Fixing iTunes

(This is one of a series of articles looking at elements of iTunes that I think need fixing. I’ll choose one element for each article, and offer a solution. See all articles in this series. If you have any particular gripes about what needs to be fixed in iTunes, drop me a line.)

Remember, back in the day, when you clicked the Shuffle button on a playlist, iTunes would re-order the songs, showing you the order in which they’d be played? If you didn’t like it, you could move some of the songs around, or re-shuffle the list.

Well, iTunes 12 did away with that feature. Now, when you click the Shuffle button, iTunes picks one of the tracks and random and starts playing it. But that track isn’t necessarily at the top of the playlist; it could be anywhere.

It would be great if Apple returned the Shuffle feature to its earlier incarnation. I like to shuffle my music, and I like to see what’s coming up, to adjust the playlist accordingly. You can see upcoming tracks in the Up Next menu, but that menu is annoying. It’s confusing, and it’s not as easy to see what’s coming up as in a playlist.

(This is one of a series of articles looking at elements of iTunes that I think need fixing. I’ll choose one element for each article, and offer a solution. See all articles in this series. If you have any particular gripes about what needs to be fixed in iTunes, drop me a line.)

As media libraries balloon with hundreds of gigabytes of music, movies, TV shows, podcasts, audiobooks, and apps, many iTunes users seek ways to organize and consolidate this content in a central location. Instead of each member of a family having content on individual Macs, it would make sense for all of this content to be stored and organized on a single computer.

iTunes lets you share libraries, play content on another Mac, and even synchronize some content from one iTunes library to another using Home Sharing, but the app isn’t designed to work with multiple users. The solution could be a server version of iTunes, which would let households organize all of their family’s media on one computer and allow each user to connect to this Mac to listen to music, view videos, and sync their iOS devices. Here are some ideas for how an iTunes server might work.

Serving Media

If several people in a household have iTunes libraries, they can share content using Home Sharing; Alice can load Bob’s iTunes library and play his content. But the problem arises with syncing to iOS devices. If a family shares media, each person needs to copy that media to their computer to be able to sync it to their iOS device(s).

If Apple were to create a server version of iTunes, the app would be similar to the current version of iTunes, managing all of the content on a single computer. It would also function as a conduit for media files so they can be transferred to and from the server and stored in the master library. This would meet the needs of families with large amounts of media files, and eliminate the need to duplicate many of these files on different computers.

iTunes Server would allow each user to set up an account and build a personal library. These accounts would ensure that the server program knows exactly which files each user wants to access. Users’ library files would remain on their individual computers, and they would be able to create their own playlists, add ratings, and keep track of their play counts and last played dates.

When the server is first set up, users would be able to choose which files they see in their copies of iTunes; this would also affect what they can sync to their iOS devices. During initial setup, as media files are uploaded to the server, there would have to be some way of ensuring that there are no duplicates. Once this is done, however, each user should be able to access a “What’s New” playlist to see what other users have purchased from the iTunes Store, or have uploaded to the server, and that are not in their individual libraries. Each time someone buys music from the iTunes Store, rips a new CD, or adds a new video to his or her library, these media files would be copied to the server so everyone in the family can access them.

Users should also be able to choose which types of content gets stored on the server, and which they keep on their own computers. Some people may have favorite podcasts that they know their parents or children don’t care for, and would rather store them locally than on the server. The same may be the case for mobile apps used on an iOS device; there’s no need to share all of your content with the rest of the family if you don’t want to.

iTunes Server would need to sync to iOS devices connected to different client computers. This would require a relatively fast network — 802.11n or faster wireless, or ethernet — and, while the first sync to a device may take a long time, subsequent syncs would be much quicker because there is much less content to change.

iTunes Server could be installed on a Mac or PC, but Apple could also create a device, similar to a Time Capsule, or an AirPort Base Station, containing a hard drive and the iTunes server software on board. (Or even a new Apple TV: if it had a USB port, it could host the server software, and work with a hard drive connected to it, to provide both local and remote access to its content.) This would eliminate the need to keep a computer on all the time. It would also make it easier to integrate iTunes Server into a network, since it would provide the necessary disk space that may not be available on any individual computer. However, for those with large libraries, it would have to support externally connected USB hard drives. And it should allow for a second hard drive to be connected for backups.

Read more

Apple has released an update to iTunes 12, providing support for the new Photos app, but also fixing the Info window. In the first article of my iTunes gripe series, How I Would Fix iTunes, Part 1: The Info Window, I explained how this window was poorly designed. The tags were not grouped logically. Apple has fixed this, essentially returning it to the layout of previous versions of iTunes.

Here’s a window from iTunes 12.1:

As I said in my article:

For most users, the tags you want to edit are the Name (song or track name), Artist, Album, Genre, and perhaps a couple of others. In the previous iTunes Info window, these tags were all grouped in the same area at the top of the window.

I also said:

Why would Apple decide to put the Album tag near the bottom of the window? This is one of the most important tags for music. And why would they promote the Composer, and even the BPM tags? This design was clearly made by people who don’t tag music in iTunes.

Apple has fixed this, as well as some of the other tags. Here’s the window now:

Again, this is very close to the layout used in iTunes 11 and earlier. The only thing I’d change is to move the Comments field up a bit, and leave the Play Count at the bottom, since it’s not editable. But at least Apple realized they had made a mistake, and fixed this.

To better compare them, here they are side by side. The old window is on the left, the new one on the right (or top and bottom, if you’re looking at them on a phone).

 

So that’s one iTunes problem fixed, a dozen or more to go…

(This is one of a series of articles looking at elements of iTunes that I think need fixing. I’ll choose one element for each article, and offer a solution. See all articles in this series. If you have any particular gripes about what needs to be fixed in iTunes, drop me a line.)

Update: this has been fixed.

I work at home. In my office, I have an ergonomic Steelcase Leap chair at my desk, and a comfortable Stressless recliner at the opposite end of my office, about ten feet away. It faces my desk, so, when I sit in that chair and work on my laptop – as I often do – I can listen to music. I generally do this by controlling my iTunes library from my iPhone with the iOS Remote app. But this app is broken, and needs fixing.

First, the Remote app has not displayed album artwork since the release of iOS 8. Apple is aware of this bug (which only affects certain devices, curiously), but hasn’t gotten around to fixing it.

The other problem is the responsiveness of the Remote app. If, for example, the phone rings, and I need to pause the playback, I have to grab my iPhone, unlock it (this is pretty quick with Touch ID), tap the Remote app icon, and then wait.

Sometimes, this is quick. Other times, it takes ten seconds, twenty seconds, or even more. Sometimes it cannot find my Mac – which is just across the room, connected to the same router – and I have to force quit the app and reload my devices. It seems that the longer the time between the last time I accessed the app, the more delay there is in establishing a connection to iTunes.

Apple could fix this easily. My guess is that the connection only stays open for a certain length of time, and goes into standby mode after a while to save power on the iOS device. This is logical; if you only use the Remote app once to play or pause music, you don’t want a lot of power being drained. There is a Stay Connected option in the Remote app’s settings. I have it turned on, but it has no effect on the connection for me.

This app is a great way to control iTunes, but it’s not reliable enough. Apple could probably fix this easily, but the fact that album artwork still doesn’t display, some six months after the release of iOS 8, suggests that they’re simply ignoring this app.

(This is one of a series of articles looking at elements of iTunes that I think need fixing. I’ll choose one element for each article, and offer a solution. See all articles in this series. If you have any particular gripes about what needs to be fixed in iTunes, drop me a line.)

Home Sharing is a very useful feature in iTunes which allows you to share your media library to other computers and devices on your network. You use Home Sharing to access content on an Apple TV, but you can also use it, for example, to play music from a central iTunes library on another computer.

Home Sharing is notoriously unreliable from computer to computer, and from a computer’s iTunes library to an Apple TV. For some people, it works all the time, on certain devices; others have to constantly restart their devices, such as their Apple TVs, to be able to access their content.

You can also – theoretically – use Home Sharing to load an iTunes library on an iOS device. You can do this in the Music app, or in the Videos app. However, this feature is broken. While it works with small libraries, once you’ve got a fair amount of media in your iTunes library, it fails. I’ve not been able to find anyone who’s gotten it to work with a large library.

If you have a large library, and try to load it on an iOS device, it simply never completes. I’ve tried many times to do this on my iPad, to watch a video, and it always fails. When I have tried to load my Music library on my iPhone, to listen to something that’s not on the iPhone, that never completes either, as you can see below. (Dark Star is my iMac, with a music library of around 70,000 tracks.)

Home Sharing is yet another great feature that is broken. Apple should fix this, especially if they’re planning on expanding the capabilities of the Apple TV.

(This is one of a series of articles looking at elements of iTunes that I think need fixing. I’ll choose one element for each article, and offer a solution. See all articles in this series. If you have any particular gripes about what needs to be fixed in iTunes, drop me a line.)

If you rate songs when you listen to them on your iPhone or iPod, you may want to go back and hear the songs you rated the highest. Unfortunately, the way smart playlists work in iTunes, you can’t do this. It would be great if iTunes had an On Device condition in smart playlists allowing you to create playlists that populate as you play or rate songs on your iOS device.

This needs a bit of explaining.

Let’s say you rate a lot of your music, and you have a few hundred 5-star songs. You can create a smart playlist in iTunes to find all of those highly-rated songs. But if you have a lot of songs in that playlist, you may not be able to sync it to your device.

All the smart playlists you make in iTunes are based on conditions, and iTunes examines your iTunes library to find tracks that match those conditions. But imagine if there was a condition, such as Location Is On Device, which allowed you to sync a playlist to a device – which would appear empty in iTunes – but that would populate according to all the other music on the device.

In other words, a playlist such as the above, with the added condition Location Is On Device, would be filled with songs synced from other playlists, or other selections (genres, artists, albums). And any time you make changes to songs – play them or rate them – that smart playlist gets updated. So you could go for days without needing to sync your device, and you’d have a playlist with all those songs that you rated five stars. Or you could switch to a Most Listened playlist, which contains all the songs you listen to a lot. Or any of a number of other playlists whose contents come from the music on your device.

This would be complicated to get across to users – just as I feel it’s complicated to explain here – but it would be very useful.

(This is one of a series of articles looking at elements of iTunes that I think need fixing. I’ll choose one element for each article, and offer a solution. See all articles in this series. If you have any particular gripes about what needs to be fixed in iTunes, drop me a line.)

If you’re familiar with the artwork for an album, there is a permanent connection between music and artwork. Remember, if you’re old enough, the LP album sleeves you used to peruse when listening to music. Or the CD inserts you used to check out. You probably chose your music visually, looking for a specific album not by the name on the spine, but by the artwork on the cover.

The same is the case with digital music. Adding artwork to music makes it much easier to find it in your iTunes library, without having to search for it. You may browse all the albums you have by an artist, looking for a specific album. You’re unlikely to actually read the names, but you can instantly zero in on the cover of the album you’re looking for.

iTunes stores and displays album artwork for music (and other types of media), in several ways. There are a number of different views in iTunes, some of which (Albums view) only show artwork, and others (Artists or Genres views) show artwork with other information.

But when you’re playing music, the artwork isn’t very visible. It shows as a tiny thumbnail in the iTunes LCD (that’s the top section of the window):

And it displays in the MiniPlayer, at the same size. If you click the thumbnail in the MiniPlayer, that window expands to become what I call the Artwork Player. It shows the album artwork, and, if you haver your cursor over the window, gives you access to controls.

But iTunes used to have another artwork pane; it was at the bottom left of the iTunes window, at the bottom of the sidebar. Not only did this always display the artwork of the currently playing track, but it had arrow buttons that allowed you to cycle through artwork, if you had stored more than one graphic for certain tracks or albums. I was never interested in storing multiple graphics, but many people do this. The problem with iTunes now is that, while you can still store multiple graphics, you can’t view them.

iTunes should return to offering some kind of artwork viewer other than the expanded MiniPlayer (or Artwork Player). It should also provide a way to view multiple graphics that are added as artwork; or not allow users to add multiple graphics.

(This is one of a series of articles looking at elements of iTunes that I think need fixing. I’ll choose one element for each article, and offer a solution. See all articles in this series. If you have any particular gripes about what needs to be fixed in iTunes, drop me a line.)

Back in iTunes 4.5, Apple added a music discovery feature to iTunes. Called iMixes, these were playlists that users were able to create, and then publish to iTunes. There was a section of the iTunes Store which grouped them; you could search among them, and preview their contents, to discover the music that other people liked. You could also buy an entire playlist with one click.

To create and publish your own iMixes, you would just select a playlist, then choose Store > Create an iMix, add a title and a description, and it would be published to iTunes. You could even publish your iMixes to the web, to show people what kind of music you liked.

But when iTunes 11 was released, iMixes were gone, and there was no longer a way to gift a playlist. Now, if you want to send a playlist to a friend as a gift, you need to send them an iTunes gift card, and instruct them to download the songs you want them to hear. You also need to tell them the order in which to listen to them, if that’s important. Or, you can gift individual songs. In other words, instead of being able to send a digital mix tape to a friend, you have to give them detailed instructions on how to do it themselves. Obviously, all the romance is gone with this method.

You can give individual songs as gifts, but if you have a mixtape you want to send with, say, twenty songs, it’s a bit of a slog to do this. Your friend will get twenty emails, each one with a link to a song, and they’ll have to download them all, then put them in order.

Interestingly, Apple still has some documentation on the web describing iMixes, but designed for those with affiliate accounts (even though it no longer works). It explains the process as follows:

“Using an iMix is a great way to increase your affiliate commissions while providing users the ability to buy multiple songs with a single click. An iMix is a playlist published on iTunes to which you can send your traffic by using an affiliated link. With an iMix, the user can buy each song individually or, with a single click, buy the whole playlist.”

I don’t know why Apple removed iMixes. Perhaps they weren’t interesting enough; perhaps they were too complicated. Perhaps the fact that any songs that were in your library that weren’t on the iTunes Store didn’t show up in a published iMix made it too sketchy a feature.

I’ve gotten a number of emails from readers recently asking about this feature. Clearly there are some people who’d like to see it return. I never used it, but I can understand how some people like the idea. So, Apple should probably find a way to allow users to gift playlists again; if it can boost sales a bit, it’s certainly a good thing. My guess is they won’t; they’ll tell you that you will be able to share a playlist with the music streaming service that they’ll be announcing soon, and that will be enough.

(This is one of a series of articles looking at elements of iTunes that I think need fixing. I’ll choose one element for each article, and offer a solution. See all articles in this series. If you have any particular gripes about what needs to be fixed in iTunes, drop me a line.)

iTunes has long been able to store lyrics in your music files. To do this, select a track, press Command-I (Control-I on Windows), and then click Lyrics. Paste the lyrics, and click OK.

Unfortunately, the only way you can read these lyrics while your music is playing is to select each song and press Command-I to display the Info window.

You can do this on iOS. When you’re playing a song in the Music app, just tap the album art to display lyrics (if there are any).

iTunes should have a window that lets you view lyrics more easily: this could be a pop-up window that displays, for example, when you click the More button next to the currently playing track in the iTunes LCD (the top section of the iTunes window). Or it could be a dedicated, floating window.

Another thing iTunes could do is automatically download lyrics. Spotify’s desktop app is adding MusixMatch lyrics integration. When this is available, you’ll be able to click a Lyrics button in the app and see the lyrics display as the music is playing.

iTunes could do this, but they could also download the lyrics to the files when you rip CDs, just as the app can download album artwork. It could also start adding lyrics to music sold on the iTunes Store.

It’s worth pointing out that you can put more than just lyrics in this tag; you can put any text you want. Hyperion Records does this, adding lyrics for vocal works, and notes for other works. The Lyrics tag can hold about 24,800 characters, which is nearly 5,000 words, and Hyperion takes advantage of this, offering you complete notes for each track.

iTunes could make these notes easier to view, and offer added information with tracks – and other media – sold on the iTunes Store.

Music listeners like lyrics; iTunes should do provide a better way to view them, and, if possible, a way to download them.

(This is one of a series of articles looking at elements of iTunes that I think need fixing. I’ll choose one element for each article, and offer a solution. See all articles in this series. If you have any particular gripes about what needs to be fixed in iTunes, drop me a line.)

“Other” storage on iOS devices is a constant headache. It can take up several gigabytes, and even fill up the empty space on your device.

Some of it is legitimate; Apple says that it is “Settings, Siri voices, and other system data,” but that’s not the whole story. Anyone who has problems syncing has seen this yellow section of the capacity bar expand to surprising sizes at times. In some cases, when a sync fails, all the music on a device shows up as Other, or the Other fills the capacity bar.

There’s a lot of stuff that’s considered to be Other, much more than what Apple claims. Other includes cache files for apps, system cache files, and many other items. And there’s no way to delete it, other than restoring your device.

iTunes and iOS need to work together on this. First, there needs to be a system-wide feature to delete files cached by apps. If you look at your app usage (Settings > General > Usage > Manage Storage), you’ll see that some apps – when you tap them – show a size for the app, plus Documents & Data. In some cases, that data is essential, but many apps cache files, taking up lots of space.

Second, there needs to be a way to purge this Other space when it is made up of orphaned files, which is what happens when syncs go bad. Requiring users to restore their devices each time there’s a problem is ridiculous.

You’ll read many suggestions of how to remove this Other storage on the web. Some of them may help – for example, deleting photos in Messages threads can save space – but most are simply wrong, because the Other balloons again shortly after you do whatever magical remedy is suggested.

Apple needs to fix this. It is annoying, it takes up a lot of precious space, and it forces people to restore their devices, something that takes a long time, and should only be the remedy of last resort.