The Long Road

10/21/2003 Archived Entry: "iTunes"

I've been pretty happy with Winamp for the last 3 or so years of using it. I've tried other players of course, like the invasive Real Player and the blocky Media Player but nothing is better than Winamp that is until last week when iTunes for Windows was released.

First, the bad. iTunes is pretty slow, slower than Winamp and it takes up a few more megs of RAM. The sluggishness and extra storage can probably be attributed to the fact that iTunes reads all of your mp3's tag info instead of just the song name. Over several hundred songs this probably makes a difference. Scrolling through my entire playlist can be pretty discouraging.

But the bad is worth it!

Here's how iTunes works: iTunes keeps a sort-of database of all the songs you have (including all the tag info) and you use iTunes' search feature to look through your database to find whatever music you want and iTunes creates an new playlist based on what you've searched for. For example, if you wanted to hear the Red Hot chilli Peppers, you'd search for that and all the Peppers' songs will show up. If you want to be more specific you could search for an album name and you'd get all the songs from that album. Even better, search for "alternative" and all your songs which are tagged as alternative will be shown. Of course all this requires that you have good tags on your mp3's, I'm pretty content with just Artist and Song Title but iTunes really makes me want to label all the Genre and Album tags. This feature is great for people like me who have most of their songs stuck in one directory, Mike has all his songs organized by artists then albums so it'd be a little bit less useful for him. But still, even if I had all my mp3's organized like that I would like to be able to still load up a specific album without having to empty my playlist and refill it with what I want, iTunes can save us all many clicks of the mouse!

Other features include "smart playlists" like the 25 most played songs - which isn't superbly useful but is cool to have around to see what your play most. My most played song is currently "Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood" by Santa Esmeralda off the Kill Bill soundtrack.

I think everyone should give iTunes a try, it'll change your life. And to make the most out of your iTunes experience, fix up your ID3Tags with this neat little program.

Replies: 3 comments

iTunes is more than just a search engine for your mp3s. It will change the way you organize and browse all your music. Once all the files are set up with the proper tags, you are set to go.

See that little 'browse' button in the top-right-hand corner of the iTunes library? Click it, and you're now able to browse your entire collection of music songs by artist, album, genre, or any combination of the three.

You can very easily make playlists by dragging and dropping songs, albums, artists or genres into the playlist bar on the left. Smart playlists are 'permanent searches,' more or less.

iTunes manages all your music for you. There's no more creation of subdirectories. No more wondering where to place files or how to set them up. iTunes operates like a black box, and you'll never be happier when you let it do what it wants.

With iTunes you can very easily rip and burn Audio CDs. It'll automatically grab the track and album information from the internet when you rip, and the songs will automatically be placed in your library. You burn playlists to CD; they can be regular Audio cds as well as MP3 and Data.

What am I trying to tell you? Give iTunes a shot. Once you've got your tags set up correctly, you'll be very happy with it. I guarantee it.

(But beware - Apple products are addictive)

Posted by Joe @ 10/22/2003 12:52 AM EST

Hear hear! I've been using iTunes since Apple bought out Casedy & Green (late 90s) and I have to tell you that I've never looked back since. It is by far one of the most comprehensive mp3 music players out there. I'm glad you're enjoying it. Though I've heard iTunes for WinXP has redraw issues, peopel say it's a pretty good port.

The best thing about iTunes is the network sharing feature that's built in. If someone is in your subnet then you can share (by streaming) all your mp3 playlist/mp3s by just clicking a few check boxes. It's all transparent and done in the background. Literaly no config involved. And it seamlessly communicates with Macs and PCs.

And yes, thanks to iTunes, i consider it farking annoying when someone doesn't fill in their ID3 tags. I guess that's why i don't download from Kazaa, usenet is the way to go! :P

BTW, i'd like to recommend "G-Force" for the music visualizer. It's a lot better than the built in visualizer since it uses more complex algorithms, it's really groovy! So what are you waiting for, google it!

The flame of the west

Posted by Narsil @ 10/22/2003 08:08 AM EST

I've tried the Browser a little but it's not really up my alley since I don't mark albums...and I enjoy typing in artist names more than scrolling for 'em.

The network-thing is rather slick. I'm very impressed with how it magically shared everything when I asked it to.

yes about the redraw issues. its a bit of a hassle but not big enough to warrant not using it.

Posted by Rayne @ 10/22/2003 09:44 PM EST