So here’s two things I’d like to see in future versions of iTunes:
- If I add album cover art for a song, I’d like that to automatically apply across all songs on the same album. Ideally, there’d be a little interface that says ‘add to:’ and lists all the songs on the album, along with their artist (just in case there’s some cock-up somewhere, or you don’t want to add it to everything). Because it’s a real pain in the ass to add album art song by song. (I’ve no idea if this happens automatically when you rip an album through iTunes — I’ve never done that. But it would be useful for making your existing, or imported music collection prettier).
- The second thing I’d like to see is to have an option to retrieve information for an artist/album/song, etc, from a master iTunes library. This would include such things as Composer, Date, Album Art, BPM, etc. All the fields in the song info screen. When downloading this information, it could be flagged as either ‘confirmed’ or ‘unconfirmed’. Confirmed means that Apple has confirmed that the information is correct. Apple could then either a) hire some lackeys to do this or b)Have some volounteers do this. I’m sure there’s some folk out there who’d be willing to officiate song information in exchange for, say, some free iTunes downloads. If you try and get info for a song that’s not in the library, you’d get a chance to upload the information. Kind of like the CDDB thing, only with more info, and hopefuly with more accuracy.
I wonder if there’s an iTunes features suggestion box somewhere? anyone know?
You can already accomplish item 1, just select all songs in the album; then hit get information. This allows you to edit all songs on the album at once. Very good for adding album art, switching album genre, correcting artist or album name or date. It leaves title, track numbers, etc., alone, so long as you don’t type in those fields. I believe the features been available since iTunes v1 or v2.
The feature works across albums as well. Say you wanted to break out a number of your songs and albums located in the genre “Pop” to something more specific like: Chamber Pop, British Pop, and Folk Pop. I find this works best in browse mode. So if your not set-up for it, go to the Edit Menu and choose “Show Browser”. The browser provides a three paned interface over top of your music library, allowing you to rapidly drill down, based on genre, artist or album.
Select the genre, for this example “Pop”. On a Mac you command+click (the Apple key plus just selecting the artist); on the PC I think it maybe a Control + Click, but you can play around with it. What your doing is selecting discontinous artists. For example, I selected Coldplay, Robbie Williams, the Doves, Keane, David Gray, and Starsailor from my listing. This in turn, changes the bottom music list, just to songs and albums from the selected artists. I then selected “all” songs from the list, and did a “Get Info” [Go to the File menu, select Get Info; or do a Command+I on any Apple].
A new window will pop up allowing you to change details on multiple song. In fact the window should be titled “Multiple Song Information” From here, I then just add the new genre (for this example: British Pop), then hit OK. iTunes will ask if I want to change info across multiple albums or something like that, I say yes, and about 100 songs are moved from Pop to British Pop.
It would be nice to be able to get composer information from Apple. The suggestion box is directly in the iTunes Music Store or you can go to the Apple site, under iPod+iTunes and use the recommendation/feedback form from there.
You can already accomplish item 1, just select all songs in the album; then hit get information. This allows you to edit all songs on the album at once. Very good for adding album art, switching album genre, correcting artist or album name or date. It leaves title, track numbers, etc., alone, so long as you don’t type in those fields. I believe the features been available since iTunes v1 or v2.
The feature works across albums as well. Say you wanted to break out a number of your songs and albums located in the genre “Pop” to something more specific like: Chamber Pop, British Pop, and Folk Pop. I find this works best in browse mode. So if your not set-up for it, go to the Edit Menu and choose “Show Browser”. The browser provides a three paned interface over top of your music library, allowing you to rapidly drill down, based on genre, artist or album.
Select the genre, for this example “Pop”. On a Mac you command+click (the Apple key plus just selecting the artist); on the PC I think it maybe a Control + Click, but you can play around with it. What your doing is selecting discontinous artists. For example, I selected Coldplay, Robbie Williams, the Doves, Keane, David Gray, and Starsailor from my listing. This in turn, changes the bottom music list, just to songs and albums from the selected artists. I then selected “all” songs from the list, and did a “Get Info” [Go to the File menu, select Get Info; or do a Command+I on any Apple].
A new window will pop up allowing you to change details on multiple song. In fact the window should be titled “Multiple Song Information” From here, I then just add the new genre (for this example: British Pop), then hit OK. iTunes will ask if I want to change info across multiple albums or something like that, I say yes, and about 100 songs are moved from Pop to British Pop.
It would be nice to be able to get composer information from Apple. The suggestion box is directly in the iTunes Music Store or you can go to the Apple site, under iPod+iTunes and use the recommendation/feedback form from there.
Hey – thanks for that tip – I had no idea I could do that. That’s most Excellent.
And I will drop a suggestion off for apple too.
Hey – thanks for that tip – I had no idea I could do that. That’s most Excellent.
And I will drop a suggestion off for apple too.