11 posts tagged “itunes”

iTunes 7 has a cool new sort-by-album-by-year thing, whereby you can sort albums by year without using the year field. But it only happens in the main track list area, not in the browse lists, and if you have more than one release from the same band in the same year, it resorts to alphabetical order.

But! iTunes 7 also introduced the new Sort fields, whereby you can enter arbitrary strings to use when sorting by artist, album, and so on!

So I wrote this py-appscript script to fill in the Sort Album fields of all of my music with the year and then the album name. This makes the albums sort in chronological order everywhere, not just in the track list. So my browse lists, where I look for the album I want, is finally organized the way I think about music: by artist, then chronologically.

So the sort fields look like “1975 Fly By Night” and “1975 Caress of Steel”.

Ah, those albums came out in the same year. So I Get Info on the first track of an album, and add the release month to the sort album name: “1975/9 Caress of Steel”. Then, because you can’t multi-edit the sort fields for some dang reason, I right-click that track and choose the crazy command “Apply Sort Field, Same Album”. This changes all of the other album tracks to have the same Sort Album value.

Behold!

Not Alphabetical Anymore

Here’s the script to get it all started. Note that it can take a long while to run. It checks for stuff that looks like you’ve already added a month, so anything with a Sort Album starting with “4 numbers followed by a slash followed by 1 or 2 numbers followed by a space” won’t get changed. Oh, and you’ll need to install appscript, if you don’t have it yet. Vive le Python!

from appscript import *
import re
iTunes = app('/Applications/iTunes')

Library = iTunes.sources.library_playlists.get()[0][0]

total = Library.count(each=k.track)
i = 0

for oneTrack in Library.tracks.get():
    i += 1
    print "%s of %s: %s" % (i, total, oneTrack.name.get().encode('utf-8'))
    if not oneTrack.podcast.get() and not oneTrack.video_kind == k.none and not re.match(r'^\d{4}/\d{1,2}\s', oneTrack.sort_album.get()):
        sortAlbum = str(oneTrack.year.get()) + " " + oneTrack.album.get()
        oneTrack.sort_album.set(to=sortAlbum)

Hmm, that gets chopped off in my browser. If you are interested in the code, you should copypaste it into your favorite text editor so that you can see it all properly.

Sometimes I really love technology. This morning I woke up, realized that the new RUSH single is supposed to come out today, checked rush.com, clicked the iTunes link, clicked Buy, and plugged in my iPod. $.99 and about 2 minutes after I remembered that it existed, the first new RUSH music in 5 years is in my pocket.

When we were in junior high, a favorite pastime for my friend Ken and me was to put some discs in my brother's CD carousel and turn on the "Spiral" function (though Ken usually called it "Swirl"). It would play the first track from each disc, then the second track from each disc, and so on until all of the discs were over. It was a cool way to listen to several different albums, mixing them together but still keeping some of the feeling from the original track orders.

Just now I couldn't decide what to listen to, so I dropped two (very) different albums into a playlist and sorted by track number, then turned on cross-fading:

Swirl

Now I can listen to both of these albums woven together into one big insane masterpiece.

WWIII

KMFDM

レインボー7

モーニング娘。

What are your top 25 most played songs? 
Submitted by Cooxie.  

Jeez... Because I tend to listen to albums more than single tracks, my two top albums (both by YUKI) pretty much devoured all 25 slots. Last.fm and iTunes have some disagreement about my top 25, probably because some tracks I listen to on the iPod never make it to last.fm's stats, so this is from iTunes.

1. YUKI - Good Times
2. YUKI - Stand Up! Sister
3. YUKI - Strawberry
4. YUKI - Nakisou Da
5. YUKI - Sentimental Journey
6. YUKI - Walking on the skyline
7. YUKI - Rock 'n' Roll Star
8. YUKI - Hummingbird
9. YUKI - Funky Fruits
10. YUKI - JOY
11. YUKI - AIR WAVE
12. YUKI - Maiagare
13. YUKI - Sweet Seventeen
14. YUKI - Koibito Yo
15. YUKI - Communication
16. YUKI - WAGON
17. YUKI - Tinkerbell
18. YUKI - Cider
19. YUKI - Kiss wo Shiyou yo
20. Yaida Hitomi - Nanairo Pierrot
21. YUKI - Aishiaeba
22. YUKI - Sabaku ni Saita Hana
23. YUKI - Brake wa No
24. Tokyo Jihen - Genjitsu wo Warau
25. Yaida Hitomi - Tsuki wo Miteita

Fascinating, I'm sure.

I was very excited about the new album art and CoverFlow views in iTunes 7, because they finally let us browse our collections visually, the way H.R. Giger and Roger Dean intended. But:

• When playing music from a connected iPod, these views are disabled. Why? I can view the album artwork on each track, so it's clearly available. This is the main way I use iTunes now, because it's the best way to use one library on several machines. So I might as well not have these views at all.
• That navigating to an album in the CoverFlow view doesn't actually select the album is more and more frustrating. If you're planning to listen to the album straight through, you shouldn't have to hit stop at the very moment the album ends in order to avoid it going on to the next album in the library. If shuffle is turned on, navigating to an album and hitting play just gets you the first song followed by some dang thing somewhere else in your library.
• If you navigate to an album in CoverFlow view and hit play, it doesn't play the album. Instead it just continues playing whatever you had selected before. You have to double-click the album cover.
• The CoverFlow view has no concept of focus on either the covers or the song list, so the left and right arrows never mean previous and next song; they always mean previous and next album cover.
• Album covers take a long time to move into position, and until they finish out that animation, you still have some old thing selected. So clicking an album cover and immediately hitting Return to start playing just moves you back to what you previously had selected and plays that instead.
• Cover art takes a long time to load. In CoverFlow, we got the joy of flipping through our music collections. In iTunes, we have the pain of flipping to a big line of blank albums, waiting for them to load, flipping to another line of blank albums, waiting for them to load again, and so on.
• Every single track without an artist tag or without an album tag appears as an individual blank album cover in CoverFlow.

If I can't go to Apple for an excellent user interface in my media player, where can I go?

iTunes 7

Goodness:

• The video controls appear as a nice overlay in the video window. No more going to Preferences to watch something full-screen.
• When you close the video window, the video stops playing. It used to move to the lower left corner of the main window and keep playing there, which is not at all what I want a video to do when I close it.
• CoverFlow, the cool 3D music library browser that inspired the OmniDazzle interface, is integrated into iTunes as a new view.
• There's also a nice new view that shows album art side by side with the tracks.
• The source list on the left is sensibly divided up into Library, Store, Devices, Shared, and Playlists, instead of the big mess it used to be.
• The new iPod management interface is really cute, with all of your iPod-related stuff in the main window instead of hidden in preferences, firmware updates available within iTunes, and a cool graph of how your iPod's space is being used up.
• edit: Gapless playback!! Man, it's about time!! So many great segues (The Talking Drum into Larks' Tongues In Aspic Part Two comes to mind) were ruined for so long...
  

• The new thingy for synchronizing music between computers via the iPod only works for music purchased from the iTunes Store, not stuff you ripped from your own CDs. That would have been genius if it could have kept my whole library in sync between my work machine, my MacBook, and my mini.
• Selecting an album in the CoverFlow view or the grouped-with-art view doesn't actually select that abum; it just moves you to that album in the huge library list. So you can't, say, go to an album and then select all tracks and do something to them, or select an album to listen to without it going on to the next album when that one is over.
  
• Failure to find album art is totally silent. If it can't get the art, it just does nothing.
  
• Bugs... My menus turned a weird translucent blue, all tracks from unknown albums get listed separately in the album views, the CoverFlow view's scroller can get mushy-looking, and I've already had a crash.
  

Today I modified the top albums script to calculate my favorite artists. The algorithm is about as simple as before: just (play count * rating * duration) for each song, compiled by artist. The top 50 or so results feel pretty good, but again, musicians I've liked for many years (Rush, Pearl Jam, Peter Gabriel) get unfairly penalized for my having listened to them a lot back before iTunes. Before I added the duration multiplier, artists like King Crimson were getting punished for tending to write long songs. Who are your favorite artists?

#1. clammbon (889800)
#2. YUKI (569140)
#3. Rush (441060)
#4. 矢井田瞳 (402700)
#5. Pizzicato Five (387200)
#6. モーニング娘。 (180940)
#7. Pearl Jam (179100)
#8. King Crimson (159100)
#9. 椎名林檎 (144900)
#10. 東京事変 (130700)
#11. 原田郁子 (119360)
#12. Qypthone (117960)
#13. Peter Gabriel (93800)
#14. Oingo Boingo (81120)
#15. KMFDM (75960)
#16. Stereolab (65380)
#17. Björk (62680)
#18. Squarepusher (60720)
#19. ハナレグミ (59960)
#20. Wir sind Helden (59320)
#21. Beady Belle (57260)
#22. Underworld (55480)
#23. Yes (51420)
#24. Def Tech (41960)
#25. ohana (40880)
#26. The Planet Smashers (40760)
#27. Itchyworms! (35040)
#28. Primus (32840)
#29. Genesis (32400)
#30. Arling & Cameron (32200)
#31. Danny Elfman (31700)
#32. orange pekoe (31580)
#33. 篠原ともえ (29800)
#34. Aphex Twin (29120)
#35. They Might Be Giants (28880)
#36. Cocteau Twins (27380)
#37. Matthew Herbert (25120)
#38. Mogwai (22440)
#39. hi-posi (22120)
#40. Basement Jaxx (21880)
#41. Tom 7 (21800)
#42. Daft Punk (21680)
#43. 元ちとせ (20340)
#44. Favorite Blue (19700)
#45. Cornelius (19620)
#46. Hiromi (18780)
#47. Takako Minekawa (18740)
#48. Barenaked Ladies (18400)
#49. Emerson, Lake & Palmer (17220)
#50. David Bowie (16920)

I finished my Python version of Ryan's top 100 albums script. I forewent the log(album.age) bit, because my iTunes library is already unfairly biased against music I listened the heck out of before iTunes was invented. The results seemed pretty accurate, save for a few oddities like Chonan Kan and Xeno-pittan... I went back and required that an album have at least 4 songs to be included in the list. I think it's pretty accurate, at least for the first 20-25. The best piece of information I got from this is that I need to listen to music more often, and that I need to finish rating my library.

#1. YUKI: COMMUNE (5195)
#2. YUKI: joy (4495)
#3. 矢井田瞳: Here today-gone tomorrow (3469)
#4. 東京事変: 教育 (3095)
#5. 矢井田瞳: Air/Cook/Sky (2996)
#6. clammbon: ドラマチック (2818)
#7. clammbon: imagination (2791)
#8. 原田郁子: ピアノ (2560)
#9. YUKI: PRISMIC (2486)
#10. clammbon: まちわび まちさび (2478)
#11. clammbon: てん、 [stereo] (2373)
#12. clammbon: てん、 [mono] (2280)
#13. Qypthone: Montuno No.5 (2078)
#14. clammbon: id (1983)
#15. clammbon: JP (1972)
#16. 矢井田瞳: daiya-monde (1536)
#17. モーニング娘。: 愛の第6感 (1421)
#18. Rush: Presto (1354)
#19. ハナレグミ: 日々のあわ (1132)
#20. 矢井田瞳: Candlize (1112)
#21. Rush: Vapor Trails (1101)
#22. モーニング娘。: No.5 (1075)
#23. Wir sind Helden: Die Reklamation (1043)
#24. The Planet Smashers: The Planet Smashers (1040)
#25. 椎名林檎: 無罪モラトリアム (1025)
#26. [Compilation]: 「ことばのパズル ぜのぴったん」挿入歌 (950)
#27. 椎名林檎: 勝訴ストリップ (887)
#28. Rush: Grace Under Pressure (885)
#29. Pizzicato Five: ROMANTIQUE'96 (882)
#30. Danny Elfman: So-Lo (877)
#31. Rush: Signals (792)
#32. Rush: Counterparts (790)
#33. Rush: Power Windows (770)
#34. Pearl Jam: Yield (770)
#35. Pizzicato Five: The International Playboy & Playgirl Record (770)
#36. 椎名林檎: 加爾基 精液 栗ノ花 (763)
#37. Rush: Moving Pictures (745)
#38. Pearl Jam: Binaural (726)
#39. ohana: オハナ百景 (714)
#40. Pizzicato Five: SOFT LANDING ON THE MOON (714)
#41. Peter Gabriel: Peter Gabriel II (623)
#42. Pearl Jam: Riot Act (617)
#43. Pearl Jam: No Code (616)
#44. Tom 7: Fake Mars (594)
#45. Pizzicato Five: Bellissima! (588)
#46. Pearl Jam: Vs. (581)
#47. Rush: Roll The Bones (578)
#48. Pizzicato Five: Overdose (578)
#49. Oingo Boingo: Dark At The End Of The Tunnel (576)
#50. Beady Belle: Closer (573)
#51. 篠原ともえ: スーパーモデル (573)
#52. Itchyworms!: Little Monsters Under Your Bed (562)
#53. Beady Belle: Cewbeagappic (555)
#54. Rush: Hold Your Fire (548)
#55. Rush: 2112 (533)
#56. 矢井田瞳: i/flancy (527)
#57. Peter Gabriel: Up (524)
#58. Affections Else: The Coroner's Monologue (524)
#59. clammbon: Re-clammbon (517)
#60. King Crimson: The Power To Believe (505)
#61. Björk: Medúlla (501)
#62. Squarepusher: Ultravisitor (494)
#63. Pizzicato Five: This Year's Girl (488)
#64. Pizzicato Five: BOSSA NOVA 2001 (481)
#65. 元ちとせ: ハイヌミカゼ (470)
#66. Stereolab: Dots And Loops (468)
#67. Rush: Test For Echo (467)
#68. Rush: Permanent Waves (466)
#69. モーニング娘。: 4th「いきまっしょい!」 (453)
#70. Pizzicato Five: Happy End of the World (449)
#71. Peter Gabriel: Peter Gabriel III (448)
#72. Takako Minekawa: roomic cube～a tiny room exhibition (435)
#73. Wir sind Helden: Von hier an blind (421)
#74. Def Tech: Catch The Wave SIDE A (412)
#75. Underworld: Everything, Everything (410)
#76. Qypthone: Episode I　-Qypthone Early Complete- (402)
#77. Stereolab: Margerine Eclipse (396)
#78. 矢井田瞳: U.K. Completion (390)
#79. モーニング娘。: セカンドモーニング (385)
#80. Oingo Boingo: Nothing To Fear (384)
#81. Arling & Cameron: We Are A & C (374)
#82. Pizzicato Five: By Her Majesty's Request (364)
#83. King Crimson: In The Wake Of Poseidon (360)
#84. Lisa Loeb & Nine Stories: Tails (353)
#85. King Crimson: Beat (350)
#86. Rush: A Farewell To Kings (350)
#87. Underworld: Beaucoup Fish (349)
#88. 東京事変: Adult (345)
#89. Pizzicato Five: couples (338)
#90. KMFDM: ATTAK (332)
#91. Pearl Jam: Vitalogy (331)
#92. Matthew Herbert: Plat Du Jour (327)
#93. Def Tech: Def Tech (326)
#94. King Crimson: Starless And Bible Black (325)
#95. King Crimson: Three Of A Perfect Pair (313)
#96. 椎名林檎: 唄ひ手冥利～其ノ壱～ (312)
#97. Rush: Caress Of Steel (304)
#98. Stereolab: Emperor Tomato Ketchup (301)
#99. Cocteau Twins: Heaven or Las Vegas (300)
#100. MC Frontalot: Nerdcore Hiphop (demo) (285)