How would you change iTunes?

This issue was addressed to some degree in post 58 and then again in 69: Browsing through the library or other playlists should not interfere with the currently playing playlist. If I'm listening to a playlist and browsing through my library to find more to add to it, I don't want the playlist to stop because I'm not longer viewing it. Winamp 5 handles this perfectly with a media browser that is separate from the current playlist. You can browse playlists and media by artist, album , genre, etc and if you want that to become your current playlist or become your playlist then you click on it, but it won't interfere with what is currently playing unless you explicitly make it. iTunes assumes that if you aren't viewing your current playlist, then it shouldn't be playing it, but hell I did't press STOP or anything. Winamp 5 also makes excellent use of crossfade between tracks when using the "SqrSoft Advanced Crossfading" plugin. The only thing it doesn't fade is hitting the play or pause button, if you want to skip forward or back a track, it will crossfade that, if you hit stop or close the program the song will still fade out. The only time I can think that you would want to abruptly stop music is if you hit pause, it's much nicer to have all other transitions more smooth and natural. Note - you can set this to not fade tracks which are short (e.g. you wouldn't want a 5 second long crossfade on a 10 second audio clip) But my only significant gripe with itunes is that you can't effectively edit playlists live because simply viewing your library will interfere with the playback of the current playlist.

I have been using iTunes since 1.0 & have been asking Apple for over a year to implement most of these improvements. I am a bit discouraged in seeing that many others want some of the same improvements & Apple hasn't really improved iTunes in over a year (& hasn't mentioned any improvements in the Tiger literature). How many people have actually sent feedback to Apple's iTunes & iPod departments? Here are the links if you haven't done so: http://www.apple.com/feedback/itunes.html http://www.apple.com/feedback/ipod.html Anyway, here's what I have requested over the years: 1. Gapless playback w/ AAC files 2. Library better able to handle storage of music files in multiple formats (i.e. no duplicate listings for songs that were converted from lossless to AAC just to be uploaded to an iPod). 3. A Library category for the different volumes on which Music folders are stored & being able to edit tags for those music files when that disk is not connected to the computer & then having an alert window confirming changes to the tags when you turn the external drive on or check a box not to see such a warning or have new changes to the Library info in a different color & a "View" option to examine them & accept them upon the disk joining the network. 4. Different views for the library as Tabs (like in safari) so I can quickly switch between a view with all songs by an artist & a view with all songs on a particular hard drive without having to type stuff in the search window, or have a View of all tags that had been edited or a View of all files of one type (mp3, aac....). Also, an Artist view option that splits the window showing all albums by that artist (w/ album cover art), similar to the way in the iTunes store, clicking on the cover would then list the tracks. The option to have a different "View" for Classical Music & maybe Soundtracks so that you can have a different category system more amenable to Classical. 5. Contextual Menu Burning/Ripping, so I can have presets automatically load to get CD info & rip a CD into lossless or AAC @ 192 without having to change preferences all the time. 6. A seperate window for editing tags so that you aren't interrupted when ripping tracks/listening to music at the same time & to make it easier to cut & paste info from other songs. 7. Options for autofill (Smarter Autofill) when entering tags: alphabetical, most recent, most frequent, & a choice of those options within a Genre or by dates (i.e. a decade). Maybe a Contextual Menu for a Preference to quickly switch between these options too. 8. A feature which identifies duplicate songs by title & allows you to compare them by examining the file itself (first by song/artist tags, then by comparing the data), prompts you to listen to the files (to confirm) & then substitutes the duplicates with aliases that come up in an album view in the library & which will convert/burn the track if prompted to. 7. Category Additions: Separate date fields for copyright/original issue & CD release (to make it easy to stop my eighties re-issues stop showing up in my 90's/00's playlists, while retaining the CD info). Multiple (user can select #) genre fields to tag B52s "Planet Claire" as "New Wave" & "Dance" & "Love Shack" as "Pop" & "Dance". Using Grouping for this complicates matters, as I use it for "Producer/Mixer" so I can group all songs produced by Martin Hannett or mixed by Flood. Producer & Re/Mixer categories would be nice, though Apple would probably assume that few people would use them, so another suggestion would be to allow 2 user-created fields so that the user can create the category & fill in as s/he pleases. Another category for "Song Version" would be nice too, distinguishing between a Live, album, single, remix etc., without having to make the Song Title unwieldly. "Song Writer" instead of "Composer" for all genres but classical & soundtrack (going back to having different views for different genres, maybe by having a checkbox in the Preferences). 6. Support for other codecs (FLAC, OGG) & true VBR ripping. 7. The ability to import (& create) Song index points for really long tracks, as well as a simple editing tool to cut out dead air in "hidden" tracks (maybe integrated w/ Garageband?). 8. Album info & artwork saved in a separate file nested in the album folder, so you don't need to add the info to every single song file in an album just to have the artwork. 9. Smarter Playlists that can be created using Boolean arguments, i.e. [X + (Y-Z)] + A. "Meta" Playlists making it easier to make Playlists of Playlists. You can simply have a set playlist that plays songs (at random or in order) from different Playlists or Smart Playlists by simply Selecting a number of tracks, which creates

The thirty second time limit is the law... It is illegal to play more than thirty seconds without buying the song or paying royalties.

================= Posted Mar 8, 2005, 6:29 PM ET by Randy I would increase the limit of the sample from the 30 seconds to 1 min ================= I think that is part of the iTunes Music Store and not controlled within iTunes.

Multiple Artists Support for the TLAN (Language) ID3 frame

Wrt: ``I would love to be able to create compilation albums of PURCHASED iTunes that stay in the order I order them to stay in.'' You can do this. Or at least, it has worked for me the few times that I tried it, and I assume it would work for any album. What you need to do is make sure all the songs have the same value for maximum track number. Ie, the "track 7 of 15" -- all songs in the album must have the same value for the second number (eg: "of 15"), and then the songs should be listed in the order of first number (eg: "track 7").

del.icio.us-style tagging? What's wrong with using the grouping filed for this? That's what I'm planning to do.

Some way to use the iTMS explicit tag on your own music. Like music you pull from your CD collection, you may want to keep some of it but not play it over the airPort (as was mentioned), or even to tag your podcasts when they get a little out of hand.

Kill Crossfade Playback. Here's why: It sounds bad on songs that have 'proper musical endings' (as opposed to a 'mere' fade outs). Same for tunes that have quick beginnings (like lyrics sung right at the head of the tune, or strong chords or beats). The listener hears a very obvious and clumsy fade out/in. What works better (in an automatic sense) is having the incoming tune start at full volume as the outgoing finishes. In this scenario at least only the ends of songs will be clipped. That's a 50% improvement right there. Allow the iTunes user to block overlapping on selected songs (i.e. with abrupt endings) and you have close to a 100% improvement. You simply then select how many seconds back in the outgoing tunes you want the incoming tunes to start. To take this idea further, being able to enter this time manually on individual tracks would mean being achieve perfect transistions every time... including, with a bit of fiddling, BPM matching. That sounds pretty reasonable, doesn't it?

1. The podcast/ipod/itunes combo is killer. 2. The question is when will video be playable in this environment.