Looks like iTunes Match finally bumped to 100K. No announcement AFAIK, but they matched thousands of my songs yesterday that pout me way over the limit. Not it is working through the uploads....I think, iTunes is not really keen on sharing what it is doing.
At this point, I think you have to consider the possibility that you are not who you claim to be.
I would def reinstall...Doesn't really take that long, even. Have you tried checking whether there might be another new update? Too, I wonder if it could be something in Windows, rather than iTunes
This was re the issue of iTunes treating it like a new install every time I open the program and resetting all my settings, including in particular the all-important "shuffle by albums" setting getting removed.
I finally found time to do a clean reinstall. Followed the online instructions, cleared out iTunes, did this to coincide with a new version, so installed the new version....no result. It still loses the settings every time I quit.
And while I am on my quarterly rant about iTunes, my biggest beef is still that "shuffle by albums" does not even really work. Sure, it fills a playlist mostly with albums, but then it fills up the remaining space with single tracks. This is a big deal because:
1. I don't like starting an album while walking to work, especially in the cold, and discovering eight minutes down the road it only had one or two tracks. 2. I don't like starting an album and sitting down on the sofa with a glass of wine and having to get up three minutes later because it only had one track. 3. Because of various specific variations on 1 and 2 above, I don't like having my ipod slowly fill with one-track albums. I just spent my bi-monthly half hour manually cleaning up all my playlists to remove incomplete albums and have them repopulate with complete ones. So this sucks up time. 4. My playlist rotations include a last played and play count criterion. When iTunes syncs partial albums and I mistakenly play them, parts of the album end up in different "eras" (tracks within the album have different play counts and last played dates) in the playlist algorithm and then the whole album will not populate the next time, so the problem compounds over time. 5. All those tracks that are less than a minute end up more or less permanently on my ipod. There is a Tetsu Inoue track that is 8 seconds - it gets synced every time I sync. An I have lost count of how many times I have manually removed the 'Spoken Introduction' from Bill Evans, At the Village Vanguard.
I have probably said all this before. I know I am weird because I listen to whole albums and that is not a thing any more. But I can't be the only one. What bugs me is that the code is clearly already present to identify all the tracks that belong to an album. How much work would it have been to add a line or two that specify not syncing a track unless the album is complete, and giving an option to not fill up the playlist space if another album won't fit? (It already knows not to add another track if there is not enough space).
I am getting close to ready to seriously look at an alternative, or even go back to manual syncing. Do any of the alternatives to iTunes that will sync with an iPod do any better at this? And will they correctly record play counts?
When you say "manual syncing", you mean manually populating a synced playlist, right? Also, I use "checked only" criteria in most of my playlists, and uncheck tracks I never want synced, like "spoken introductions" (or unpalatable tracks I want to keep for reference).
Yes, I mean manually choosing what to sync so that no tracks are automatically added. I have unchecked some things, but I don't want to be blackmailed by the software into unchecking all the short tracks, because then once more I have arbitrarily incomplete albums. The short tracks are not necessarily annoying in themselves, just when they are the only track synced.
GP - I'll email your comments re iTunes to my daughter-in-law, who works in Apple's UK office. At the moment she's working on a project to do with films/video, but sits next to someone dealing with iTunes music. It'll probably only get added to the general mix, but might hit the right person eventually.
@rostasi, I'll check that out, but it looks similar to an app I already have. It seems to address the issue after the music is on the iPod rather than the syncing issue.
@greg, thanks, I'll expect the new feature in iTunes soon :-).
So, got the pop-up that there was a new version. Thought I took the option to ignore this update, so I could delay it as I was busy and like to check there are no issues before updating. However it installed it anyway, probably as part of the El Capitan update, but...
Latest update, 12.4, on the Mac claims
Library and Playlists. Use Sidebar to view your Library in new ways. Drag and drop songs to easily add them to Playlists. And Edit Sidebar to only show your favorite views. Menus. Menus in iTunes are now simpler and easier to use. Use the View menu to customize your Library or try context menus to act on specific items.
Not sure about viewing in 'new ways', probably best described as 'worse ways'. The icons/buttons to move between library sections (different media kinds) have gone, to be replaced by a drop down list.
Also gone is the recently added section at the top of album view (it was probably elsewhere).
Drag and drop for adding to playlists is not new, neither is editing the sidebar.
Menus are no easier, just have a few of useful options removed.
So, yet another set of interface changes simply for the sake of it. Probably best to be avoided, if you can. Just spotted that this version claims to correct the problem with deleting users collections reported elsewhere...
I think 12.4 improves on poor interface choices of the previous one. A prime example - the pulldown menu to switch between album/song view was terrible - clearly better to have them immediately clickable on the left. 'Recently Added' isn't gone, just separate, in the same list at the top left.
Yes, noticed that - it's also mentioned on the Apple support forums.
I saw 'Recently Added' in the side bar. The only thing I can say is that they have a very strange concept of recent, as it shows items added over the last year. As I have my own 'Recently Added' smart playlist that lists just the last month's addition, it's not really a problem. But, it was nice how they were before, so you didn't need to go searching for them.
So I finally upgraded to 12.4 today. It took an hour and a half - first attempt corrupted something during install then it would neither install nor uninstall nor let me delete the folder. Ran a Windows system restore which got me to the point of being able to rename the old iTunes folder, which allowed a new install...fun, as usual.
My 10c on the new interface: Of the six navigation text-buttons at the top of the main window, we are now down to only one that I actually use. At least the menu bar seems to be sticking so far, which is an improvement.
That thing I had for the last several versions where the preferences would not save between sessions seems fixed now. Not sure if that is because they fixed it or because the installation fiasco messed up whatever was messed up sufficiently to rectify it. Good news though.
Probably I'm the only one who would notice (still the best source I know of for a wide but intelligent selection of the latest jazz releases), but the iTunes music store is completely F'd up. Menus scrambled, links that go other places, page spilling off the side of the monitor. At least on my Win7 computer...Maybe it works on touch screens. This malfunction would have been a big deal once, not too long ago
Was at a friend's house talking about podcasts, and they were not there, on the newest version. For the casual user to find...impossible....I did find them, finally.
You're totally correct about the store being hosed.
I didn't pay much attention at first to the latest version of iTunes deciding to increase the size of all the cover art, except to think "huh, pretty, I guess." Now I am finding I have quite a few albums with cover art in resolutions that show up all fuzzy and pixelated in the new views. Annoying. I just replaced some cover art outside iTunes using Mp3tag. Back in iTunes, if I go to get info and select cover art, the new art shows up nice and clear. But in the actual browsing views the old fuzzy art still shows, even though I removed it (and in one case even though it was a different picture altogether). Anyone know a way of persuading iTunes to refresh its artwork display?
Yikes. This kind of thing is why I don't update my main music computer unless absolutely necessary. Think I'll go duplicate back up my Library files...
Comments
I finally found time to do a clean reinstall. Followed the online instructions, cleared out iTunes, did this to coincide with a new version, so installed the new version....no result. It still loses the settings every time I quit.
1. I don't like starting an album while walking to work, especially in the cold, and discovering eight minutes down the road it only had one or two tracks.
2. I don't like starting an album and sitting down on the sofa with a glass of wine and having to get up three minutes later because it only had one track.
3. Because of various specific variations on 1 and 2 above, I don't like having my ipod slowly fill with one-track albums. I just spent my bi-monthly half hour manually cleaning up all my playlists to remove incomplete albums and have them repopulate with complete ones. So this sucks up time.
4. My playlist rotations include a last played and play count criterion. When iTunes syncs partial albums and I mistakenly play them, parts of the album end up in different "eras" (tracks within the album have different play counts and last played dates) in the playlist algorithm and then the whole album will not populate the next time, so the problem compounds over time.
5. All those tracks that are less than a minute end up more or less permanently on my ipod. There is a Tetsu Inoue track that is 8 seconds - it gets synced every time I sync. An I have lost count of how many times I have manually removed the 'Spoken Introduction' from Bill Evans, At the Village Vanguard.
I have probably said all this before. I know I am weird because I listen to whole albums and that is not a thing any more. But I can't be the only one. What bugs me is that the code is clearly already present to identify all the tracks that belong to an album. How much work would it have been to add a line or two that specify not syncing a track unless the album is complete, and giving an option to not fill up the playlist space if another album won't fit? (It already knows not to add another track if there is not enough space).
I am getting close to ready to seriously look at an alternative, or even go back to manual syncing. Do any of the alternatives to iTunes that will sync with an iPod do any better at this? And will they correctly record play counts?
@greg, thanks, I'll expect the new feature in iTunes soon :-).
Latest update, 12.4, on the Mac claims
Not sure about viewing in 'new ways', probably best described as 'worse ways'. The icons/buttons to move between library sections (different media kinds) have gone, to be replaced by a drop down list.
Also gone is the recently added section at the top of album view (it was probably elsewhere).
Drag and drop for adding to playlists is not new, neither is editing the sidebar.
Menus are no easier, just have a few of useful options removed.
So, yet another set of interface changes simply for the sake of it. Probably best to be avoided, if you can. Just spotted that this version claims to correct the problem with deleting users collections reported elsewhere...
Craig
I saw 'Recently Added' in the side bar. The only thing I can say is that they have a very strange concept of recent, as it shows items added over the last year. As I have my own 'Recently Added' smart playlist that lists just the last month's addition, it's not really a problem. But, it was nice how they were before, so you didn't need to go searching for them.
My 10c on the new interface: Of the six navigation text-buttons at the top of the main window, we are now down to only one that I actually use. At least the menu bar seems to be sticking so far, which is an improvement.
I'm in 9.2.1 which is from 6 years ago. Thanks!
This is how mine looks fully updated. It's not that different.
Craig
I'm still on 10.7.0.21. Using cover flow.
Was at a friend's house talking about podcasts, and they were not there, on the newest version. For the casual user to find...impossible....I did find them, finally.
You're totally correct about the store being hosed.
I just replaced some cover art outside iTunes using Mp3tag. Back in iTunes, if I go to get info and select cover art, the new art shows up nice and clear. But in the actual browsing views the old fuzzy art still shows, even though I removed it (and in one case even though it was a different picture altogether). Anyone know a way of persuading iTunes to refresh its artwork display?