Things you wish Itunes could do

[Tool_of_the_Conspiracy]

@sciguy

1. Allow manually changing the media type from “Podcast” within iTunes. I subscribe to a few podcasts that are audiobooks (podiobooks.com), and if I like the novel / writer enough to keep, I’d prefer to move them to the audiobooks category. Right now, the only way to do this is to use a separate mp3 tag editor to strip off the “ITUNES_PODCAST_*” fields (which makes iTunes recognize them as plain music mp3s), then set the media type to “Audiobook”.

What makes it even more odd is that the podcast files do have the Media Type drop-down show in the info dialog, but it’s greyed out and can’t be changed. Weird.

This is my #1 too. I get a podcast from Hype Machine, and if I want to keep a song that I’ve heard, I have to go to the website and download it again without the podcast tag.
I also have an album that I downloaded from an artist’s website, that iTunes has decided is a podcast, for some reason.

3. Have some option to have “Auto delete” on podcasts to default to “off”. I have a mix of “one time listen” podcasts (news casts, Penn Says, etc) that I don’t care about keeping once I’ve listened to them, and others (like the audiobooks mentioned above) that I want to keep. I’d rather manually delete podcast episodes when I forget to turn auto-delete on than have to re-get episodes of ones I wanted to keep. Especially since I can’t seem to find a way to mark a file “unread” from the feed (and re-download everything) without removing / rejoining the podcast in iTunes.

Are you talking about having separate settings for different podcasts? (If not, I think someone else was.) Because that feature was added in the last update that I installed.

@iamthewalrus_3

Support arbitrary boolean logic and a basic scripting API in the playlist filters.

Yes! Show me my top-rated songs, breaking ties by looking at the last-played tag.

@Lightnin

I’ve got an iPhone, which I sync with both my home and work computers. Well, I would, except iTunes allows only one (1) device to sync with each computer- so I sync my music and photos at home, and my calendar and email at work. I want to listen to my music at work, through my computer, so I have to use a thumbdrive to keep my computers synced with each other… even though I’m already carrying a freakin’ hard drive (dressed up as a phone) between the two locations.

Can’t you turn on “disk use”, and use the iPhone as your drive for shuttling stuff back and forth? It would mean always ejecting it before disconnecting it, but it might be worth it.

@Typo_Knig

A “Play All” option on the iPod for podcasts. You can play all tracks in an album, all tracks by an artist, or all tracks on a playlist with one click of the Play button, and without having to diddle the scroll wheel after EVERY. FREAKING. ONE. C’mon Steverino, it’s all just data.

I do it with a smart playlist that shows me any tracks I haven’t listened to. You also can use a smart playlist to select all of the tracks from a particular podcast. Either way, iTunes will play straight through the playlist.
Can I include a bug fix request? Sometimes I’ll get a file in a podcast that’s corrupted in some way, and it causes iTunes to use 100% of my processor for ten minutes or more whenever it tries to check for new episodes of that podcast, until I find which file is bad and delete it. I have the Hype Machine podcast I mentioned above set to download the most recent “episode” every hour, and sometimes iTunes gets so stuck that it can’t unstick itself before it’s time to download the next one.

[Anaamika]

I would like to be able to “lock” certain playlists so they would always play in the same order. I have a lot of stand-up on my iTunes, plus a couple of books-on-tape. I shuffle my iPod when I listen to it, but I would like certain playlists to *never *shuffle.

I would like the whole shitty “world” genre to go away and be replaced by a great deal of more specificity. *Why *can’t I search for just “Hindi” or even “Indian” songs?

[Tool_of_the_Conspiracy]

@Anaamika

I would like to be able to “lock” certain playlists so they would always play in the same order. I have a lot of stand-up on my iTunes, plus a couple of books-on-tape. I shuffle my iPod when I listen to it, but I would like certain playlists to *never *shuffle.

I’m pretty sure there’s a flag you can set to exclude tracks from shuffling.

I would like the whole shitty “world” genre to go away and be replaced by a great deal of more specificity. *Why *can’t I search for just “Hindi” or even “Indian” songs?

Can’t you put whatever you want in that field? And I think that once you’ve marked one track with a genre, it’ll even appear in the drop-down when you’re editing future tracks.

[Sunspace]

@KneadToKnow

Holy crap, that looks like something I could really make use of … if I had a Mac.

:tries to think of any friends I might be able to hit up:

“This software is no longer available.” Say what? Yet it let me download it.

[Sunspace]

As for a feature I’d like…

I’d like iTunes to log netradio playlists. I listen to a lot of bandeapart.fm and Space Station Soma, and iTunes is quite faithful at providing the artist and album information as songs are played, but it doesn’t log them, or the time. I have all these scraps of paper around the computer with names on them!

I suppose this might be best handled as an RSS feed by the source of the stream, but there’s no reason iTunes can’t do this as well. It could then link straight through to the store as well, which would be brilliant marketing as well.

[JackofHearts]

@Dreamy_B

On a Mac, you can do this by setting up an automator action. The action is two parts, the first ‘find finder item’ pointed at the watch folder. The second action is ‘import files into iTunes’. When you run the script it will import music in that folder into iTunes. You can then save this as a iCal plug in. This enables you to schedule the script to run on a regular basis, in my case it runs nightly.

I’m decently literate about macs and ITunes, but have no experience with scripts and the like…can you explain in more detail how to do this, or point to an “idiots guide?” This sounds like a great setups, since I use amazon, lala, and other music stores in addition to tunes for getting music…thanks!

[Boyo_Jim]

More shuffle options in iTunes and on my iPod:

1. I’d like to be able to shuffle artists in addition to albums – play all the music of a given artist within the current playlist and then randomly select the next artist to play.
2. Randomly shuffle the tracks when I am shuffling albums or artists. It irks me when I am shuffling albums the tracks always play in the same order. Even when you erase the track numbers, the tracks will play in the order they are sorted into the playlist (for me that’s alpha by title).

[Monkey_Chews]

@Giraffe

This is so much better. I love you. As a sign of my gratitude, the rules of this message board no longer apply to you. It’s like an invulnerability cheat code in a video game. Do anything you want. Seriously.

FINALLY I get to tell everyone that you’re ALL on my ignore list. EVERY STINKIN’ LAST ONE OF YOU.
Boy, it sure is quiet around here.

[Girl_From_Mars]

I’d like to be able to sort songs by tempo - to make it easier to make playlists to run to etc.

[Cicero]

I have just been given an Ipod for Christmas. I first used it at a friends place and now it has her name attached to it on Itunes- anyway to change this to my name?

It has 120 GB and I have no idea where to find enough music.

[Acsenray]

@Askance

I’d like to be able to sort by more than one column at once. Ideally it would list by alphabetical Artist and then albums by numeric release date within artist, but it always defaults to alphabetical.

Also I’d like it to list solo artists by lastname, firstname instead of the silly firstname lastname.

Use the “sort” fields for these. This is how I do it, for example:

Title: A Quick One, While He’s Away
Artist: The Who
Album: A Quick One
Album Artist: The Who
Composer: Pete Townshend
Sort Title: Quick One While Hes Away
Sort Artist: Who
Sort Album: Who 1966
Sort Album Artist: Who
Sort Composer: Townshend Pete

[Anaamika]

@Tool_of_the_Conspiracy

I’m pretty sure there’s a flag you can set to exclude tracks from shuffling.

Oh! Ok, I will try and look at it tonight; I did not have time to come back to this thread last night.

Can’t you put whatever you want in that field? And I think that once you’ve marked one track with a genre, it’ll even appear in the drop-down when you’re editing future tracks.

Naw, I mean in the power search or when I am searching for new music to buy.

[Interconnected_Series_of_Tubes]

1. Open in the same century I click on it.

2. Let me burn CDs without having to make a playlist first. Seriously, why?

3. Not only show me my duplicate songs - I know they’re there. But actually delete them!

4. Stop removing functionality with every upgrade. I’m still bitter about Music Sharing -> Music Sharing But Only 5 People! -> Want To Buy Some Music?

[Acsenray]

@Anaamika

Oh! Ok, I will try and look at it tonight; I did not have time to come back to this thread last night.

Do a “get info” on a track and click on “options.” I think you’ll find several pleasant surprises.

Naw, I mean in the power search or when I am searching for new music to buy.

That’s a fault of the Itunes Store perhaps, but not of Itunes.

[Anaamika]

@acsenray

Do a “get info” on a track and click on “options.” I think you’ll find several pleasant surprises.

So I can set it up so the whole playlist won’t shuffle, even if I have to do it song-by-song?

That’s a fault of the Itunes Store perhaps, but not of Itunes.

There’s a difference? I mean, yes, I know you can have iTunes without the store, but aren’t they affiliated? And I know this thread is really about the problems people have with the program iTunes, but honestly, I’d buy more music through Apple if they had this for me.

[Acsenray]

@Anaamika

So I can set it up so the whole playlist won’t shuffle, even if I have to do it song-by-song?

You can select all the songs and then do a “get info” for all of them at once. It’s very handy.

There’s a difference? I mean, yes, I know you can have iTunes without the store, but aren’t they affiliated?

I guess I just see them as two different things. One is a piece of software. The other is an online retailer. They needn’t be used together.

[Lightnin]

@Tool_of_the_Conspiracy

Can’t you turn on “disk use”, and use the iPhone as your drive for shuttling stuff back and forth? It would mean always ejecting it before disconnecting it, but it might be worth it.

I looked into that a while back- it’s not an option on the iPhone. Yet. Who knows if they’ll ever allow it?

[Munch]

@bouv

I wish I could click in the “song area” (I don’t know the name for it, but the window that has all the songs listed) and keep the button held down so I can drag the cursor to select multiple songs.

Also, not in iTunes but on my iPod, I wish I could “hot drop” (for lack of a better word) a song into the current playlist. Usually I just listen to all my songs on shuffle (I only have a few gigs worth,) but every now and then I have the whim to listen to a particular song. I have to scroll through the menu to get to the song, and then click it to play, but then that’s the only song playing, and I have to go back through the menu to either restart the playlist I had or re-start the shuffling of all my songs again. Why can’t I just have the option to drop it in, either right now or after the current song, and then go back to what is currently playing?

1. Click first song.
2. Press and hold the shift key.
3. Click last song.

[Acsenray]

@Munch

1. Click first song.
2. Press and hold the shift key.
3. Click last song.

Where’s the shift key on an Ipod?

[svrider]

I’d like apple to support movies/tv shows through my local itunes, so I wouldn’t have to buy gift cards on ebay to be able to buy from the US one. There is probably some legal nonsense behind this, but it’s still stupid. Apple even sells the Apple TV here and it’s pretty worthless when all you can access though the itunes store is music.