I used folders sorted by genre. That's my biggest gripe with library based stuff, is losing that. But it's not even the software's fault, it's that I'm never sure how to tag things, genre-wise.
I had broad categories before (alternative, power pop, rap, R&B/Dance, etc). And sometimes alternative meant the Smiths, and sometimes it meant Deftones. Obviously Genius would never pair these together, but often times I'd want to listen to those sorts of things together, but avoid techno/dance music and rap. Sometimes I'd want poppy rock (which would be anything from, say, Yellowcard to Counting Crows to whatever. Pretty much anything that's neither super heavy nor super indie-sounding).
I can judiciously tag my music, but short of making playlists manually, I don't see how it'll ever shuffle between those kind of broad categories. I guess I could just drag the directory to the sidebar (???) or spend the time to make those playlists, but you get the point.
Picking one genre for tags is hard enough (is it Indie? Indie Rock? Alt? Alt. Rock? etc). But what Mp3s need are hierarchical tags. One broad level, that any stupid tagger program can determine (Rock, R&B/Rap, Dance/Electronica, Classical, Comedy, Audiobook, World Music, Jazz, maybe one or two others) and then one or two sub levels (with your zydeco, klezmer, electro-glitch, etc etc etc). That way you could be like "gimme all the rock music", and it'd ignore your techno and your swing, but you wouldn't lose out on your glam if you picked industrial or your grunge if you pick arena.
Y'dig?
I had broad categories before (alternative, power pop, rap, R&B/Dance, etc). And sometimes alternative meant the Smiths, and sometimes it meant Deftones. Obviously Genius would never pair these together, but often times I'd want to listen to those sorts of things together, but avoid techno/dance music and rap. Sometimes I'd want poppy rock (which would be anything from, say, Yellowcard to Counting Crows to whatever. Pretty much anything that's neither super heavy nor super indie-sounding).
I can judiciously tag my music, but short of making playlists manually, I don't see how it'll ever shuffle between those kind of broad categories. I guess I could just drag the directory to the sidebar (???) or spend the time to make those playlists, but you get the point.
Picking one genre for tags is hard enough (is it Indie? Indie Rock? Alt? Alt. Rock? etc). But what Mp3s need are hierarchical tags. One broad level, that any stupid tagger program can determine (Rock, R&B/Rap, Dance/Electronica, Classical, Comedy, Audiobook, World Music, Jazz, maybe one or two others) and then one or two sub levels (with your zydeco, klezmer, electro-glitch, etc etc etc). That way you could be like "gimme all the rock music", and it'd ignore your techno and your swing, but you wouldn't lose out on your glam if you picked industrial or your grunge if you pick arena.
Y'dig?
How about just mass-tagging, and then using Smart Playlists to show specific tags? You could use the comments section, genre... anything really. Would take a little while to tag via genre, but once done.. you're good to go.
That sounds cool except I'm not sure what you're talking about.
Like I said, I switched from Winamp to iTunes about a year and a half ago, and I still use the most basic functionality (i.e. I just use shuffle and genius, pretty much).
Smart Playlists will gather music based on any number of criteria. You could make one that was 1GB of all of you music, randomly selected, that had the word Rabbit in the comments, was of genre Opera, the Artist started with A and the Album started with Z. Only the MP3s, only 2 star files.
Basically, any of the criteria that you can set when tagging (name, artist, album, album artist, composer, track number, disk number, year, rating, comments, genre, etc...) and any of the file's attributes (type, bit rate, length, size, etc) can be used to create smart playlists.
Ahhh. Cool. So I could tag all my stuff with a high-level genre, and then put the lower level genre in the comments or something. Only problem being it'll only work with iTunes, but I think I can probably handle that. I'll look into it. Thanks!
Where's support for .ogg and .flac in this masterpiece? Or support for .avi and .mkv containers? Where's the ability to embed cover art in MP3s? Why can't I sync anything but Apple devices with it? Why is it so bloated and still misses essential features such as last.fm support?
Don't get me wrong, iTunes is a good software. Integrated, relatively few bugs, beginner-friendly. But it's certainly not the best software for managing music ever created. That's something which is user-dependent. Maybe iTunes is best for my grandmother. I know it's certainly not best for power users like me. I prefer MediaMonkey, foobar2000, Rhythmbox, Banshee, Amarok, and Songbird over iTunes any day of the week.
.ogg and .flac are pointless unless you're a collector IMO.
.avi and .mkv would be nice.. but they won't divert from .mp4 now.
There are definite things that they could improve on in iTunes.. but overall I think it's a very competent media player for mp3s, podcasts and mp4 videos.
I saw 'I know it's certainly not the best for power users like me' and I just have to know what, pray tell, are you doing with your music? I listen to music and sometimes when I am listening, I organize. Seriously... what the hell about music would even begin to be 'power-user-y'? Can anyone tell me?
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Well, I am a DJ. I like to listen in music in a media player but ultimately, the stuff gets imported into Traktor, Serato, and/or Ableton. For example, in MediaMonkey I can add cover art and tags and they later show up perfectly in the DJing software. Doesn't happen with iTunes, as I've mentioned for example it doesn't embed the cover art in MP3s. Which means I would need a third application such as MP3tag for tagging.
Also, FLAC and OGG support is crucial for me. I often get sent stuff in FLAC format and, occasionally, stuff in OGG. I don't want to have to transcode every time.
EDIT: I'm also not happy about the automatic transcoding of WMAs by iTunes (that does nothing for me but waste my time). I also don't like how iTunes organizes the library. Other media players let me customize the directory structure, iTunes doesn't. Having the directory structure exactly like I want it is beneficial when attaching storage media to certain devices (such as CDJ's).
Lastly, some media players show better performance than iTunes imo which is useful when working with very large libraries.
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I did not even think about DJing...
However, I would still say that for the majority of people, including non-grandmothers like myself, that iTunes is just fine. Plus, as has been mentioned, the OS X version is better than the PC version. Not entirely sure why, I never was a very good programmer.
MJinZ
Diamond Member
- Nov 4, 2009
- 8,192
- 0
- 0
I don't expect DJs to use iTunes.
The rest of us have no need for OGG, FLAC, etc. WTF is last.fm? Exactly.
Homerboy
Lifer
- Mar 1, 2000
- 30,890
- 5,001
- 126
This is what he does on these forums. You're new here. You will see over time.
I'm not sure why he has no use for OGG or FLAC. And how can you be on the internet and not know what last.fm is (I'm not saying you don't have to use it, but to be ignorant of it? Come on.).
Anubis
No Lifer
http://last.fm/
it was the first site like that IIRC, beating out pandora and the like by a few years
many people have the need for FLAC, every CD i rip is FLAC and then rerip as VBR insane mp3. and the only reason i do that is so i can fit more of them on my MP3 player. Flac files go on the backup server where everything is stored
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