So I downloaded and installed iTunes 7 last week, plugged in my iPod Nano, and I saw the strangest thing: all of my music had disappeared. It was there in iTunes 6, but not so much anymore. 4GB — 700 songs (that 1000 songs is a 128k joke) — had simply vanished. Gone like Kahoutek.
Except of course, it wasn’t: according to the space indicator, it was all still there, taking up room on the Nano’s hard drive. I had 3.72GB of something taking up space on my , it’s just that neither iTunes nor my Nano could find it. This, BTW, is exactly one of my fears about the already infamous Zune “three days / three plays” issue: the music stays on your hard drive, but is forever inaccessible.
So I said frack that, and restored the iPod, figuring that I would just start from scratch. After determining that it was all clear, I did what I’ve always done: used Windows Explorer to drag a file directly to the iPod window in iTunes, only, unlike every single other time in the last year I’ve owned the Nano, it didn’t show up. Oh sure, it took space, but wasn’t seeable as a song. Gee thanks!
I did a little bit of experimenting. It seems that — for whatever reason — iTunes 7 will not allow me to add songs from my file system directly to the Nano. In order to get music it would actually recognize as music, I had to create a playlist in iTunes, add the songs to that playlist, and then subsequently add the songs from that playlist to my Nano. This is double work, and not my preferred method of managing my music.
Here’s the thing: I have a lot of songs, and I listen to a different subset of songs at home, at work, while jogging and in my car. Different places, different purposes, different playback devices. So, what I like to do is to put all of my songs into a file system, and then direct those songs to my various playback devices. Each playback device has a different configuration of songs, suiting the purposes to which I put it. It might seem overly complicated — as a matter of fact, it is overly complicated — but this is what works for me. So why am I now forced to create and manage an iTunes playlist in order to update my Nano? Why won’t iTunes 7 play nice with Windows Explorer?
This is exactly the type of crap that everybody hates Microsoft for: programs that force the user to take a certain path towards their goal.
I realize that there might be some kind of setting I need to reset. Sure that would help, but on a larger scale, that just makes it worse: nothing more frustrating than an “upgrade” that messes up all of your previous settings. This is far less of what I would expect from Apple and far more of what I would expect from Prism DuroSport.
if you actuallly learnt what iTunes can do for you, how smart those smart playlists can be etc, you might realise that what your goals can be achieved without your overcomplicated scheme…
Not likely. The iPod isn’t my only music player, and iTunes is pretty much worthless with the other ones.
Also, I like to keep my actual music itself agnostic of any playback device. Which is why the first thing I do when I buy anything from the iTunes store is set it free via burning and ripping.
I hate the fact that iTunes still can’t automatically scan a specified drive or directory for new files. Seriously, how hard is that?? Every other music manager has the ability to do that.
I was initially excited about the cover art feature of iTunes 7. Turns out iTunes doesn’t have covers for most of the music I listen too. Someone needs to create a plugin that grabs covers from eMusic.
Also, Jim – you should look into Anapod.
http://www.redchairsoftware.com/anapod/
kirk- just grab the cover off the emusic page and drop it on yr. dsktop-
they are 155x155pxls then drop em in yr. itunes
if you want it semi-automated get coverfinder it’s like 25 bucks but you can search amazon, google images and itunes store pick the cover you like (or any image) and load it in w/o ever leaving itunes
you can force itunes to fill the covers but apple will keep a record of the songs in your library.
anapod is the answer for jims probs…
All you had to do was click on the little arrow/triangle to the left of the iPod icon, on the “Source” list at left. That would have opened up to show you a list of options, like “Music”, any playlists you may have in your iPod, etc. That took me about seven seconds to figure out.
Seriously. One would think that someone with enough computer savvy to work an iPod would recognize the triangle to the left of its icon as an indication that there is a menu under there.
Oh, and cheers for an otherwise excellent site. I discovered you the other day through boingboing and thoroughly enjoy reading your articles.
Serge,
Please give me *some* credit. Of course I did that. First thing. And you know it showed me when I selected the “Music” view? Nothing. No songs whatsoever.
Because every single music file had been put on that iPod via Windows Explorer as opposed to through an iTunes playlist. So, suddenly, it didn’t exist anymore.
Which is my point: why are they now forcing me to use their playlists when I’ve not previously had to?
On the other hand, thanks for the nice words about our site!!
kdc – Yes, I’ve tried dropping a few eMusic images directly into iTunes and that works (on the Mac I don’t even to drop them onto the desktop first). The problem is that I’ve been an eMusic subscriber forever and I have A LOT of eMusic files in my library.
I’ll take a look at coverfinder – thanks for the tip.
Alright. Sorry I jumped the gun, Jim.
Personally, I think that sucks. I, for one, use iTunes for all my music managing needs, and so I’ve never tried dropping files from the Finder straight into the iPod. Much easier for me to just drop it from the Library within iTunes. (In fact, I don’t even know if the problem you’re having when using Windows Explorer happens with the Finder in OS X as well.) But for people who prefer other music management software (and, of course, there is a ton of far better ones than iTunes out there), this is Apple just being a bully.
Another thing I’m not completely happy with is the “cover browsing thingy”. It’s pretty choppy on my iMac G5 (2 GHz, 2 GB RAM), and its behaviour is annoyingly uncustomizable. Not that I’m a champion for all-out customization of every little detail, mind you. But the way it works is: if there’s a song playing, it’ll show that song’s album cover by default, and if I select something else for whatever reason, it’ll jump to that song’s album cover. The problem: after a few seconds, it’ll jump straight back to the cover of the song that is still playing. Combine this with a choppy effect, and a feature that was supposed to be awesome eye-candy turns into a major turn-off.
Of course, one doesn’t really *need* the damn “cover browsing thingy”, but if they’re gonna do it, they might as well do it right. Not that I want it to run flawlessly on any machine, but at least let me customize its behaviour, so that I can tell it to stay put either on the song being played, or on the song that is selected, and thus cut down on the processing power needed to switch back and forth from one album cover to another every few seconds. (This, btw, is the way the original album cover viewer at the bottom left works: you can set it to display the cover art for the song being played, or for the song that is currently selected. Apple should take a hint from it’s own interface.)
Ok, I’ll stop writing now.
[Yawn] Once again, I have no real complaints. It all seems to work for fine. Like the cover art, bit of a resource hog. Love the new graphics, the status screen, etc. Things like importing new music via the File/Import method works for me pretty easily. Manual is best!
But I also think it all works for me because I keep it all relatively simple. CD=rip. iTunes=download. Storage=backup on CDs/DVDs, hard drive/Oboe. Playback via iPods/air tunes. No big blinky things for me.
The other key is Senuti. Once it’s on your iPod you can rip it back to your computer, or any computer. Easy peasy.
Wow, I was searching for people who had that same problem. It’s nice to know I’m not the only one whose library got eaten by iTunes7.
And I was using their playlists. That’s why I’m irratated. Nice to read your article though.
Uh, what’s a big blinky thing? Are you talking about one of those network media players with a display that tells you what you’re hearing so that you don’t have to run into the next room to look at your computer? If so, I guess air tunes must be better because it doesn’t distract you with all of that extra unnecessary information.
I have just recently downloaded iTunes 7 and have noticed that it is not accepting my 30gig ipod to disconnect. it is saying that it is being used by another program. i have never had a problem like this before. my ipod was working perfectly, until i downloaded iTunes 7…
Can anyone please help me!!!
I am gonna try and download iTunes 6 again and hope for the best…
i am looking 4ward for Apple to release a new iTunes and get rid of iTunes 7. These problems are just unacceptiable. although iPods are still gonna be better than the Microsoft Zen.
After reading all of your comments I feel somewhat reassured knowing that I’m not the only one that’s had these problems. The real reason I’m writing, however, is to see if there’s anyone who might help me with my most recent issue. I store almost all of my music on an external harddrive and I’ve recently found that windows explorer and itunes somehow interfere with each other and cause my computer to freeze. On the processes tab in the task manager (ctrl. alt. del.) windows shows up using 100% CPU. I don’t know if this is a unique problem or something I might fix. Thanks for your time and good luck with all your own itunes issues.
this itunes 7 really complicates things even further it just totally erased all my albums I am really bummed I spent hours only to lose all because when I tried to add more songs it removed the ones I had and nothing was checked so I tried to reinstall itunes 6 but it won’t let me open it citing a newer version was installed I already had removed that version any ideas what I can do? I feel more gray hair underway
Hi anyone!
I am a bit baffled by my ipod as everything seems to have been wiped off it and when i plug it in to connect to my computer it says that i need to restore the factory settings which i tried to do, but itunes just crashed half way through and seemed to be taking far too long to do anything so i disconnected my ipod and reset it to see if that helped, but no help at all. Music did not appear back on my ipod and now i plug it into my computer itunes crashes before it even starts doing any thing!!!
Can anyone help??
I just got my 2000t and all of my songs are skipping in iTunes, and I cant figure out why. If someone could help me out and tell me how to fix this I would really appreciate it because its driving me crazy. Thanks for the replys.
i have an ipod nano and a ipod mini i wanted to put all the songs from my nano to my mini but the library on my itunes 7 doesnt desplay any songs but if i go under device and click music it shows all my music i just cant figure out how to put my songs into my library please help im going crazy !!!!
ANAPOD is NOT the answer.
I came to this page just because Anapod fucked up my ipod the same way – twice! And it was more like 15 GB of music, not 4.
I was just transfering music via the windows explorer interface, the same way i always did. Then it got stuck for some reason, and there wan no way i could unfreeze it. After ending the program, my 4G 20 GB ipod kept trying to read something from it’s hard drive and finally ended up in tabula rasa mode – no music whatsoever. But of course it showed all the space used formerly for music – as used. No one deleted my files, it just blocked the access to them in some way.
The first time i had no options but to restore it from scratch (Yay! Here goes my 15 GB of well selected music!), but now that it happened again, i don’t know what to do. I thought it was some kind of one-time-quirk.
What i DO know is i do not recommend Anapod explorer (I use v. 8.96) to anyone. It’s so frustrating and it doesn’t solve the above problem.
Has anyone solved it without restoring from scratch? What’s the source of the problem?
Thanx in advance.
Hi guys! Sad greetings fron England!! After downoloading iTunes 7, my music got crashed, couldnt open itunes again, or if was lucky enough and it opened- wasnt able to shut it down-unless i switched my comp completly!!!! itunes totally fucked my laptop!! Tried to reinstall version 6-it wouldnt let me-saying new version is installed!!! Got so far that had to clean up my hardrive,installed version 6 and had all my songs backed up-but now can not play them-its asks for licence and new version 7. what a fuck!!!!!! anyway thanks for any reply!! martine
Martina – are those actual iTunes songs you’re trying to play, or regular mp3 files? If they’re iTunes songs then you’ll need to authorize the computer. You can do that in iTunes from the ‘store’ menu.
I store all of my iTunes music on an external harddrive. I’ve never had problems with it before. The other day, after having taken my computer somewhere to work without the hard drive, the computer didn’t recognize the hard drive. I didn’t realize this and tried to open iTunes. It said it couldn’t find my music, except the few things I’d recently imported and apparently hadn’t resent to store on the external so they were saved on the C drive. I figured this wasn’t a big deal, and went to preferences and advanced and reset the library to the folder on my external drive. I then consolidated my library. (BTW, the external hard drive was now recognized and all of my old music files exist on there. And I run Windows XP.) Alas, nothing was fixed, except now the newer files exist on the external hard drive. If I click on any of my 5,500 songs iTues suddenly can’t access, it says it can’t find the original. However, if I browse through the folders and link it to where the library supposedly pulls from, it works. I don’t want to do this individually for each song. If I go to file and pick add new folder, I can add the folder but now I have duplicates.
Is there an easier way to get iTunes to recognize my library?
Thanks so much!!!
I feel like the iTunes doctor today. Which is strange, because I don’t really like iTunes.
Kristin: I sort of have a similar problem on an ongoing basis. I store my music on a network drive. If the network drive isn’t mounted when I open iTunes it shows that all of my music is unavailable. I can usually recover from this state by changing the default location in preferences. Once in a while I have to do the ‘consolidate libraries’ trick to move new additions over to the network drive.
I’m not really sure why this isn’t working for you, but you might try the following:
1. Rename the iTunes library files. If you’re on windows you can most likely find them at:
c:\Documents and Settings\username\My Documents\My Music\iTunes\
Make sure iTunes is closed when you try this. You’ll probably want to back these files up while your at it.
2. Open iTunes. Your library should be empty at this point. Make sure the location of the iTunes music folder is set to the drive your music is on.
3. Import the songs from your external hard drive. Depending on how many songs you have this could take a while.
Once the import is complete your library should be rebuilt and all of your music should be playable. If you’ve purchased songs from iTunes you might need to reauthorize your computer (just a guess, I don’t buy music from iTunes).
The downside to this approach is that you’ll lose all of your playlists and song ratings, but your music should be playable.
Thanks Kirk. I was hoping I wouldn’t have to lose my playlists, but I guess it’s better to have my music back! 🙂
ok i just bought my new ipod, and my ITUNES DOSENT WORK ANYMORE is there any other music place i can use or can you only use itunes???
– please help ! 🙂
Good site guys and like most of you I am frustrated as hell with itunes and for that matter apple as their website is no help at all and removes threads that are even slightly critical of the company – throws of Windows!!
My itunes issues are all down to itunes7 and the fact that it is sluggish, stutters on all songs and while a great interface has too many drawbacks. Some of the stutter solutions are posted elsewhere on the web – for most they seem to be solved with either going to quicktime in your control panel and ticking the safemode WaveOut option or
1. Open Device Manager.
2. Double-click IDE ATA/ATAPI Controllers to display the list of controllers and channels.
3. Right-click the icon for the channel to which the device is connected, select Properties, and then click the Advanced Settings tab.
4. In the Current Transfer Mode drop-down box, select DMA if Available if the current setting is “PIO Only.”
If the drop-down box already shows “DMA if Available” but the current transfer mode is PIO, then the user must toggle the settings. That is:
• Change the selection from “DMA if available” to PIO only, and click OK.
• Then repeat the steps above to change the selection to DMA if Available.
I have to add that neither have helped me with this issue and it is not only itunes but also mediamonkey where this happens. I have a 160g external usb driven hard drive with 80g of music so this may be the issue but it works ok in itunes6 and windows media manager so i have no idea where the problem is.
ITUNES 7 is a desaster. I am frustrated as hell with itunes
I have just recently buy the last model of IPOD (30gig) . It need ITUNES 7, but when i downloaded iTunes 7, it is saying that
It can´t open clue HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\current\version\run
ipod to disconnect. it is being used by another program. i have never had a problem like this before. my ipod was working perfectly, until i downloaded iTunes 7…
Can anyone please help me!!!
again and hope for the best…
i am looking 4ward for Apple to release a new iTunes and get rid of iTunes 7. These problems are just unacceptiable. although iPods are still gonna be better than the Microsoft Zen.
I am gonna try and download iTunes 6, but it´s eliminate of ADD/QUIT of configuration, nevertheles, it appear in PROGRAMS, I mean, I can´t eliminate it.
I Eliminate Quicktime 6 and I trait to install quick time 7, but the same error. Finally, it was posible.
Again, I trait dowloading ITUNES 7, but the same error. Again quicktime 7, but the same error. Finally, I can´t uninstalled ITUNES Because I don´t Know, and I can´t uninstalled quicktime7, Because it´s imposible.
I can run ITUNES 6 but It dosn´t work whit any music, but i can see it.
¡ Plaese HELP ME!
ITUNES 7 is a desaster. I am frustrated as hell with itunes
I have just recently buy the last model of IPOD (30gig) . It need ITUNES 7, but when i downloaded iTunes 7, it is saying that
It can´t open clue HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\current\version\run
I am gonna try and download iTunes 6, but it´s eliminate of ADD/QUIT of configuration, nevertheles, it appear in PROGRAMS, I mean, I can´t eliminate it.
I Eliminate Quicktime 6 and I trait to install quick time 7, but the same error. Finally, it was posible.
Again, I trait dowloading ITUNES 7, but the same error. Again quicktime 7, but the same error. Finally, I can´t uninstalled ITUNES Because I don´t Know, and I can´t uninstalled quicktime7, Because it´s imposible.
I can run ITUNES 6 but It dosn´t work whit any music, but i can see it.
¡ Plaese HELP ME!
Dear All:
I realize this post is a late response to all the Q/A’s posted, but crapintosh really fubar’ed on it’s shit-tunes version 7 software. APPARENTLY, they’ve released a freeware utility called Itunes Updater (version 1.2)
My problem is with the Nano itself and iTunes 7.
If I have 3 songs by the same artist, and the first song has an album title, but the other 2 songs have no album title, they won’t show up under the music listing by that artist.
For example,
Artist – Album Name – Song Name
U2 – Greatest Hits – Song #1
U2 – – Song #2
U2 – – Song #3
Only Song #1 will show up under the artist’s name, but the other two songs (#2 & #3) will show up under ‘Songs’.
If I blank out Song #1’s album name, all 3 show up under the artist’s name. What a stupid error to have to fix!!!
hey, I recently got a brand new colored 4GB ipod nano. it has been working fine, but all of the sudden in mid-song it stopped playing..all my songs are still listed but they won’t play, its just silence, and skips to another song..pleaseee help me if you have any idea what’s wrong ! =/..thank youu
I find itunes so frustrating and annoying to use! Apple software is NOT convenient to use after Microsoft – does anyone experience this?
i updated to itunes 7 the other day and i thought i lost everything – since it had a fatal error and can’t open my itunes. tried everything like re-installing but obviously you cannot uninstall that easy. I removed all apple connected software from my registry – itunes, quicktime, etc, downloaded itunes 4.9 installed it and still had errors saying it cannot read my library since it was made using a newer version – so I installed itunes 7 to update my 4.9 and whoaaa – it worked- it even found my old library… hope this works for you. cheers and good luck – make sure you be careful with the registry..
I have encountered a “runtime error” and can’t get on iTunes…what’s up with that?
Kidwest – All the usual troubleshooting advice applies. Have you updated the program? Updated Windows? Rebooted? Considered dumping iTunes for another media player? (only an option if you haven’t bought songs from the iTunes store).
HELP! I needed to try and fix my brothers ipod nano.
Cause he bought songs from itunes and now it won’t install them onto his ipod cause his ipod wasn’t showing up onto itunes. So I thought I would reinstall itunes because I had well kinda the same problem with my ipod shuffle it wasn’t syncing the songs onto my ipod and it wouldn’t let me restore it eather. So I uninstalled it and it worked for me. Soo a few months which is where im at now I tried to do it for my brothers ipod reinstall itunes. WHAT A BIG MISTAKE THAT was it was installed but it was saying itunes will not open because it was installed by a newer version of itunes. Soo I reinstalled it again and the same thing popped up!! I was like what the fuck it totally screwed it up now it was a BIG mistake cause now itunes wont work for me and my dad and my brother. So if anyone knows what Iam talking about please help me!!!
well i had itunes 7.5 or 7.6 something like that,and yesterday a window came up offering an upgrade to 7.6.1…..a message from apple that often comes up.Usually i ignore it but yesterday i upgraded.All was well until i clicked out of itunes only to discover i could not click back in.A message came up saying that “Quick time failed to initialise (error -2096…Quick time is required to run itunes,please re-install itunes”….i followed this but to no avail….i have seemingly tried everything……has anyone got any solutions?????PLEASE
Hi all
Just new to iTunes and not that impressed.
Have some questions that I think some of you pros can answer.
– Everybody seems to be using this iTunes Music folder. Whats it for and what if I don’t want to use it. I’d like to keep my songs on my HD and leave them there. I see no point in copying them again to the HD in some place that iTunes wants them or have I completely misunderstood something?
– Duplicates suck, I now have some 9,000 duplicates in my library and there does not seem to exist any easy way of removing them. I have my mp3’s on a network drive and it was not connected when I started iTunes. Any fix is appreciated.
– If I go to “help” and choose about, it only states that my iTunes is version 7, not 7.x something. Is this the way it should be?
– What happens if I just clear my library of all songs and then re-import them. Will that delete all my downloaded artworks as well (the ones not fetched by iTunes itself)?
Have tons of more questions but these are the most pressing. Can’t really believe that something as crappy as iTunes exist, probably wouldn’t if it weren’t for the iPods. By the way. I installed the latest version of Winamp (like it a bit more than iTunes) and it seems that it can be used to connect to the iPod. Has anyone tried this.
Sorry for the long post and thankful for replies
i have just made the unfortunate mistake of downloading the latest download (8) from i tunes. on the same day, my wife did the same with hers. WHAT A LOAD OF CRAP!!!!!! its screwed my ipod completely. the wife can no longer open i tunes at all. i looked on the pathetic i tunes site for some way of contacting them, HAA BLOODY HAA!!!!! the worst mistake i have done is buying apple. that however is something i will be rectifying and certainly wont be doing again. if 1 of their people read this. congratulations you bunch of nauseating little oiks for having the most user unfriendly sites and attitudes towards problems that your company has caused. I WOULD RATHER EAT WORMS AND HAVE MY EYES PULLED OUT WITH FISHING HOOKS THAN HAVE ANYTHING TO DO WITH APPLE AGAIN. CREDIT TO YOUR NATION NOTTTTTTTTTTTTTT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Absolutely incredible! I was thinking about exactly this last night, and I just stumbled on to it!