Sunday, May 24, 2009

The main reason I don't like iTunes

iTunes is completely hopeless for organising music.

iTunes has no consistency is labeling and categorising music in the player itself. For example, take the Delirious album World Service. Tracks 1-11 are by Delirious, track 12 is by Delirious and Daniel Bedingfield. If I am looking through my Delirious music on iTunes, this song is missing! It's filed under a different artist ('Delirious and Daniel Bedingfield'). Therefore I am unable to browse my Delirious collection satisfactorily (especially as Delirious have worked with several different artists, giving multiple Delirious entries in iTunes).

This problem is particularly exacerbated in film soundtracks, such as The Lord of the Rings - composed by Howard Shore, but using a total of 11 solo artists over the three soundtracks. Therefore I cannot see or play the three albums together, as they are filed under 12 different artists!

It seems to me that iTunes is aimed at listeners who generally want to listen to one track at a time and then find a different track to listen to, or listeners who only use playlists, or listeners who are happy to put their entire music collection on random.

I fit into none of these categories. For me, the best experiences of music are when I listen to a complete album, and this is the thing that iTunes is useless for.

7 comments:

Elliespeaks said...

It's very simple, instead of browsing the "artists" section you browse the "albums" section, where you can listen to a COMPLETE album. Somebody didn't do his research!

Unknown said...

I know. But it is not possible to see ALL the albums by an artist in one window (as is possible in Media Player). Therefore I can't see all of my Delirious music at once - I can only see either World Service OR everything that is only by Delirious with no other artists.

Elliespeaks said...

Maybe not on Itunes, but on an I-pod you can. But I'm bias, cos I LOVEEEE i-tunes, Windows Media is boring - you don't have genius! And THAT is GENIUS! oh but wait, you hate that kinda stuff...so maybe you're boring too...

Elliespeaks said...

AND I just checked on itunes and you're WRONG. I have a song by Whitney Houston and Enrique and I just typed in Whitney and the song came up along with the REST of her album. So THERE, you're WRONG! :-D

Unknown said...

The Whitney Houston thing is interesting - but that's never happened when I've been on iTunes.
And you're right, I'm not bothered by Genius - I know which of my songs sound like other ones, I think Genius would annoy me a bit.

James Doc said...

In the case of World Service, yes you are right it is a pain, I got rid of Daniel Beddingfield and that solved the issue there.

In regards to the Lord of the Rings soundtrack, firstly I would argue that Howard Shore is not the artist, rather the composer, however, secondly I would also point out that the disc is a compilation and as such should be marked as a compilation in iTunes which will then place all compilations together.

However as a whole, you are right it is one of two main gripes that I have with the software. The second issue I have is with the lack of a 'now playing' playlist that I can add to on the fly without disrupting what I'm playing now.

Unknown said...

It's a massive faff to go through all my music and change the artists though!
You're right, he is the composer, but in my Media Player I just have things sorted by artists (having artists and composers is too messy), so I guess I was using the term 'artist' loosely.
Lastly, I wouldn't want all the compilations together - I'd want them separated. And I'd want to be able to search for Howard Shore and see all 3 complete albums.

I didn't know about the lack of a 'now playing' list - I haven't used iTunes enough to see all its flaws.

Media Player does everything I want, and I think it looks a lot better too :-)