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October 20, 2003
I-tunes 2
Brian Tiemann comments.
Brian is a nice guy. We met once at a blog bash, I'd like to do so again. Brian is also one of the Mac faithful. As such he seems to have a bit of a blind spot where apple is concerned. The writer in me would like to take a cheep shot at his faith in Job, but I've already used up my quota of friends insulting for this year. So I'll try to keep the snarkyness limited to Apple's product...
One thing before I really begin, Brian says (and this will be the only time I quote him. I really don't want to attack his post—he makes some good points and was generally rather helpful):
UPDATE: Kris reminds me that in the iTunes installation wizard on Windows, there's a screen where it asks you whether you want it to automatically keep your Music folder organized... and it defaults to off.
In retrospect, it sure does. And I was wrong for saying otherwise. I think the big problem is that I didn't know what the question meant. It's a bit like asking someone who has never had sushi how much wasabi they want; with no reference for it; I had no way of knowing if I wanted it...
As I said, thgough, I-tunes is a product I would recommend. It works, and has a layer of functionality, much greater/deeper than most other products on the market. Anyone who is new to digital music would do well to start with I-tunes...
Indeed, that seems to be the assumption Apple is making; users are beginners. It turns out that (something that developed after a confusion conversation with Brian) the CD database Apple has compiled can only be accessed if one is ripping a new CD. My older Mp3s can't take advantage of Apple's database. Music Match has several databases, any of which can be used at any time...
Ultimately, were it not for MusicMatch, I would be using I-Tunes exclusively. That's meant as high praise. I-tunes has a lot to offer. I'll probably even recommend it to my father (who actually feels more strongly about music than I do). This is meant as high praise.
What I-tunes does is manage to blow away just about every other CD out there, on just about every level. Where it fails is in measuring up to MusicMatch.
On a point by point, The two are closely matched. While it is true that MusicMatch doesn't organize your files (a point I would consider in its favor!), just about everything else Apple does, MM (got tired of typing MusicMatch all the time) does. A specific application Brian mentions is 1 click CD ripping. MM takes 1 click to say "call up the CD", and 1 click to say "start ripping". Apple takes the same. Apple calls the process "importing", which does have a kind of nicely European flair to it, but is otherwise a kind of odd convention.
Apple lets one rate music tracks and can create playlists based on that. So does MM. Apple lets users look at their libraries based on a bajillion different qualities, including one that reads "number of olives the artist(s) like in their martinis." So does MusicMatch...
There are Exactly 2 things MM does better than I-Tunes. Probably neither would be a deal breaker, but together they are important. 1) the aforementioned ID Tag lookup. MM simply does a better job of looking up tags. Yes, there is a bit of manual work involved, but with I-Tunes there is simply a lot more work. 2) AutoDJ. There is a button that let me choose criterion on which to create a playlist. For instance; if I want to listen to 5 hours worth of Upbeat Slow music, and have more than 5 hrs of that kind of music, MM will create a playlist for me. I can choose up to 3 criterion (Album, Artist, Genre, Tempo, Mood, Situation, Preference) If have less than that, MM will simply put what I have in random order. Keeping track of this sort of information is exactly the point of ID tags. Frankly I am surprised that Apple doesn't have this feature. If anyone wants to tell me where it is, I'll look at I-tunes again. But I did look for it and didn't find it...
I-Tunes is a wonderfully simple piece of software. If I MusicMatch didn't exist, I'd be using it. Frankly I am surprised more people don't use MusicMatch, but it is clear which is the superior software...
Posted by Andrew at October 20, 2003 09:19 PM
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» iTunes and Looney Tunes: from jjdaley.com
I won't dwell too much on the subject, but I've been recommending iTunes pretty strongly in the last week, and most people seem to get it and like it. Some are thrown off by the simplicity of the interface. That's... [Read More]
Tracked on November 1, 2003 12:02 PM
Comments
While I can't speak for the Windows version, I have no problem getting ID tags on the Mac version of iTunes. So, I'm not sure what you mean when you say it takes a lot more work to look up tracks. I insert CD and when it spins up, iTunes automatically looks for the tags. Bada-bing bada boom, they show up.
Your other minor point about the AutoDJ sounds like it would suck. I've rarely found a track that I thought the genre was labeled correctly. So, to allow the program to set up a playlist with that a criteria seems foolish. I'd rather pick and choose my playlist than hope the program gets it right.
Personally, I find the word "rip" far inferior to "import". Though I agree it is an odd choice considering its other UI aspects. When I talk to people about MP3s, I always use "convert." Isn't that what you are doing? Converting one format to another.
Posted by: Michael McInnis at October 21, 2003 05:29 PM
Ahh...the downside to familiarity is that often people make things more complicated then they are.. while you are correct or prehaps partially correct about ID Tags. iTunes will not look up track info for individual songs, but it does search the CDDB database for any CD placed in your computer, or when ripping CDs to mp3s, aiff, wav, aac, etc. There is an option to turn this on automatically, so that iTunes searches as soon as the CD is in the computer.
Now as for looking for the wrong thing, I assume you didn't find AutoDJ, because you were actually looking for something that said or was similar to the term auto-dj. Unfortunately, you missed Smart Playlist. Since iTunes uses the playlist metaphor, you basically have the Library (all your tunes), the Music Store (tunes you can buy), Purchased Playlist (tunes you HAVE bought), shared lists (others libraries), then your playlist. Your playlist can be a standard list--you've created it and it never changes, or a smart playlist--you give it some criteria and iTunes creates the list for you.
How the Smart Playlist works, select from almost all of the ID Tag fields--album, artist, genre, bit rate, comments, rating, date added, last date played, etc., etc. From there you can choose the options: contains, does not contain, begins with, ends with, is, is not, etc. some of this modifiers change depending on your original selection. You can add addition qualifiers, match all conditions, have live updating, limit the songs, select the songs randomly, or by rating or other overarching qualifiers.
For your example. I'd created a new Smart Playlist called "5hr Trance". I might then say 1) select genre is Trance, 2) select comment contains upbeat, and just to be on the safe side, 3) select rating is greater than 3 stars. Limit to 5hrs. Live Update.
This will produce a trance dance mix, of ONLY songs that I rated highly, and limit the mix to 5hrs in time. iTunes doesn't have a specific field for tempo, so that would placed in comments.
Typically speaking when I have a party, I don't like leaving everything to chance, so I do, 3 lists--one that I manually create with must have songs for the evening, one that I let iTunes generate, and then my final playlist, that combines both, and place it on shuffle. This has worked well for me for dinner parties and the like, though I don't do alot of dance parties, but I imagine the more random the better, so giving over total control to iTunes or MM is a good way to go.
Posted by: allgood2 at October 21, 2003 08:01 PM