[Superchicken]

Yah, I was thinking the big feature I'd like to see in iTunes 5 would be support for having lyrics in something other than the comment fields. Especially putting lyrics in songs from the iTMS. Right now if I wanna find exactly what a song is saying (say a word is hard to make out) I have to look online and find the lyrics. I know a lot of people don't care about lyrics, but it'd be great to have em in iTunes, even have a key to bring em up. It'd be really cool if they could have a way to have the lyrics come up on your iPod, and even scroll in time with the music (Though I doubt that'd be easy since it'd have to some how recognize the course and.... that's not exactly realistic.).

But anyway... that's my biggest desire tor iTunes 5. Dono what Apple actually is gona give us... though they really should give us something soon... 4 has been around for a dog's age... anyone else think we're still gona have the green note for the next upgrade?

[Appleman]

Originally Posted by Superchicken

Yah, I was thinking the big feature I'd like to see in iTunes 5 would be support for having lyrics in something other than the comment fields. Especially putting lyrics in songs from the iTMS. Right now if I wanna find exactly what a song is saying (say a word is hard to make out) I have to look online and find the lyrics. I know a lot of people don't care about lyrics, but it'd be great to have em in iTunes, even have a key to bring em up. It'd be really cool if they could have a way to have the lyrics come up on your iPod, and even scroll in time with the music (Though I doubt that'd be easy since it'd have to some how recognize the course and.... that's not exactly realistic.).

But anyway... that's my biggest desire tor iTunes 5. Dono what Apple actually is gona give us... though they really should give us something soon... 4 has been around for a dog's age... anyone else think we're still gona have the green note for the next upgrade?

iLyric is doing this more or less, as a plugin of iTunes.

[nickw311]

I would really like to see a way to enqueue music... Like right (ctrl) click on a song and chose to enqueue it to come up next.

Maybe have a smart playlist on the side of songs that are queued...

[proton]

Originally Posted by nickw311

I would really like to see a way to enqueue music... Like right (ctrl) click on a song and chose to enqueue it to come up next.

Maybe have a smart playlist on the side of songs that are queued...

Great idea! Maybe they could call it Party Shuffle.

- proton

[dav]

i'd like my music files to be located in different drives (internal and external), and itunes be able to adjust playlists (add, subtract, modify songs/playlists) on the fly depending on what's connected/disconnected.

[Stradlater]

Keep looking online. Lyrics might be a good idea once they can be timestamped within the song, but for now, I don't like the sound of lyrics tabs. Stick with the plugin mentioned above.

[ambush]

Skins
VBR AAC
Lyrics
Better performance

and most importantly

ABILITY TO GROUP PLAYLISTS!!!!

[dav]

Originally Posted by ambush

VBR AAC

i believe aac includes vbr, i.e., there's no aac sans vbr

[Don Pickett]

Originally Posted by ambush

Skins

Never. Gonna. Happen.

[windsurfer_nyc]

Originally Posted by Superchicken

Yah, I was thinking the big feature I'd like to see in iTunes 5 would be support for having lyrics in something other than the comment fields. Especially putting lyrics in songs from the iTMS.

It would also be cool if the artists provided a pdf of the liner notes that you'd get with a CD. Apple did this with U2's last album....

[jyunderwood]

Originally Posted by dav

i'd like my music files to be located in different drives (internal and external), and itunes be able to adjust playlists (add, subtract, modify songs/playlists) on the fly depending on what's connected/disconnected.

awesome idea.

[Stecchino]

The lyrics, the grouped playlists, the auto-updating of the links to music files, PDF's of liner notes--right on, guys.

By the way, iLyric is hard to find. Does anyone know of a working link? VersionTracker, MacUpdate and other all point to http://www.goldensquare.net/ilyric/ilyric.sit, which is a broken link.

[parsec_kadets]

This makes even more sense with Spotlight. If I search for bunny, I should find bunny pictures, references to the Easter bunny, and Surf Colorado by Bowling for Soup (has a lyric "She traded rattle snakes for bunny runs in Colorado Springs").

[MartiNZ]

Originally Posted by nickw311

I would really like to see a way to enqueue music... Like right (ctrl) click on a song and chose to enqueue it to come up next.

Maybe have a smart playlist on the side of songs that are queued...

Yep I agree with this one, and it's quite different from Party Shuffle. This is for the situation when you're listening to an album and suddenly think of another track you want to hear - rather than waiting until the current song ends and then remembering to go and set it to play, you could just get it to 'play next' right at the time when you think of it! And then it could even go back to playing the album from before.

I'd also like to be able to get it to 'stop playing after this album' or similar, without having to set playlists or use browse, simply because I don't do those things much ... I guess that one could be more my fault .

Nested sorting: sort by artist and then by year within artist - that would be a very sensible sort to my mind, but I don't see how to do it at the moment. Maybe I should submit feedback ... hmmm .

[Chuckit]

Originally Posted by Stecchino

By the way, iLyric is hard to find. Does anyone know of a working link? VersionTracker, MacUpdate and other all point to http://www.goldensquare.net/ilyric/ilyric.sit, which is a broken link.

Third result on Google for "iLyric download": http://www.leoslyrics.com/winamp.php

Google is your friend.

[Stecchino]

Originally Posted by Chuckit

Google is your friend.

Most certainly. I didn't explore that link because it was referring to a Winamp plugin. Thanks for the tip.


BTW, in my search I noticed many posts at other Mac forums where people were asking "where has iLyric gone?"

[SpaceMonkey]

Originally Posted by dav

i believe aac includes vbr, i.e., there's no aac sans vbr

iTunes' current implementation of AAC uses something called bit-reservoir, not VBR. The upshot is that while it is somewhat responsive to audio complexity (if part of your encoded track is "silent," for example, the bitrate will be effectively 0 for that segment), it is not nearly as responsive as true VBR would be.

VBR AAC capability is in the new version of Quicktime for Tiger, but I haven't seen anything yet on when it will be integrated into iTunes.

[Chuckit]

Doesn't iTunes use QuickTime for playback? I know it works with the Ogg Vorbis QuickTime codec.

[SpaceMonkey]

Originally Posted by Chuckit

Doesn't iTunes use QuickTime for playback? I know it works with the Ogg Vorbis QuickTime codec.

Right, iTunes can play anything that Quicktime can play, and can play anything that Quicktime can encode. But, iTunes cannot encode everything that Quicktime can encode. When Apple first introduced AAC, for example, many people said that the iTunes music store tracks sounded much better to them than their own music they had ripped in iTunes. One possible reason that many people pointed to was that iTunes doesn't give users access to all of Quicktime's quality settings for encoding AAC files, instead appearing to just use Quicktime's "fastest" setting rather than giving the option of using its "best" setting. Similarly, although Tiger's Quicktime is capable of encoding VBR AACs, it's unclear if or when Apple will allow users to access those settings through iTunes.

[dav]

Originally Posted by SpaceMonkey

iTunes' current implementation of AAC uses something called bit-reservoir, not VBR. The upshot is that while it is somewhat responsive to audio complexity (if part of your encoded track is "silent," for example, the bitrate will be effectively 0 for that segment), it is not nearly as responsive as true VBR would be.

VBR AAC capability is in the new version of Quicktime for Tiger, but I haven't seen anything yet on when it will be integrated into iTunes.

thanks for the clarification

[Busemann]

Originally Posted by SpaceMonkey

One possible reason that many people pointed to was that iTunes doesn't give users access to all of Quicktime's quality settings for encoding AAC files, instead appearing to just use Quicktime's "fastest" setting rather than giving the option of using its "best" setting.

It was later proved that the "better" and "best" settings provide the same results on 16bit content (best is only optimized for 24bit). iTunes uses the "better" setting.

Let's hope it won't be too long before they release an update to iTunes that will use the new VBR encoder, though

[SpaceMonkey]

Originally Posted by Busemann

It was later proved that the "better" and "best" settings provide the same results on 16bit content (best is only optimized for 24bit). iTunes uses the "better" setting.

Ah, cool. I hadn't really followed that. I was just trying to think of an example of features in Quicktime not making it to iTunes, and that was the first thing that came to mind.

[nickw311]

Originally Posted by MartiNZ

Yep I agree with this one, and it's quite different from Party Shuffle. This is for the situation when you're listening to an album and suddenly think of another track you want to hear - rather than waiting until the current song ends and then remembering to go and set it to play, you could just get it to 'play next' right at the time when you think of it! And then it could even go back to playing the album from before.

I'd also like to be able to get it to 'stop playing after this album' or similar, without having to set playlists or use browse, simply because I don't do those things much ... I guess that one could be more my fault .

Nested sorting: sort by artist and then by year within artist - that would be a very sensible sort to my mind, but I don't see how to do it at the moment. Maybe I should submit feedback ... hmmm .

Thank you, I am glad you understood what I was talking about... It really is needed.

[patman600]

The feature I would like to see is the ability to have one song in multiple albums. So, for example, I can have one song in its original album, and in it's best of album, without having two copies of the song, two different play counts, last played, etc.

[Stecchino]

Originally Posted by patman600

The feature I would like to see is the ability to have one song in multiple albums. So, for example, I can have one song in its original album, and in it's best of album, without having two copies of the song, two different play counts, last played, etc.

..."ability" being the key word. However, sometimes it's nice to have two separate tracks. I definitely agree.

[kman42]

podcasting is becoming more and more popular. Apple could easily add podcasts to the realm of things iTunes can handle. Just slide it in right under internet radio stations.

[mitchell_pgh]

ABILITY TO GROUP PLAYLISTS

and speed. I could care less about most the other stuff.

Something that could track beat per second and have music that "goes" together "play" together (think virtual DJ)...

that's about it...

[mitchell_pgh]

Originally Posted by patman600

The feature I would like to see is the ability to have one song in multiple albums. So, for example, I can have one song in its original album, and in it's best of album, without having two copies of the song, two different play counts, last played, etc.

Do you have that many copies of the same song?

[ehjay]

I'd say that Apple should work on their Windows port of iTunes. Same goes for the new QT7, perhaps it will finally break the sour tradition Apple has had with their Windows ports.

They're just crap on Windows. Plain and simple. It could be one of the best players on XP, but Apple just slights one of their largest growing margins (Windows using iPod owners). Most of the people I speak with, solely use iTunes to add their tunes to their iPod, and then quickly escape to Winamp or similar.

QT has just been historically bad on Windows. It's about time they sat down and rewrote the application to work solidly on both operating systems, not just their own.

[noka]

All I want is Apple to finally fix the damn gap that gets put in in between songs, even when a user selects "none" in burning preferences. Apple has single-handedly ruined the dj-set format. What this means is that if a DJ is spinning a set of records together and it goes from track 1 to track 2, you STILL get a gap, which in turn ruins the performance.

Otherwise, itunes is just an all around GREAT player.

[weldon]

I would like to see Apple extend the auto-fill feature extended to other iPods so that we can store Apple Lossless on our desktop machines and auto-convert to 128kbps AAC for the iPod if we wish to do so. I enjoy the quality difference of lossless encoding when I'm listening to music on my computer or on the stereo through AirTunes, but I don't need to take that much space up on my iPod. I'd rather have more tracks on the iPod and settle for 128kbps. To save synch time, there should also be an option to "pre-convert" tracks and store them on the hard drive.

The main thing is to make it completely seamless so that playcounts still increment correctly and ratings update properly, etc. when I play the 128kbps version on the iPod and the lossless version on the desktop.

[indigoimac]

Network Compatibility-store ALL of the music on one computer and be able to monitor change and burn cds etc. as if it were on any other computer on a network this is not hard they just will have trouble with the copyright issues! And it better still work w/ 10.2! And they should come out w/ a wired or wireless(2 seperate models) audio interfaces with lcd displays(Airport express-the wireless+display and remote) <-This would be VERY nice!

That's a nice list of demands!

[Zang]

A feature I'd like to see is:

Say you rip three tracks from a disc you own and add album artwork to them in iTunes, and then want to add more tracks later, then you have to track down the album artwork and add it manually. I'd like it if the album artwork were "autofilled" if the artist and album name match another in your library.

[Jedidiah]

Originally Posted by patman600

The feature I would like to see is the ability to have one song in multiple albums. So, for example, I can have one song in its original album, and in it's best of album, without having two copies of the song, two different play counts, last played, etc.

I was just thinking the same thing.... If I have several oldies compilations, plus the original CD, plus the Greatest Hits CD of that artist, I can have four to six identical copies of the same song! But if I delete some of them, it screws it up when I want to play a particular CD.....

[porieux]

...

[ericdano]

Originally Posted by indigoimac

Network Compatibility-store ALL of the music on one computer and be able to monitor change and burn cds etc. as if it were on any other computer on a network

Well, I put all my tunes on a Samba share on a server. Works pretty darn good. And the thing has RAID on it, so, I shouldn't lose anything. Making changes is a pain. There has to be a better way to do it.

Originally Posted by indigoimac

And they should come out w/ a wired or wireless(2 seperate models) audio interfaces with lcd displays(Airport express-the wireless+display and remote) <-This would be VERY nice!

That's a nice list of demands!

Interesting idea. I'd rather have some sort of NSA (Network Storage Appliance) that Apple designs that handles the storage of iTunes material. It would have to have some sort of fault tolerance, like RAID, and let certain iTunes users log into it and make changes/deletions/additions to the library.

[3R1C]

The ability to use the wonderful, "Keep Library Organized" while at the same time allowing the use of multiple drives. I keep running out of space and iTunes only allows me too use 1 library location.

[sixhoursago]

Originally Posted by 3R1C

The ability to use the wonderful, "Keep Library Organized" while at the same time allowing the use of multiple drives. I keep running out of space and iTunes only allows me too use 1 library location.

THAT would be KickAss! My library is resting on a 120GB drive with only about 5GB free.

[bigpoppa206]

Originally Posted by porieux

I'd like to optionally be able to have the crossfade happen even if I want to switch to a new track before the old one has finished playing.

This ties in with some of the nightclub DJ effects I wished were possible...ie., a better crossfader, pitch control, BPM counter, etc.

[Thain Esh Kelch]

Better decoding optimization. My iMac 233 uses ~30% of its processor when playing an mp3. You almost think that its a gigantic iPod since it slows the rest of the system..

[OwlBoy]

Originally Posted by mitchell_pgh

ABILITY TO GROUP PLAYLISTS

amen.

-Owl

[blanalex]

CD-Text burning & importing (so i can finally burn CDs that I will be able to read the track title on my car's radio), fadeout on stop/pause (like shift-pause in old winamp versions, i don't know about the recent versions)

[goMac]

Originally Posted by Thain Esh Kelch

Better decoding optimization. My iMac 233 uses ~30% of its processor when playing an mp3. You almost think that its a gigantic iPod since it slows the rest of the system..

No offense, but an iMac G3/233 is not that fast.

[alchemy10]

Originally Posted by porieux

I'd like to optionally be able to have the crossfade happen even if I want to switch to a new track before the old one has finished playing.

It would be really nice if they could add beat-matching for the crossfade.

[Stradlater]

Originally Posted by MartiNZ

Yep I agree with this one, and it's quite different from Party Shuffle. This is for the situation when you're listening to an album and suddenly think of another track you want to hear - rather than waiting until the current song ends and then remembering to go and set it to play, you could just get it to 'play next' right at the time when you think of it! And then it could even go back to playing the album from before.

That is like Party Shuffle. If you use PS religiously, you could do all that. Want to listen to a specific album? Highlight all tracks, right-click, "play next in party shuffle." Then if you want to play just one song, do likewise to it. It'll play next, and then it will go back to the album you were listening to.

I'd also like to be able to get it to 'stop playing after this album' or similar, without having to set playlists or use browse, simply because I don't do those things much ... I guess that one could be more my fault .

Yeah, it's possible, though if they added a way to stop Party Shuffle after a given track, that would be interesting.

Nested sorting: sort by artist and then by year within artist - that would be a very sensible sort to my mind, but I don't see how to do it at the moment. Maybe I should submit feedback ... hmmm .

There's no way to do this, the implementation would be important; it would be possible to do in a Smart Playlist.

[Stradlater]

Originally Posted by noka

All I want is Apple to finally fix the damn gap that gets put in in between songs, even when a user selects "none" in burning preferences. Apple has single-handedly ruined the dj-set format. What this means is that if a DJ is spinning a set of records together and it goes from track 1 to track 2, you STILL get a gap, which in turn ruins the performance.

Otherwise, itunes is just an all around GREAT player.

MP3 isn't a gapless format (though LAME can kind of hack this by replacing that gap with part of an adjacent song.

AAC isn't a gapless format, either.

Apple didn't "single-handedly ruin" anything; this is how it's always been, this is how lossy formats work. Most people who listen to DJ sets encode the tracks into one single track.

Once you encode to either, and burn it to a CD, the gaps will remain.

If you don't want gaps, encode to Apple Lossless, which preserves everything of the original track.

[c�zanne]

i would like to see a drop-down window during install, wherein i may choose a "don't delete all of my $#@! playlists" option.

[bmedina]

Originally Posted by Stradlater

If you don't want gaps, encode to Apple Lossless, which preserves everything of the original track.

And it will still play back with gaps.

[Stradlater]

Originally Posted by bmedina

And it will still play back with gaps.

If you burn the Apple Lossless files back into a CD, there are still gaps when you play it in a CD player?

If this is so, that's unfortunate.

[SpaceMonkey]

I'd like to see better compression ratios when using Apple Lossless. Right now Apple Lossless has higher encoding complexity than FLAC, yet churns out files of about the same size.