely screwing up all the album art on my own music? Yes, this particular track I synced to the device also happens to be in some random music compliation CD from twenty years ago that's available on Apple Music. It doesn't mean I want to see that album art swapped into mine, dammit.
- incogitomode 10y agoFor two years now I've used iCloud Music Library (iTunes Match) to handle exactly the sort of situation the article author describes. Bucking the trend here; I love it. I've written a number of scripts (the main one is on npm) that run on a home Mac Mini server, converting FLAC to ALAC, and copying music which gets added to the library via the iTunes Add to Library folder. Within minutes of hitting a synced drop folder music is converted, stored and uploaded. I then have access to that music on my phone and computer. I can access 100% of my personal 40k track library anywhere, and can listen lossless at home. I still have music in my library I ripped in the early 2000s. I've definitely hated on iTunes plenty — the search is unforgivably slow and CPU intensive, and the app seems forever going backwards on usability. Still, I have what seems like a miracle of the cloud. A reliable, personal streaming service, with none of the restrictions of Spotify or Apple Music. I'll deal with the inconvenience. For the record: I've explored a similar system with Google Play, but Apple manages the best end-to-end ecosystem across devices in my opinion.
- jghn 10y agoI'm also generally +1 on iTunes Match. However recently I've noticed my iPhone skipping songs frequently, no matter how hard I try I can't get those songs to play. I'm not sure if the fault is with my phone, itunes, match or something else, but it's not as seamless as I'd have liked. It took me a while to notice as usually I'm not watching the screen of my phone when I"m shuffling around and such, but now that I know it happens i've been watching for it.
- incogitomode 10y agoIt happens to be occasionally too. I've ended up exporting and re-importing those tracks on the server and it tends to fix it. Definitely an annoyance, but infrequent enough that I had forgotten about it until you mentioned.
- fuzzywalrus 10y agoThis is pretty much to a t my thoughts on iTunes. iTunes Match is everything I want and need it to be for on-the-go but leaves me a with a bit to be desired elsewhere. It's good enough for me, I've given up on syncing my music on iPhone (do still do local backups)...
- TazeTSchnitzel 10y agoOn the subject of syncing, Apple's devices still† use USB 2.0 cables. In practice the software might be more of a bottleneck, but still. †IIRC the iPad Pro actually supports USB 3.0 on its Lightning port, but the included USB cable is plain old USB 2.0.
- rabboRubble 10y agoiTunes being shiat is a big reason why I don't listen to music as much. I am annoyed with constantly having to figure out what new crapped up way iTunes does X, annoyed with the integration of Apple Music into the iPhone Music app, and annoyed with all the maintenance. My music is a 250gb waste of hard disk space. Riddle me this: why does the iPhone Music app require cellular data access when all I want to is play music local to my iPhone device? WTF is the app doing? I don't subscribe to the stupid music match function so what exactly is it doing?
- joshmarinacci 10y agoQuestion. Would you subscribe to a service that fixed all this? I've created a streaming service for personal use and I'm considering commercializing it. Or am I just an old fuddy duddy who likes to own my music and I should just give up and go to iMusic and GPlay to lease everything.
- mercer 10y agoBy some strange coincidence I got the dreaded corrupted iTunes library shortly after I read this article. Years of ratings, playlists, play counts, and whatnot are gone :-/. Last time this happened I couldn't find a way to fix this. Does anyone have any experience with the matter and/or tips for fixing this?