# Who uses iTunes?



## Edd (Nov 8, 2011)

I bought an iPhone recently and was hesitant about downloading iTunes because I've heard negative stuff over the years.  As far as music goes I just use Rhapsody or play my files with Windows media.

People are telling me I need iTunes as an iPhone owner so I downloaded the software out of curiosity.  Wow.  First impressions are horrible.  It only incorporated 30% of my library and the way it organized the files is a notch better than throwing darts at a board.  Looks like junk software at first glance.

I wasn't planning on using it for music anyway but do I need this software on my computer to enjoy whatever the backup or other benfits iTunes is supposed to offer?


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## Puck it (Nov 8, 2011)

Yes, in order to get updates.


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## deadheadskier (Nov 8, 2011)

I think iTunes sux personally.  I let my wife mess with it to load our music onto the ipod.

For a company that prides itself in creating user friendly and intuitive electronic devices, iTunes is a huge swing and miss by Apple IMO


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## Edd (Nov 8, 2011)

I made an appt for Apple to call tomorrow so I can fix this.  I've always been leery of Apple but I'm very impressed with the iPhone after 8 days.  I honestly wasn't expecting a problem despite what I'd heard but I can't believe how bad this download went.


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## ctenidae (Nov 8, 2011)

I find iTunes nearly impossible to use. I really dislike it.

I'm actually fairly strongly anti-Apple. Just don't generally like their products functionally. Design is great, I just dont like the way their OSs think.


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## Geoff (Nov 8, 2011)

I have about 70 gig of music stored in iTunes on my spare notebook computer.   The MP3's are scattered across the machine and I don't have enough disk space to tell iTunes to consolidate them into one directory so I can move them off the machine.   At one point about 4 years ago, I did an editing marathon of a bunch of music where the artist/album/song were all screwed up.   I'd hate to lose that.   I'd love to figure out a way to just archive it all off to a USB hard drive and preserve the iTunes XML database.


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## Glenn (Nov 9, 2011)

I don't like how it handles music. Thankfully, we just use it to update our iPad. Even then, though, every time you update the OS, you have to wait for iTunes to update first. I'm hoping the wirelss sync takes care of that song and dance.


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## Puck it (Nov 9, 2011)

I had a bunch of music from Napster and it did not have all of the info.  I downloaded this TuneUp Companion.  It cleaned up iTunes music files. I also use this program Itunes Sync to download iTune music to non Apple products.


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## kickstand (Nov 9, 2011)

The things I don't like about iTunes (or maybe this is a device/o-s thing):

1. I can't custom order a playlist.  It appears to be either random or alphabetical by album and by track number within each album

2. The way it seemingly randomly assigns some albums as "compilation" when it's not.  If anyone has Santana's "Shaman", perfect example.  It also breaks out the guest artist who is with the main artist.  On my iPod, below Santana, I have about 12 additional entries of "Santana feat. XXXXX".  So annoying.  And when you go to disk, you don't find it under Santana - Shaman, it's under Compilations - Shaman.

3. Minor annoyance, but Garth Brooks should be under B, not G.  That's how I would look for his albums at Newbury Comics, that's how I would expect to see it in iTunes.

There was one other thing that annoyed me from the very beginning, but I can't remember what it was.  What I find is, almost anything I had downloaded from Napster or any file sharing program, I can't expect to have the correct metadata on the file.  That alone makes importing music a bit tough.  Because of that, I never imported everything all at once.  I did it in small chunks, so it would be easy to find and correct all the bad files.

I have an external HD, maybe 500GB, for all my music.  Nothing sits on the C-drive.  It may be a little scattered in terms of directories (I have my own little system for what goes where), but it's all centrally located.  Personally, I don't trust ANY of these programs to organize the files the way I want them.  I never let the programs automatically detect anything.

My iPod is also super-old.  The version in the About menu says 1.2.1.  Maybe a newer one, or at least an o/s upgrade, would solve some of the issues I find with it.


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## darent (Nov 12, 2011)

I have no problems with I-tunes, I don't know anything about computers , struggle with e-mail and can barely post to this forum. but Itunes has my music listed by artist on my old nano, I didn't do it  and it auto assembled my favorites list so it is easy for me. It took me aehile to relize that I-tunes on my desktop is the same as my nano and whatever I did  on the desktop affected my nano, learned some hard lessons; all in all  it works for me, but I.'m easy


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## AdironRider (Nov 13, 2011)

Ive been a Mac user my entire life and really dont get the itunes hate. 

Maybe its because I started out using it from day one, and have built my entire music collection with itunes but I have no issues. 

I think most people coming from a Windoze world have lots of control issues with itunes and mac stuff in general and are really missing the point on why macs kick ass in the first place. They just do the stuff you want them to do, when you want it. Its when you Windows people (and I admit since that stuff always needs fixin you must be trained a certain way hah) try and monkey around with everything that it gets a bad rap. 

Just upload some tunes and let the mac do its thing. You can pretty much guarantee it will still be working years from now with no issues.


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## deadheadskier (Nov 13, 2011)

:lol:

my computer and software preferences are the most bestest in the world


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## mondeo (Nov 14, 2011)

AdironRider said:


> Ive been a Mac user my entire life and really dont get the itunes hate.
> 
> Maybe its because I started out using it from day one, and have built my entire music collection with itunes but I have no issues.
> 
> ...


Jobs forbid if you want to do something differently than the way He intended.

Pic somewhat related.


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## Edd (Nov 14, 2011)

deadheadskier said:


> :lol:
> 
> my computer and software preferences are the most bestest in the world



:lol:


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## bvibert (Nov 14, 2011)

AdironRider said:


> Ive been a Mac user my entire life and really dont get the itunes hate.
> 
> Maybe its because I started out using it from day one, and have built my entire music collection with itunes but I have no issues.
> 
> ...



Thanks for pointing out one of my biggest issues with Apple products; you either do it Jobs' way or no way.  That may be fine for some people, but for me I want some amount of control over how I do things.  If it doesn't do what I want to do then why would I care how long it works for?

It's not that Windows always needs fixing, it's that it allows one to tweak things to their preferences.  I leave my Windows XP desktop at work running 24/7 with zero issues.

Try making a Mac do something even slightly outside of what Jobs' originally intended and let me know how headache free it is.  When my wife had a Mac I had more trouble getting it to do the simplest things than I ever had with a Windows machine.  For example; I had to dumb down the encryption of our wireless network just to get the Mac on it.  Those experiences really turned me off to Macs.  I was kinda glad when the motherboard prematurely died in that thing.  At least she went back to a Windows machine.


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## o3jeff (Nov 14, 2011)

bvibert said:


> Thanks for pointing out one of my biggest issues with Apple products; you either do it Jobs' way or no way.  That may be fine for some people, but for me I want some amount of control over how I do things.  If it doesn't do what I want to do then why would I care how long it works for?
> 
> It's not that Windows always needs fixing, it's that it allows one to tweak things to their preferences.  I leave my Windows XP desktop at work running 24/7 with zero issues.
> 
> Try making a Mac do something even slightly outside of what Jobs' originally intended and let me know how headache free it is.  When my wife had a Mac I had more trouble getting it to do the simplest things than I ever had with a Windows machine.  For example; I had to dumb down the encryption of our wireless network just to get the Mac on it.  Those experiences really turned me off to Macs.  I was kinda glad when the motherboard prematurely died in that thing.  At least she went back to a Windows machine.


H8ter


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## bvibert (Nov 14, 2011)

o3jeff said:


> H8ter



Fanboi


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## Edd (Nov 14, 2011)

So I spent a bunch of time organizing music in a file I can manually feed to iTunes so I can avoid duplicates, which is something Rhapsody and Windows Media seem to do with ease.  It's converting the songs now to AAC.  At the rate it's going it looks like this will take days.  

I don't even know why I'm doing this but it's nice to have another place to store my music.  When I have a technical problem I get obsessive about solving it.


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## AdironRider (Nov 14, 2011)

bvibert said:


> Thanks for pointing out one of my biggest issues with Apple products; you either do it Jobs' way or no way.  That may be fine for some people, but for me I want some amount of control over how I do things.  If it doesn't do what I want to do then why would I care how long it works for?
> 
> It's not that Windows always needs fixing, it's that it allows one to tweak things to their preferences.  I leave my Windows XP desktop at work running 24/7 with zero issues.
> 
> Try making a Mac do something even slightly outside of what Jobs' originally intended and let me know how headache free it is.  When my wife had a Mac I had more trouble getting it to do the simplest things than I ever had with a Windows machine.  For example; I had to dumb down the encryption of our wireless network just to get the Mac on it.  Those experiences really turned me off to Macs.  I was kinda glad when the motherboard prematurely died in that thing.  At least she went back to a Windows machine.



Good for you on your work computer, but you cant seriously be arguing that Macs dont have a far more reliably operating system. How many windows ME's or Vistas do we have to go through before they find one that works? All I know is 2000 worked pretty well, and XP now works ok although it took them the good part of a decade to get it right. Anyone remember XP before service pack 2 came out? Total shitshow. 

And you can make a Mac do plenty of things you want it to. I seriously doubt it was anything beyond user error that is giving you problems. Just because its different doesnt mean its bad, its just not what you are used to. 

Meanwhile Apple keeps trading blows with Exxon for the most valuable company out there. At one point this summer they had more cash on hand than the US govt, clearly they are doing something horrifically wrong there.


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## bvibert (Nov 14, 2011)

AdironRider said:


> Good for you on your work computer, but you cant seriously be arguing that Macs dont have a far more reliably operating system. How many windows ME's or Vistas do we have to go through before they find one that works? All I know is 2000 worked pretty well, and XP now works ok although it took them the good part of a decade to get it right. Anyone remember XP before service pack 2 came out? Total shitshow.
> 
> And you can make a Mac do plenty of things you want it to. I seriously doubt it was anything beyond user error that is giving you problems. Just because its different doesnt mean its bad, its just not what you are used to.
> 
> Meanwhile Apple keeps trading blows with Exxon for the most valuable company out there. At one point this summer they had more cash on hand than the US govt, clearly they are doing something horrifically wrong there.



They do a terrific job at marketing, I'll definitely give them that.

I'm not buying that they're super reliable, ours certainly wasn't, but it sure did cost more than a comparable Windows laptop.

I'll take Windows with some quirks over OSX any day, and that's not saying much, I'm not particularly fond of Microsoft either.

Some of my Mac problems may have been user error, but I chalk that up to the interface not being intuitive for anything beyond mindless computing amongst other Apple products.


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## AdironRider (Nov 14, 2011)

If you have kids computer reliabilty goes out the window. My little sisters can destroy a computer within hours of booting it up the first time. Not sure if thats your situation. 

Otherwise, Macs are vastly superior in terms of reliability. Hands down. 

I would argue that Mac OS is more intuitive for most average computer users. For someone like my wife or Mom, who know nothing about computers, Macs are the greatest thing since sliced bread. Otherwise its a Unix system. 

They definitely arent intuitive if you are used to a Windows system, but to say they are faulty products just because you arent comfortable with the software is going a bit far no? 

Macs definitely are pricey though, no argument from me on that one. However, they are built to high quality standards (unlike any Toshiba, Lenovo, etc Ive ever encountered) and operate well IMO. Are they worth what they charge? Maybe not, but Im willing to pay for high quality equipment (with a great service program - even without Applecare those genius' at the store will fix your stuff for free most times as long as its not a hardware problem).


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## bvibert (Nov 14, 2011)

AdironRider said:


> If you have kids computer reliabilty goes out the window. My little sisters can destroy a computer within hours of booting it up the first time. Not sure if thats your situation.
> 
> Otherwise, Macs are vastly superior in terms of reliability. Hands down.
> 
> ...



The motherboard on our Mac laptop died.  I've owned a lot of PCs and I've never ever had a motherboard die.  When I searched the internet at the time it appeared that we were far from the only ones who experienced that particular problem.  That's hardly a trait that I'd attribute with "high quality equipment".  There were no children involved.  The computer was used primarily by my wife, and a little by me, mostly around our house.

Now that we have kids it's been relegated to something the kids can beat on and pretend they're using a computer with, something it's much better suited for.

Before the hardware died it was far from reliable, locking up and/or crashing programs regularly.  So, you can keep telling me they're "vastly superior" until you're blue in the face, I know from experience that isn't true.  

What they're good at is marketing and creating hype.  Just because they make money does not mean they make a product that's worth what they charge.


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## Edd (Nov 14, 2011)

Edd said:


> So I spent a bunch of time organizing music in a file I can manually feed to iTunes so I can avoid duplicates, which is something Rhapsody and Windows Media seem to do with ease.  It's converting the songs now to AAC.  At the rate it's going it looks like this will take days.



8 hours later.  Still converting...my desktop is getting a workout.


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## bvibert (Nov 15, 2011)

Edd said:


> 8 hours later.  Still converting...my desktop is getting a workout.



Did it finish yet?


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## Edd (Nov 15, 2011)

bvibert said:


> Did it finish yet?



It was still going at midnight but was done this morning.  Based on the # of songs (about 6500) I estimate it finished in 11 - 12 hours.  

The organization is sort of like a musical massacre.  Soundtracks and other compilations are thoroughly f****d.  Other established albums are even scattered.  3 of the songs from Led Zeppelin IV are randomly separated from the rest of the album.  Got some work to do...


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## wa-loaf (Nov 15, 2011)

bvibert said:


> The motherboard on our Mac laptop died.  I've owned a lot of PCs and I've never ever had a motherboard die.  When I searched the internet at the time it appeared that we were far from the only ones who experienced that particular problem.  That's hardly a trait that I'd attribute with "high quality equipment".  There were no children involved.  The computer was used primarily by my wife, and a little by me, mostly around our house.
> 
> Now that we have kids it's been relegated to something the kids can beat on and pretend they're using a computer with, something it's much better suited for.
> 
> ...



I had an old macbook that had a motherboard problem that caused me a bunch of trouble. It was actually recalled and they replaced the motherboard. No issues after that. Sounds like you got one of those, but missed the recall. I've had no other major problems. You can't base your opinion on one computer you had. I've had a string of Dells at work that have all been pieces of crap.

Apple beats all the other pc makers in every customer service and reliability survey I've ever seen. That doesn't mean that they are the computer for everyone. But smearing them based on one experience is kinda weak.


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## kickstand (Nov 15, 2011)

Edd said:


> It was still going at midnight but was done this morning.  Based on the # of songs (about 6500) I estimate it finished in 11 - 12 hours.
> 
> The organization is sort of like a musical massacre.  Soundtracks and other compilations are thoroughly f****d.  Other established albums are even scattered.  3 of the songs from Led Zeppelin IV are randomly separated from the rest of the album.  Got some work to do...



Were your songs originally ripped from CD or were they downloaded from a site like Napster or some file sharing site?  If they came from CD and all the metadata was there, iTunes should have organized them without issue - except for those annoying "Compilation" and "Artist feat. Other Artist" things I mentioned.  If they were downloaded, then all bets are off.  I have so many bootlegs and other randomly downloaded stuff I haven't bothered to import because the tags are all messed up.  It would take hours just to get them organized.


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## bvibert (Nov 15, 2011)

wa-loaf said:


> I had an old macbook that had a motherboard problem that caused me a bunch of trouble. It was actually recalled and they replaced the motherboard. No issues after that. Sounds like you got one of those, but missed the recall. I've had no other major problems. You can't base your opinion on one computer you had. I've had a string of Dells at work that have all been pieces of crap.
> 
> Apple beats all the other pc makers in every customer service and reliability survey I've ever seen. That doesn't mean that they are the computer for everyone. But smearing them based on one experience is kinda weak.



Ours was an iBook I think, I don't really remember exactly, just that it was white and had a piece of fruit on the cover.

Smearing wasn't the intention.  I don't like them, and I was pointing out why.  The one experience I've had is all I need, and hopefully all I'll ever have.  I'm glad Apple products work for some people, they just don't for me.

Sorry for any weak sauce, I'm just calling it like I see it.  I do tend to go a bit overboard on topics I'm passionate about...


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## Nick (Nov 15, 2011)

I've been using itunes for a while but just recently put all my music on the cloud (Google Music)... works very well and I don't have to worry about losing everything if the house burns down.


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## Black Phantom (Nov 15, 2011)

Nick said:


> I've been using itunes for a while but just recently put all my music on the cloud (Google Music)... works very well and I don't have to worry about losing everything if the house burns down.



What will you do if the cloud goes away?


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## Edd (Nov 15, 2011)

kickstand said:


> Were your songs originally ripped from CD or were they downloaded from a site like Napster or some file sharing site?  If they came from CD and all the metadata was there, iTunes should have organized them without issue - except for those annoying "Compilation" and "Artist feat. Other Artist" things I mentioned.  If they were downloaded, then all bets are off.  I have so many bootlegs and other randomly downloaded stuff I haven't bothered to import because the tags are all messed up.  It would take hours just to get them organized.



Probably 95% of the songs are ripped from CD.  However, I tasked iTunes with converting thousands of MP3 and WMA files to AAC and I've heard that it has trouble doing that.

If a person starts out cold with his CD collection and devotes himself to iTunes from the get-go then he's all set.  A ding-dong like me that comes to Apple with a crapload of non-Apple songs has some work to do.  The dumb thing is...once I start somethng like this I have a hard time not finishing...even if I'm not going to need it.  Something like this brings out my OCD to the surface.


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## ctenidae (Nov 15, 2011)

We went through and burned all of our CDs to iTunes. At least, we put all of our CDs, one by one, into the drive, and watched iTunes process them.

I think approximately half of the songs then appeared in iTunes. So now, I have to go through the pile of CDs and the iTunes list and see what made it and what didn't. Not ina hurry to do that.


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## Nick (Nov 15, 2011)

Black Phantom said:


> What will you do if the cloud goes away?



Bask in the sun

.... anyways I have them Amazon's cloud too, and also on my own RAID0 NAS device at home. 

So I'm pretty well covered


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## Edd (Nov 15, 2011)

ctenidae said:


> We went through and burned all of our CDs to iTunes. At least, we put all of our CDs, one by one, into the drive, and watched iTunes process them.
> 
> I think approximately half of the songs then appeared in iTunes. So now, I have to go through the pile of CDs and the iTunes list and see what made it and what didn't. Not ina hurry to do that.



Jeez, I stand corrected.  There's no excuse for that.


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## kickstand (Nov 15, 2011)

Edd said:


> Probably 95% of the songs are ripped from CD.  However, I tasked iTunes with converting thousands of MP3 and WMA files to AAC and I've heard that it has trouble doing that.



Not positive about WMA files, but it can handle MP3.  All you have to do is add the files/folder to the library.  No conversions necessary, but you know that now..... 



Edd said:


> If a person starts out cold with his CD collection and devotes himself to iTunes from the get-go then he's all set.  A ding-dong like me that comes to Apple with a crapload of non-Apple songs has some work to do.  The dumb thing is...once I start somethng like this I have a hard time not finishing...even if I'm not going to need it.  Something like this brings out my OCD to the surface.



I ripped the CDs to disk before I started using iTunes.  I was trying to create backups of the music and eventually put the CDs in storage.  It took my forever to start using the iTunes store.  There's something about having the media in your hands, especially when your truck has a CD player and no auxiliary input for the iPod.

And the OCD is exactly why I haven't started importing all the music with bad metadata.  I would be in front of the PC for days fixing all of them.


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## Geoff (Nov 15, 2011)

kickstand said:


> And the OCD is exactly why I haven't started importing all the music with bad metadata.  I would be in front of the PC for days fixing all of them.



I did that about 3 years ago.   It helped to be unemployed.   I don't have enough hours in my life to do that now.


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## Nick (Nov 15, 2011)

Yeah, I burned all my CD's several years ago. Took a long time but it was really wroth it and it's nice to have a clean music collection today.


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## kickstand (Nov 15, 2011)

Geoff said:


> I did that about 3 years ago.   It helped to be unemployed.   I don't have enough hours in my life to do that now.



I hear that.  We're remodeling the basement into a play room for the kids (buh-bye, ManTown) and I'm on a deadline to get the rest of my CDs ripped before they go into storage.  I think I have about a week, but I'm not unemployed.....


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## mondeo (Nov 16, 2011)

AdironRider said:


> Good for you on your work computer, but you cant seriously be arguing that Macs dont have a far more reliably operating system. How many windows ME's or Vistas do we have to go through before they find one that works? All I know is 2000 worked pretty well, and XP now works ok although it took them the good part of a decade to get it right. Anyone remember XP before service pack 2 came out? Total shitshow.
> 
> And you can make a Mac do plenty of things you want it to. I seriously doubt it was anything beyond user error that is giving you problems. Just because its different doesnt mean its bad, its just not what you are used to.
> 
> Meanwhile Apple keeps trading blows with Exxon for the most valuable company out there. At one point this summer they had more cash on hand than the US govt, clearly they are doing something horrifically wrong there.


Vista has a perception problem, and that's it. My desktop runs Vista, my laptop Win 7; there really isn't that much of a difference between the two. How many enterprises run mission critical systems on Macs?

Windows is rock solid, and has much better support than Macs. Business wise, they do a great job at exploiting blind loyalty from people like you, milking their customers for all their worth. No one's arguing against that.


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## kickstand (Nov 18, 2011)

kickstand said:


> 2. The way it seemingly randomly assigns some albums as "compilation" when it's not.  If anyone has Santana's "Shaman", perfect example.  It also breaks out the guest artist who is with the main artist.  On my iPod, below Santana, I have about 12 additional entries of "Santana feat. XXXXX".  So annoying.  And when you go to disk, you don't find it under Santana - Shaman, it's under Compilations - Shaman.



Solved my own problem here....

Even though the assignment to "Compilation" still seems random, there is a check box on each song's Info page.  It says "Part of compilation".  Just uncheck it and it automatically moves the files around in the library folder structure for you.

However, in importing a bunch of CD's tonight, I noticed iTunes now decided to add another directory layer to my library.  I have my library path defined as H:\music\iTunes, with all the artists under iTunes.  Well, the damn software added a Music folder and put the new stuff under there.  So, now the path is H:\music\iTunes\Music.

Super-annoying to look at and even more annoying that they add that layer and give you no control over it (as far as I can tell...)


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## roark (Nov 18, 2011)

itunes = teh suxors, especially since the iphone came out. I never forgave apple for my first computer, a craptastic perfoma 6214, one of the original 
power pcs that required reinstalling the OS every three weeks or so.


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## Edd (Dec 3, 2011)

I thought it was my imagination at first but after a few weeks it was clear that my computer had become a dog since downloading iTunes...that was the last straw so I dumped it.  Hooray!


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