Another new feature of the newly-minted iTunes 7 is that the program now features a built-in back up system, similar to that originally found in iPhoto. The function allows you to copy either your entire library or just your iTunes Store purchases. However, you are limited to backing up to either CD or DVD, no external drives and no networks.
Select "Back up to disc…" from the file menu.
In addition to all the hullabaloo about the new iTunes 7, here are the minor enhancements and changes I noticed while exploring.
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.
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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.
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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!
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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.
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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.
Also, iTunes now lists all the problems it has syncing files with an iPod.
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.
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:
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.
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.
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.
I think I may have decided to start adopting parts of the genre labeling system that’s in use at discogs.com. I say this half-heartedly because I don’t relish the idea of re-tagging all 14,000+ songs in the library and I’m not sure it would be an improvement. But at the same time, I must acknowledge that my existing scheme is arbitrary and borderline fubar.
Part of the problem is that a while back, I started using my genre tags more as a list of stylistic keywords rather than general labels. I did this so I could take advantage of iTunes’ smart playlists to quickly find (or filter) specific styles of music. For example, a quick smart playlist consisting of Genre contains "downtempo" returns 471 songs that I can easily turn on for a chill-out mood. I can easily filter out trip-hop by adding Genre does not contain "trip hop" to the list’s criteria. Overall, the system works fairly well.
But the problem I’ve recently started encountering is the result of 2 dueling forces. On one hand, there’s no limit to how many attributes I can add to a genre tag; I can get very specific if I want to (Ambient Pop Electronic Trip Hop, anyone?). Conversely, I want to keep everything as streamlined as possible. at the moment, my iTunes lists 298 different genres. Scrolling through that many listings on an iPod is an exercise in frustration. To make matters worse, many of those ‘genres’ contain only one album or, in some cases, just a couple of songs.
The point of all this is that I’m conflicted as to what to do with my genre tags. In practice, I tend to cast a wide net when collating music for a playlist, so I’m inclined to include as many keywords as necessary. But I rarely filter based on the more specific criteria, preferring to just skip songs I don’t feel like hearing when the come up.
Though sometimes, filtering is necessary. Indie rock, in general, returns 1400 songs and I usually need to further cull one branch or another based on whatever mood I’m in.
So after writing all this, I may have talked myself out of tackling this.
How would you handle it?