iTunes version 12 birthing problems (esp. "lost" files)

[mhschmieder]

How did iTunes v12 assert itself onto my computer, when I have auto-updates turned off?

I knew something was up when I saw the red vs. blue icon in my dock today.

When I opened it up, it couldn't find over 1000 "songs" in my library.

At first, I thought it was just the two on-line purchases I have made over the years (I do not buy music on-line), which were the Mozart collection (99 "songs") and the 24 Hours of Classical Music collection (almost 400 "songs"). So I searched for my iTunes Store login info, as I never use it but was forced to register in order to be eligible for general software updates in the App Store, or something like that. It then showed my purchases but said they are not "authorized" on my computer.

I wouldn't really care so much, as most of them aren't the greatest performance, but it was a cheap way to get some placeholder recordings of a lot of stuff.

I am building up to the worst problems, so please be patient. I am presenting problems in the order to how likely they are to affect the most people here, which is the inverse of how much they affect me personally.

So, next up was a visit to my Playlists, which I use exclusively for music I am producing as well as music I am practicing for gigs. For my jazz group, quite a bit of the music was GONE.

At this point, I was in a bit of a panic, so booted up my most recent backup drive to see if I could find the "songs" on that drive. It then became clear that it was a matter of the new version of iTunes not being able to reconcile the difference between Artist and Album Artist, as well as difficulty with Unicode characters (or at least UTF-8 or anything not in standard US-ASCII).

What this means is that the lost "songs" fall into these main categories:

1. Artist and Album Artist do not match -- most frequent with classical and compilations
2. Artist Name has accents (e.g. almost any French composer), hyphens, umlauts, etc.
3. Material was originally downloaded from the internet vs. uploaded from CD and is "unauthorized" all of a sudden

Given that in many cases entire albums got "lost", it would be oh so nice if we could select groups of tracks and locate their on-disc files, but we have to do it all one-by-one.

So, I spent over two hours taking care of almost everything other than the two classical compilations mentioned above, and a recording of Mozart's Figaro that would probably take me an hour to do one track at a time and thus is easier just to re-upload.

Fatigued at this point, I hadn't the energy to keep locating files for the large compilations, so uploaded a new CD to see if anything goes awry.

The first thing I do after I upload a CD is to transfer as much of the liner notes as interest me for that album, since no one has ever digitized that stuff. Primarily, I like to keep track of who played, and what instruments. I insert this info in the "Notes" field.

Uh-oh, looks like someone in an office somewhere had a better idea, so the "Notes" field has gone ZAPPO and NO LONGER EXISTS!!!! This represents hundreds of hours of work lost at my end over the years. To me, this is the worst of the sins of v12 --e specially as there was no warning that they had changed the library format for the metadata.

Oh, the interface is entirely different as well, and just as with v11, you may find it takes awhile to get back your preferred views of your music library.

I had been meaning for some time to look into current alternatives to iTunes, and now this emergency will force me to do this sooner than later.

To me, the biggest point is the trust factor. If Apple feels they can just arbitrarily change things in a way that cause people to lose data, we have no idea what's ahead that could be even worse. Something akin to when e-books got deleted from people's e-readers even though they had paid for them.

It would be somewhat different if I bought music on-line, due to all the contractual stuff where you don't "own" the music, but I don't. My iTunes library primarily consists of music I have made myself, and uploads of my jazz and classical collections as well as some rock, as I no longer own a hi fi system so have to upload to my computer to play musical recordings anymore.

[BKK-OZ]

Ouch.
Hasn't installed itself on my 'puter, so not sure how that happened to you.

Is there any chance that there are libraries from 11+ still somewhere on your machine? If so, you might be able to deprecate to 11.

What about Time Machine?

[mikehalloran]

I don't like the new look nor do I care for the way it's trying to shove iTunes Radio down my throat. In fact, if I could go back to iTunes 10, I would. 12 installs automatically with Yosemite or pushes it immediately after.

That being said, I am not having any of the problems you are having. It is a pain to do what was so easy in 10 and earlier but as I figure it out, it's working for me.

[stubbsonic]

I always go kicking and screaming into new iTunes updates. And I'm feeling pretty sure I'm going to avoid this one as long as possible. This text from the description in the App Store/Updates set off alarm bells for me. I can't imaging hating an idea more than this...


"Seemless browsing between Store and Library. The iTunes Store is now a part of the music, movies or TV shows views of your library -- making it simple to jump between your personal collection and what's new for each category in the store."

I guess some people don't mind feeling constant pressure to buy things. This kind of $h!t makes me want to delete iTunes and find some other way to download podcasts. I guess that is doable.

[mikehalloran]

I will be surprised if the OS allows you to delete it.

[stubbsonic]

Yea. And I really wouldn't because I have an iPad which sort of locks me into that world for the time being.

But perhaps when I am finally coerced into iTunes 12, I can at least shift some of the responsibilities of iTunes to other apps; like podcast downloads, audio file management, format conversion, and CD burning. And only use iTunes for managing iPad apps & files, and purchasing the occasional album.

Not to wander off-topic, but this feels like a cultural shift. I feel like I'm in a "dying" generation of people who like a tasteful veil between commerce & art. Apple seems to cater to a younger generation to whom such a sentiment is gibberish.

[billf]

I had been meaning for some time to look into current alternatives to iTunes, and now this emergency will force me to do this sooner than later.

There are some recommendations on this thread. I'm going to do the same as you and investigate alternatives. iTunes 12 is a joke.

http://www.head-fi.org/t/539740/mac-os- ... -to-itunes

ETA: looking at the list on the thread linked above, I think I will check out Swinsian. I like the fact that is described as an iTunes replacement.

[MIDI Life Crisis]

Cosmetics aside, the only issue I've had so far is that I don't need to verify purchases as before. I click buy and it just does it. Not so on the iPhone, but on the Mac Pro. Not sure how to get that back to a more secure place...

[bayswater]

Cosmetics aside, the only issue I've had so far is that I don't need to verify purchases as before. I click buy and it just does it. Not so on the iPhone, but on the Mac Pro. Not sure how to get that back to a more secure place...

That's a revenue enhancement feature.

[MIDI Life Crisis]

That's a revenue enhancement feature.

No doubt. I had family sharing on but turned it off. I'll see if the next purchase is as "easy."

[stubbsonic]

ETA: looking at the list on the thread linked above, I think I will check out Swinsian. I like the fact that is described as an iTunes replacement.

I just looked at it. Looks cool for most audio playback functions. It does mention that if you are sync'ing iOS devices, you'll still need to use iTunes. Otherwise, it does look good.

[Dan Worley]

I forget which version screwed it up (probably 10), but iTunes confuses the heck out of me now. I used to get around quickly and easily in it, now I don't know where I am when I try to use it. Not a good design, as far as I'm concerned.

[cuttime]

Yes to all the above, although I haven't lost any material. Getting the sidebar back with playlists takes three steps as far as I can tell:
Music>Playlists>My Music. And it doesn't always stick. It took a good thirty minutes to figure it all out, and the Help menu was pretty much worthless. I'm no newbie to Apple products, but what would this do to a new user? Send them back to the Windows world? All of Apple's latest developments (RE: iCloud Drive discussion) have led to some significant non-intuitive head scratching lately.

[bayswater]

Yes to all the above, although I haven't lost any material. Getting the sidebar back with playlists takes three steps as far as I can tell:
Music>Playlists>My Music. And it doesn't always stick. It took a good thirty minutes to figure it all out, and the Help menu was pretty much worthless. I'm no newbie to Apple products, but what would this do to a new user? Send them back to the Windows world? All of Apple's latest developments (RE: iCloud Drive discussion) have led to some significant non-intuitive head scratching lately.

Yes, there is something wrong with the display. On first launch there is no reference at all to playlists except at the top, and if you click on that it shows you albums. To get your playlists to show up, go to File>New>Playlist. All your old Playlists, and the Sidebar that should be there already will show up. Now when you click on Playlists at the top, the albums will show up, but so will your Playlists in the sidebar.

Very intuitive. Not. I haven't found any Apple written Mac software to be intuitive for quite a while. Or Windows written for that matter. It's like a memo went out explaining a whole new concept in software design, and I didn't get a copy.

[mikehalloran]

On first launch there is no reference at all to playlists except at the top, and if you click on that it shows you albums. To get your playlists to show up, go to File>New>Playlist. All your old Playlists, and the Sidebar that should be there already will show up. Now when you click on Playlists at the top, the albums will show up, but so will your Playlists in the sidebar.

Wow, thanks for that tip.

I didn't do that. In fact I don't know how I got mine to show the first time but, somehow, I got there.

Once I got my playlists to show up, I am finding that I like 12 a lot more than I liked 11. It's more like 9 in many ways.

Everything just shows up in my play lists now, even a few YouTube videos that I saved a long time ago plus all of the interviews (voice memos) I recorded on my iPhone for the book I am writing.

The more I get into it, the more I like it. This version isn't so bad at all.

I had installed it on Oct. 17. There was an update to 12.0.1 on 10/19.