iTunes + iPod

Tips, tricks, news, problems & advice for better use of iTunes and iPod

New to iTunes 7: Album Artist and other features

In addition to all the hullabaloo about the new iTunes 7, here are the minor enhancements and changes I noticed while exploring.

Album Artist

There’s a new music tag called “album artist.” I’m not sure what it’s used for yet, but it could be for compatibility with windows media files. UPDATE: From glancing around the interweb it seems as though album artist is in fact used by wma files, but i think iTunes 7 still doesn’t play them (i don’t have one to test). within iTunes, however, it looks like the tag is most useful for when a song has a guest artist in addition to the main artist, like Basement Jaxx featuring J.C. Chasez. Under the iTunes 6 scheme, I had been putting that info in the comment field. I’ll let you know how it works, when I try this method.

It could also be useful for classical music in situations where a soloist or vocal is featured in addition to the orchestra. On that note, please allow me to plug my classical music tagging article, which was written for iTunes 6, but still applies today because of the iPod’s shortcomings.

From Apple’s support page:

iTunes 7 includes a new attribute for song files called Album Artist This allows you to assign a primary artist name for an album that many includes songs by several artists. It is important that all songs in the album have the same Album Artist name. To assign an Album Artist, select all the songs in the album and choose Get Info from the File menu. Next, type a name in the Album Artist field name such that it will apply to all the selected songs. This field can optionally be left blank if all the songs have the same album name.

Album Artist is not respected by the iPod, however, at least not iPod Software 1.2. Songs continue to be sorted by the Artist tag alone, which of course makes the new tag almost useless. I say, “almost” because I did find one use for it. Also, I have additional criticism of the Album Artist tag with regards to the iPod.

iTunes album artist

New Album Sorting Options

The album column in list view also sports new sorting options. Click on the Album header. It’ll switch between Album, Album by Artist (each artist’s album sorted alphabetically), and Album by Year (each artist’s album sorted chronologically). Click the triangle to reverse the sorting order.

Gapless and Crossfade

~~And it looks like you have to tell iTunes that your songs are gapless.~~ If you’re using Crossfade playback, click “Part of a gapless album” to keep seamless songs together. Look under the song options. Thanks Brian!

iTunes gapless playback

New batch operations in iTunes 7:

iTunes 7 batch

Multiple Libraries

Hold down option (or alt) when opening iTunes to choose from multiple libraries. You can also create a new library from scratch and save it in a new location. iTunes will use this library as its default until another is selection using this same method.

iTunes 7 multiple libraries

New Smart Playlist Selectors

iTunes 7 smart playlists
Then there’s some new smart playlist criteria, including the afore-mentioned album artist, as well as the brand new last skipped and skip count.

Syncing Problems

Also, iTunes now lists all the problems it has syncing files with an iPod.

iTunes 7 ipod errors

Finding Statistics About Your iTunes Library

iTunes logo with graph

Anyone who has been reading the tunequest for a while knows that statistics, numbers, figures and graphs have played a large part in its progress. In fact, it was the discovery that 10% of my songs were responsible for 49% of my total play counts that prompted me to set out on this endeavor in the first place.

To this day, I’m still surprised by the lack of sophisticated options available for gathering and analyzing iTunes’ stored data. That XML file has been a statistical treasure trove since the day it started recording star ratings and play counts. You’d think that in the four years since, there would be a more mature market of programs to choose from.

However, 2006 has actually seen some positive developments in that regard. While there is still no killer app for iTunes stats, there are a number of solutions for parsing your XML file and learning more about your music, and yourself.

Continue reading →

Lovage: The most common word in my iTunes Library

According to Super Analyser for iTunes, the most common word in the song titles of my library is "love."

Unfortunately, the program doesn’t tell how it generates that number. Does it include variations like “lovely,” “loves” and “lover”? Probably not. It’s probably a straight-up word-pattern match.

Still, that result surprises me. Certainly it filters out “a,” “an,” “the,” “that,” etc, but I would have expected some kind of standard nomenclature to take that top spot. Something like “mix,” “remix” or “version.”

After doing my own quick analysis using iTunes’ search box (song names only), I find this:

Love (252) – loves (6) – lover (17) – lovely (5) = 224 songs.
Mix (376) – remix (155) = 221 songs

So it is neck and neck. Of course, those numbers are not quite 100% accurate. There are undoubtedly a handful more combinations and variations that I missed. But for now, “Love” is the reigning champion of my iTunes library.

The question is: What’s yours? Download Super Analyser for iTunes to find out. It runs on both Windows and Mac OS X.

Apple + Last.fm: If true, it would be cool

This would be interesting.

UPDATE: Turns out this was an attempt at parody. Apple is NOT buying last.fm Oh well. It’s a nice wishlist though. I still think GenreFolksonomies are cool. And even though I don’t put together many playlists manually these days (viva randomization!), SmartTransitions is an intriguing idea.

I, for one, wouldn’t mind seeing:

GenreFolksonomies
No longer will iTunes tracks be chained to single categories. Users will be able to create multiple tags across all track variables, as well as at the album, artist, and playlist levels. This intelligence isn’t tied to individual users either.

That would certainly solve my genre dilemma.

Someone is claiming that Apple has acquired Last.fm and plans of rolling a bunch of social networking features into a future version of iTunes. the more i think about this, the less inclined i am to believe it. first of all, commenting on that post is disabled, which probably means they don’t want to receive any criticism. Second of all, as titillating as it sounds, it’s just as unsubstantiated a rumor as all the fake ipod mockups that occasionally zoom around the net.

~~a quick jaunt over to the last.fm forums reveals little forthcoming information about this potential deal.~~

on the other hand, apple has been known to purchase smaller companies in order to get products to market quickly. most of its pro A/V tools were purchased from someone else. and there were other recent rumors that apple was looking to as “social networking” features to a future version of iTunes.

~~still, i can’t help but be suspicious of this particular claim.~~

iTunes Statistician for the iTunes Stats Obsessive

There’s a new program in town (for Mac users) to help you gather more nuggets of information about your listening habits as reflected by your iTunes library. it’s a nifty little piece of donation-ware called iTunes Statistician and it analyzes your library data to calculate your top 100 songs, artists, albums and genres, based on playcounts (and optionally weights for star rating as well). additionally, it calculates the total number of plays of all your songs and tells you how much total time you’ve spent listening to your music. It also tells you the average length of your songs (4:23 in my case) and average number of songs you play each day.

The program makes a pretty good desktop-based substitute to the ailing iTunes registry (which is looking to beef up its service, so kick in if you’ve got a few extra bucks). unfortunately, iTunes statistician only samples the entire library. the iTunes registry, on the other hand, allows you to submit any exported song list in XML format. In that regard, it is much more versatile. If you wanted to see the stats for all your 90s music, you’d simply create a smart playlist with condition year is between 1990 and 1999. export song list from iTunes as XML and upload it to the registry for analysis.

However, until the registry is fully operational again, I’m certain that iTunes statistician will provide me with all the information I need.

current i-stats

Another day of seemingly non-random iPod

As if to prove my previous post for me, the tunequest-pod offered me these selections today (in order):

pearl jam-live at the fox theatre in atlanta (which i skipped because i had just heard a live show yesterday)
vince guaraldi’s oh good grief (a decent jazz album)
sonic youth experimental jet set trash and no star (my first sonic youth record and, for lack of a better word the group’s most "quirky." to this day, ‘self-obsessed and sexxee’ remains one of my favorite songs.)
tchaikovsky’s symphony 4 (ooo, the lush strings of its marvelous second movement)
spiritual vibes’ newly (more work from the ever-fascinating nobukazu takemura. before tunequest began, i would have named his songs as top candidates for removal from the library, but now i’ve a much renewed and invigorated appreciation for his musical talents.)
john williams’ score for the 70s disaster film earthquake (skipped because i wanted to pay extra attention to it and couldn’t at the time)
a pearl jam single (hail hail, b/w black red and yellow. that one’s a good b-side)
two beck singles, then a beck album (mutations. all of which were skipped because i wasn’t in a beck mood)
two more symphonies i didn’t feeling hearing at the time
finally, the 1992 re-recording of maurice jarre’s lawrence of arabia. (fine stuff there)

So despite the fact that albums by Beck, Pearl Jam and Sonic Youth have only a roughly 10% chance, combined, of being the next one played, we see here that, in fact, said artists account for 6 of 11 “randomly selected” albums for the day, or 55%. My iPod choose them at 5 times the rate I would have expected.

I’m not railing against it, since it doesn’t really bother mean though; just pointing it out.

The seemingly non-random preferences of my iPod

I’ve talked about this before, but it keeps happening and I need to remind myself that nothing nefarious is going on.

For the fourth time since I started the tunequest, I’ve had to question the randomness of my ipod. first, there’s cex’s being ridden and being ridden instrumentals, which were played pretty much back to back. Then there was Danny Elfman’s Batman scores. more recently, the device decided to play nothing but drum-n-bass for a while, despite that particular genre’s relative scarcity in my library.

Today however, no sooner had Nirvana’s unplugged session finished than i was presented with Pearl Jam’s performance of the same.

To be fair, I have to remind myself that these sort of coincidences are completely natural. Indeed, four instances within the 135 days of the project thus far is nothing to get choked up about. Still I always raise an eyebrow when I notice a new pattern. In today’s case, maybe the iPod just wanted to further perpetuate the music-media-manufactured feud between Cobain and Vedder.

But believe me, I’m not complaining. Both performances are mind blowing. Come As You Are sounds phenomenal on Nirvana’s unplugged record and Pearl Jam’s unplugged rendition of Porch is the best one in existence.