So true and sad. I would rather purchase the music as albums, cd’s or mp3s so the artists get paid at least a bit of the proceeds. “the laborer is worth (his/her/their) hire…”
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One of the reasons I use Nisus Writer Pro is so that I can design the program to work the way I want it, not the way Microsoft Word tells me I will work it or else have to search through 40,000 hidden options to make it work. It does seem to me that Apple could create the app to do what they are pushing while allowing the user to shape it the way the user wishes for their own personal convenience. In my personal opinion, Music is really difficult because we cannot shape it to our needs, but as my wife often reminds me, I could be wrong lol.
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I am currently running two libraries, iTunes on an older MacPro (High Sierra) and Music on a M1 laptop (music stored in Apple iTunes Match). There are so many problems with Music that for my own peace of mind I’m going to have to start filing bug reports and sending them to the Apple void. Simple things like not being able to browse large playlists because the cursor jumps up and down, yadda yadda.
If Music is supposed to be only for streaming, Apple should make that explicit. Plus, like I said, I use Music to stream my own music, and it is still terrible.
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The Old Apple you’re lionizing also charged a lot for software upgrades and had its own issues with usability. OS X wasn’t really fully baked until a few versions in. I don’t disagree about Music, but let’s not over romanticize things.
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I hope you’re not saying that because Apple doesn’t charge for its current “upgrades,” wanting better software that actually works is not a reasonable expectation?
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Artist compensation is a major concern (and I acknowledge that Apple is better than many services). Just take a look at the credits on many modern “albums”–many have very few actual musicians listed, while listing sometimes dozens of producers. Illustrates the way many of today’s “hits” are manufactured, using Pro Tools and AutoTune. Being a professional sideman (such as a guitarist or keyboard player) doesn’t seem to be a profession with much of a future.
And yes, I recognize that “times change” blah blah. Doesn’t mean I have to like it, and doesn’t mean I have to silently accept crappy software to play it. I’ll point out again that somebody at Apple cares enough to keep a final version of iTunes available.
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As I said in the sentence you deleted “I don’t disagree about Music” so, no, I’m not saying that.
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Glad to hear it. And I didn’t delete anything, but quoted only part of your message rather than the entire content.
You didn’t include the part where I had, in fact, already answered your question.
I don’t see that at all, which is why I asked the question, but this sub-branch of the discussion is rapidly deteriorating into drivel so I give up. You win.
Since I’ve only tried the Music app a few times, I’m not as familiar with it compared to iTunes which I use every day on two different computers so if streaming is Apple’s new focus, then so be it I guess but then I will stay with what I have for as long as I can. When Music dropped the “free” Radio component, I felt that the push towards pay radio channels and other purchases was the new focus and it seems to be judging by comments here and on other sites. But I have enough of my own CD’s and LP’s etc. so I have no need to pay for something I will not use or hardly use.
Whether older iTunes app’s will still be able to run on newer equipment/systems (like the M1) is one area of concern for me.
I don’t know for sure, but I don’t think M1 Macs can run iTunes (natively, apart from using a partitioned emulator like VMware or Parallels–if they can even run on M1s…I’m not sure). This is “progress”–the historical path of Macintoshes since 1984 is littered with the carcasses of discarded technology…MacPaint, MacWrite, the “virtual slots” of RS-232, ADB, SCSI…the list goes on and on. There’s always a trade. Is the “upgrade” worth it? Many times, yes. Sometimes…maybe no.
Apple has always made great, long lasting hardware (if you overlook the 128k’s flyback transformer problem, the keyboards of some recent laptop Macs, etc.) so in a way, putting older Macs in an orphan status update-wise, where you can no longer count on Apple’s providing security related updates, is a blessing, because you can use your otherwise essentially worthless Macs as local servers, running so-called “obsolete” software such as iTunes.
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I use Alexa to call up my music in iTunes.
Works quite well.
What is the actual problem here? Music is doing this in the exact same way iTunes always did.
There is no “album” object in the system at all. Albums are presented in the UI (pretty much) as just predefined sort/group options.
Two tracks are considered to be part of the same album if:
- The Artist and Album fields match, the Album is a compilation… box is not checked and there is nothing in the Album Artist field.
- The Album Artist and Album fields match and the Album is a compilation… box is not checked.
- The Album fields match, the Album is a compilation… box is checked and there is nothing in the Album Artist field.
Note that the Album is a compilation… box is very important here. When it is checked, iTunes/Music ignores the Artist field and places the album in “Compilations” (for artist views) and at the end of the list (for song views sorted by album-artist).
Note also that Album Artist overrides Artist for this purpose. A particular value used for Artist will not put the track in the same album with a track that uses that value for Album Artist. In other words, if you have an album that uses Album Artist, all of the tracks in that album must use that field and have the same value.
For example, my rip of Starship Greatest Hits, contains 5 tracks by Jefferson Starship and 7 tracks by Starship. So for this album, the Artist field reflects the tracks’ artists (5 as Jefferson Starship and 7 as Starship), but all 12 tracks have the same value (Starship) for Album Artist, so they will group together as a single album that will sort with everything else by Starship:
The only other gotcha here is that there are “Sorting” versions of the Title, Album, Album Artist, Artist and Composer fields. These do not change the track’s appearance or grouping, but will affect the sort order when those fields are used for sorting. I typically use these fields so my songs/albums will sort by the artists’ last names. For example:
As for viewing your music collection, when you go to Songs view, you don’t need to see the list sorted by song title. Click the titles at the top of the list to change the sort order. And for some fields, click them a few times to see different options.
Of particular interest, click the top of the “Album” column and it will sort/group everything by Album. But if you click it again, it will change to “Album by Artist” - so the albums will be sorted by Artist (or Album Artist), and by Album within that. And if you click it again, it will change to “Album by Artist/Year” - sorting by Artist, and then by album-year (defined as the greatest year of all the album’s tracks, and then by Album within that (if two albums have the same year):
Notice how, in the above screen-shot, that Bruce Springsteen sorts as “Springsteen, Bruce” and how the Jefferson Starship tracks (part of the Starship Greatest Hits album) are grouped with the Starship tracks.
This becomes of particular interest with things like tribute albums, where you have many artists covering tracks originally written by a single band. I set the Album Artist to something related to the band that is being covered, so the tribute album sorts with the original artist. For instance, I gave the Genesis tribute album, Supper’s Ready an Album Artist of “Genesis Tribute”, causing it to sort immediately after Genesis’s albums:
Note that all the tracks on this album are from different artists.
I realize that this is not a perfect system and it is designed around popular music, but it’s not hard to work with once you understand what it is actually doing. This is why, for my classical albums, I put the composer in the Artist field and mention the conductor/orchestra in the Title or Album fields - so they will sort/group in what I consider a reasonable way:
I don’t think any of this is particularly “hard”, but iTunes/Music was designed around popular music. So it gets a bit awkward for classical music until you get used to what it wants.
As for audiobooks (language courses, etc.), Music is the wrong app altogether. You should be able to add them to the Books app’s library, if you want to use it, but it gives you minimal ability to customize metadata. But I would strongly recommend using a third-party app for this purpose.
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Streaming? I have Prime so I sometimes use Amazon Music. I listened to Abbey Road the other day. Disaster. The medley at the end was completely botched. Unlistenable. Does Apple Music get it right?
That’s kind of a problem endemic with digital streaming–I’m not sure if anybody gets it right.
For another perspective on streaming, check out this old NYT article (may be paywalled):
This problem is also encountered when digitizing vinyl LPs–the software used can handle making individual songs if there is the “normal” 4-6 second gap between tracks but for albums that have segues with no gaps, like virtually all of side 2 of Abbey Road, the results of digitization can be very disappointing. Likely my approach will be (as I’ve been deferring this action on my own digitization project) to render side 2 as one single track.
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If the software is the issue, then use something like Audacity to digitize. You can split the tracks after both sides have been recorded. It is a bit more work than some other programs, but when you split the tracks yourself, you can also do things like fade-outs if needed due to excess noise on a record.
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The one problem with running something like iTunes 10.7 CoverFlow in a VM is that the main part that I like, which is CoverFlow does not work due to a graphics issue although cover art displays fine in other modes. But like you say, progress is going to happen in any event so workarounds like using a VM or older computer are worth it if you still want or need to use older software.
Two things about the Music app:
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If Apple would allow me another way to get music that I curate in my Mac into my iphone, then I wouldn’t be so annoyed that Music is hard to use and buggy. But no, I MUST use Music, and I MUST have both phone and mac totally up to date on OS version, not even 1 version old on either side.
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If you search for any sort of help or information about the Music app, all you get is help for apple’s music streaming service, because they named the app Music instead of itunes. Stoopid branding/naming.
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I can only express my personal experience and feelings - the Music app is awful. Maybe it’s me but I find I’m constantly fighting (and swearing at it) when trying to do even the most basic things a music app should do. I hate it with a passion.
Clearly Apple and I ‘think different’.
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