
iTunes built, and then broke, my meticulous music-listening system - anjalik
http://www.theverge.com/2017/3/23/15031054/how-itunes-built-and-then-broke-my-meticulous-music-listening-system
======
incogitomode
For two years now I've used iCloud Music Library (iTunes Match) to handle
exactly the sort of situation the article author describes. Bucking the trend
here; I love it.

I've written a number of scripts (the main one is on npm) that run on a home
Mac Mini server, converting FLAC to ALAC, and copying music which gets added
to the library via the iTunes Add to Library folder.

Within minutes of hitting a synced drop folder music is converted, stored and
uploaded. I then have access to that music on my phone and computer. I can
access 100% of my personal 40k track library anywhere, and can listen lossless
at home. I still have music in my library I ripped in the early 2000s.

I've definitely hated on iTunes plenty — the search is unforgivably slow and
CPU intensive, and the app seems forever going backwards on usability.

Still, I have what seems like a miracle of the cloud. A reliable, personal
streaming service, with none of the restrictions of Spotify or Apple Music.
I'll deal with the inconvenience.

For the record: I've explored a similar system with Google Play, but Apple
manages the best end-to-end ecosystem across devices in my opinion.

~~~
jghn
I'm also generally +1 on iTunes Match. However recently I've noticed my iPhone
skipping songs frequently, no matter how hard I try I can't get those songs to
play. I'm not sure if the fault is with my phone, itunes, match or something
else, but it's not as seamless as I'd have liked.

It took me a while to notice as usually I'm not watching the screen of my
phone when I"m shuffling around and such, but now that I know it happens i've
been watching for it.

~~~
incogitomode
It happens to be occasionally too. I've ended up exporting and re-importing
those tracks on the server and it tends to fix it.

Definitely an annoyance, but infrequent enough that I had forgotten about it
until you mentioned.

------
srslack
Syncing is broken on all phones, practically. MTP is a disaster.

These days I just use Syncthing on Android. What works best for me on my
desktop is Rhythmbox and a bindfs mounted to the Syncthing directory, which
contains a file named ".is_audio_player".

[https://almost-a-
technocrat.blogspot.com/2010/11/isaudioplay...](https://almost-a-
technocrat.blogspot.com/2010/11/isaudioplayer.htm)

After that, multiple playlists, podcasts, transcoded or not: it can handle it
all wirelessly.

~~~
dmix
I used to obsessively manage my music like this on external HDs, syncing apps,
and `beets` [1] to clean up the tags/album covers. But I've recently given
this up in favour of Google Music and I'm in love.

I haven't stopped raving about the service since I started using it two months
ago.

Just having your entire collection (and it has 99% of the music I'm looking
for, something like 35 million full albums... just a simple search and button
click away from adding to my library) and for stuff it doesn't have you can
upload 50k songs, even stuff your pirate off private torrent trackers or w/e.

Getting new phones each year, new tablets, new laptops, etc I always ended up
with a half-baked collection of music. I never set up a NAS to solve this
unfortunately but now I don't feel the need to.

It's helped me rediscover so much music I've forgotten over the years and lost
from my collection during various moves.

Now I'm in the process of building playlists, rating songs, and rebuilding the
playcounts. Not having to worry about ever losing them again is very
reassuring!

I got a 90-day trial with my Nexus phone and it's only $9/month after that...
but you can also use it for free with ads which includes the 50k songs.

[1] [https://github.com/beetbox/beets](https://github.com/beetbox/beets)

------
damontal
I'm on Spotify and Pandora despite having a huge music collection in iTunes. I
dread having to launch it and have basically given up buying and managing my
own music.

~~~
baldfat
Just use Google Play music and upload your music to them. You get 50,000
songs. Plus if you just listen to your music its free.

~~~
msabalau
And you can listen offline on your mobile.

~~~
LaSombra
Yes, you can. It pre-downloads two or four songs, I don't recall, from your
current playlist and you can also choose to download playlists, albums and
songs for offline usage.

~~~
baldfat
My favorite money spent is on Google Play Music Family. I get my son, daughter
and wife on it cost $15 and it includes ad free YouTube and the ability to
play in background (Awesome for Podcast like content) and download videos (If
I am going on a trip I down load a ton of stuff)

------
_jal
Wanting an application to work is not an edge case. iTunes is an atrocity.

That old joke about emacs? iTunes is not a great operating system, and it
still needs a decent MP3 player.

~~~
leppr
You mean a FLAC player :^)

~~~
bartl
Does iTunes even play FLAC files?

Apple developers have one serious problem: the "not invented here" syndrome.
As everybody was using mp3, Apple wanted AAC. FLAC? Apple didn't invent it. So
they just support their own rubbish instead [1].

[1]
[https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3002052?tstart=0](https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3002052?tstart=0))

~~~
robinhoodexe
>just support their own rubbish They support ALAC, a lossless format. Sure,
converting is a slight hassle, but doesn't take long. The quality is the same
as in FLAC.

------
danielhooper
The problems with iTunes extends beyond iTunes. I just want to drag and drop
MP3s to my iPhone!!!

~~~
virtuabhi
This! And no automatic syncing. I have no idea why deleted songs keep showing
on my iphone and added songs keep disappearing from my iphone.

------
nix0n
Is it possible to get mp3s onto an iPhone SE without using iTunes? Either
Windows or Linux is fine.

~~~
spython
You can use Tiny Player, which is a simple player for iOS:

[http://www.catnapgames.com/tiny-player/](http://www.catnapgames.com/tiny-
player/)

~~~
nix0n
Thanks!

------
baldfat
Use CMUS is a small, fast and powerful console music player for Unix-like
operating systems. [https://cmus.github.io/](https://cmus.github.io/)

Anyone wanting to program and hack their music should use this gem. It is the
best music player I have ever used.

Installation instructions
[http://macappstore.org/cmus/](http://macappstore.org/cmus/)

------
thebiglebrewski
Anybody have a good Mac alternative to iTunes? I found myself using VLC the
other day on a plane because it is SO SLOW with big libraries.

------
joezydeco
Is this where I can complain about Apple Music completely screwing up all the
album art on my own music?

Yes, this particular track I synced to the device also happens to be in some
random music compliation CD from twenty years ago that's available on Apple
Music. _It doesn 't mean I want to see that album art swapped into mine,
dammit._

------
mercer
By some strange coincidence I got the dreaded corrupted iTunes library shortly
after I read this article. Years of ratings, playlists, play counts, and
whatnot are gone :-/.

Last time this happened I couldn't find a way to fix this. Does anyone have
any experience with the matter and/or tips for fixing this?

------
TazeTSchnitzel
On the subject of syncing, Apple's devices still† use USB 2.0 cables. In
practice the software might be more of a bottleneck, but still.

†IIRC the iPad Pro actually supports USB 3.0 on its Lightning port, but the
included USB cable is plain old USB 2.0.

------
joshmarinacci
Question. Would you subscribe to a service that fixed all this? I've created a
streaming service for personal use and I'm considering commercializing it.

Or am I just an old fuddy duddy who likes to own my music and I should just
give up and go to iMusic and GPlay to lease everything.

------
vermooten
Use WALTR no need for iTunes, end of.

~~~
SyneRyder
Unless I've missed something, WALTR doesn't solve the author's smart playlist
/ generate a "new playlist of the day" problem.

------
SippinLean
Any great replacements for Windows?

* foobar is the most feature-rich, but requires a lot of customization and the auto-move functionality is not on par with iTunes file organization tool

* MediaMonkey is nice but the interface is lacking in simplicity compared to iTunes

~~~
ue_
I personally use Clementine, which I think is excellent, especially how it
lets you browse by album rather than just Artist like some other programs.

~~~
Notre1
I've been using Clementine for the past few years, too. It's really a nice
"simple" interface.

------
everyone
Take this as a lesson in not using or relying on proprietary systems like
that.

~~~
shp0ngle
The thing is, iTunes - the music organizer part - is still one of the best
ways to organize your music collection, make automated playlists, make them to
sync. Apple bought iTunes and then developed it back when they made iPods and
needed people to manage copying the music to their players easily, and there
were some great design decisions made back then that are still present now.

However, they also piled tons of crap on the core functionality. Which sucks.
But I haven't seen an application that is as good as iTunes for music library.

Anyway I switched to Spotify too, but the UI is frankly pretty terrible,
especially on desktop.

~~~
exergy
Wait, Spotify UI is terrible? How would you alter it? I ask because I find it
to be really good, especially since I came from playing my music on Windows
Media Player and occasionally VLC(!).

~~~
k-mcgrady
Not OP but take playlists in Spotify for a start. They push playlists like
crazy and then have this silly little side bar for them that requires me to
scroll if I have more than 10-15 playlists and is narrow so I can't see the
full playlist names.

------
rabboRubble
iTunes being shiat is a big reason why I don't listen to music as much. I am
annoyed with constantly having to figure out what new crapped up way iTunes
does X, annoyed with the integration of Apple Music into the iPhone Music app,
and annoyed with all the maintenance. My music is a 250gb waste of hard disk
space.

Riddle me this: why does the iPhone Music app require cellular data access
when all I want to is play music local to my iPhone device? WTF is the app
doing? I don't subscribe to the stupid music match function so what exactly is
it doing?

------
employee8000
iTunes is the single worst piece of software I'm still forced to use. I would
pay $100 for a better piece of software but Apple has their walled "garden".
And they have billions but can't hire PMs and engineers that can build a
better piece of software. So fuck them.

Anyone foolish enough to build a music listening system on top of them
unfortunately deserves whatever they get. I don't have much sympathy.

~~~
mcintyre1994
Why are you forced to use it? The only time I see it is when it comes up on my
macbook when I plug my phone in, then I just close it - and I could probably
stop it showing up then too.

~~~
enzanki_ars
You can only transfer music via USB onto an iPhone via iTunes.

~~~
Arizhel
That's a good reason not to own an iPhone. Android may have its (many) faults,
but at least I can transfer music onto it from my Linux command line with "adb
push". Or I can take out the SDcard and just pop it into my computer and
transfer it like I copy any other files.

------
wowvou
VLC

~~~
kalleboo
How do you use VLC to sync a subset of star-ranked songs that haven't been
played in X months to a device with a limited amount of storage?

------
danesparza
Why are you eulogizing an existing product? Build something better or use
something else.

~~~
jankotek
It simply can not be done!

Apple is worth $ 750,000,000,000 and it spend last 16 years trying to build
file synchronization tool.

~~~
danesparza
Well not with that attitude it can't.

Have you even looked at other tools like Plex
[https://www.plex.tv/](https://www.plex.tv/), Foobar2000
[http://www.foobar2000.org/](http://www.foobar2000.org/), Clementine
[https://www.clementine-player.org/](https://www.clementine-player.org/),
iSyncr [http://www.jrtstudio.com/iSyncr-iTunes-for-
Android](http://www.jrtstudio.com/iSyncr-iTunes-for-Android), or DoubleTwist
Sync?

~~~
jankotek
Sarcasm? I used rsync for past 20 years...

------
k-mcgrady
I don't really get the complaint. The author acknowledges they are a tiny edge
case and Apple has clearly been trying to get away from syncing and make the
devices work without computers for years now. The music industry has changed
and streaming is now what most people are doing with these devices. I think,
in hindsight, investing a lot of time in any music delivery mechanism is
wasteful. It changes much too often.

~~~
jsperson
It's not just music though. Stream if you will/want. I think it's a good
model. But that doesn't work for pictures. I know - iCloud, but it's not even
as reliable as iTunes. No way am I trusting it for the only backup of videos
of my kids. This may be a HN edge case, but out there in the RW, folks are
taking pictures at soccer practice that they want to keep forever. It's a real
PITA if you can't sync reliably.

~~~
k-mcgrady
Have you used iCloud Photo Library? Syncs between your devices and you can
have it store local copies on your Mac so you have cloud and local copies (and
you can backup the local copies with your usual solution). Much safer than
sync IMO because the photos are synced and backed up before you can get to a
computer (useful if you're on vacation and without a computer for a couple of
weeks).

~~~
jsperson
I haven't found iCloud to be entirely reliable. The total lack of feedback in
sync progress and errors when something goes wrong drive me crazy.

More importantly, Apple charges a lot for storage and it can't be shared so
each account needs it's own storage - and enough of it to store all
pictures/videos or it won't sync at all. Basically it comes down to I don't
want to pay Apple four times for storage (2 phones and 2 iCloud accounts) just
so that I can have my pictures fully backed up and synced.

~~~
LgWoodenBadger
They charge me $0.99/month per 50GB of extra storage. I just buy one fewer
candy bars per month.

