This is the second time this has been brought up and I don't get it. You can browse by album and you're done. Use the column browser and just select the album or easier, type the album name in the top right search bar and you have it. 

I used Windows media player before i had apple and hated it. My father has figured it out, but now ALL of his music is WMA and won't play on all devices, so the argument of Apple doing AAC by default goes both ways. 

I didn't mean the contents would change, but how they store information and where they store information. Scanning tens of thousands of files manually every five minutes is kludgey at best. If you compare it to other schemes, it's pretty sad. Even though with something like J.River you have to export an XML file, at least everything the automation system needs to know is in that one XML file which can be scanned quickly and efficiently. But even that's really a kludge. A proper system would have a backend server that manages the files and metadata and provide a TCP/IP interface for other applications (and its own interface) to access and manipulate that data. This deals with multi-user issues as well, which is important in a modern automation system.

iTunes of course does create an XML file, but it's not documented, and they can change it any time and you wake up one day and all of your customers are screaming that their music doesn't work. Any sort of file format scheme is bad and they always break it because it's not well defined like a remote API has to be.

One of the options we offer is our own media repository. While obviously it's not anything like as popular as iTunes, it's a client/server based system, fully multi-user compatible and you can rip CDs from any machine without any file shares or anything like that. That's what a real media system is supposed to be like. But of course everyone wants to use iTunes, so we are stuck with their pretty much complete lack of interest in our needs as automation system providers.

But I, in my naivete, have been ripping my CDs as .WAV files. Please tell me how bad an idea that is/was, or how to rip them in the future.

Some older files are mp3s.

Will WAVs and mp3s play via iTunes?


What's your secret, or do have a clue what must be turned off on my computer? I'm using XP, and I have NEVER been able to update QuickTime, or play anything that says it requires it.


Does this mean that iTunes will, for instance, take the many folders I've got on my external drive, the one with the music on it, and totally redo the folders on that drive? I'd expect it to create, within itself, a mapping system to be able to find the files, then present the music to me as though it's been organized.

One thing I didn't mention is how horrible the WMP alphabetization is. Everything is by people's first names. If you've got classical music, it's organized by the first name of whichever name is the first one on the disc, usually the conductor.


This is also horrid on the Windows Media Player. But, I just installed a system for a couple, and when she brought her iPod to use in it, she had all these single cuts by different artists. I finally figured out that it was all from "Jazz at Midnight" or some such collection.

What's amusing about this is that I once started a database of my collection of 78s, showing title, bandleader, etc, eventually wanting to list all 18 or so players. For that I used vp planner, which was eventually replaced when some company or other introduced a new program called... what was it... Lotus. Remember that? Now, almost thirty years later, the two most popular music softwares have zero idea how to handle multiple artists!

IF...there is an explicit verson of a song I want to purchase, more than likely, I want it. When I click buy, if I'm not clicking the explicit version and there is one available, please make me aware and give me the option.....nuff said.

c4c4,
you're saying this is how the iTunes store works, right?

Have you ever seen songs for sale where you know there are two versions? How did they handle it?

I see it all the time. I've bought whole albums assuming they were the explicit versions listned to them and kind of just chalked it up as a loss. I never really researched trying to "return" it?

Honestly Ernie, I have used XP for 3 or 4 years now and can't remember much of it. Vista did some but W7 has made SO many improvements, XP feels like W98 to me now. 

On my W7 computer, when i installed itunes, it included some sort of Apple Updater that checks for updates for iTunes, Safari, and Quicktime.

+1

I just emailed support the first time I got burned by this, and they credited my account. I then bought the explicit version.

How did you make the transition from Fireball to iTunes? I need to do the same.