Rush my money to the record shops

[venta]

I'm at work, I've fortified myself with my morning dose of tea and toast-and-evil, and I still don't quite feel like taking on the kernel locking primitives which are waiting for me.

So instead, I think I'll wax gently wrathful about iTunes.

Those of you who follow the minutae of my life (a) should get out more, and (b) will be aware that I recently downloaded iTunes just to get hold of their exclusive Pixies' single. (Incidentally, apologies to those I to whom I offered an mp3, the continued delay is because bastard Evesham still haven't given my laptop back.)

Although iTunes does offer itself as an all-in-one music solution, I decided I'd prefer to continue using Winamp as my main music player. iTunes' format is proprietory, so I can only listen to Bam Thwok with iTunes, but that was pretty much the only thing I intended to use it for. I played around briefly with it, failed to be able to work out how to generate a playlist, and shut it down.

I'd unset all the "make this my default player" options, but it still started up every time I put a CD in the drive. I closed it every time. One time I failed to close it swiftly, and as I watched, my open directory of mp3s all changed icons. Away went the little orange zigzags of Winamp, and in came the blobby green notes of iTunes.

A quick glance through file associations confirmed it - all my audio format did indeed belong to iTunes. I've got them all back now to where I want them, but it took a while. iTunes was very much in disgrace.

But I thought its online music-purchasing aspects deserved a fair chance. Unfortunately it didn't do what I'd hoped - the music it offers for sale is mostly the mainstream things you could find in any record shop anyway, not the obscure stuff which I'd have thought it would make sense to offer. After all, deleted albums which are now unavailable should be cheap to offer, and people would want them. Fair enough, I suppose, but it was disappointing. As it was to discover that with a popular album, the "known" single is often only available as part of the album, not as an individual download.

Now, every Tuesday iTunes mails me to tell me about their newly available stuff, and to let me know what the free-to-download single of the week is. Two weeks ago, the free-to-download single didn't actually exist when I searched iTunes for it. Last week, clicking on the link from the mail displayed me a crashed page of XML. When I tried later, I got a popup saying the store was unavailable.

This week's mail listed a Barenaked Ladies album among their new releases. Now, a new Barenaked Ladies album is the sort of thing that one could get quite excited about on a Tuesday morning, so I followed the link - only to be told the album wasn't available in the UK store, and they had no details.

So. I am in all ways officially unimpressed. I dunno where the online music revolution is, kids, but it's not hanging around at iTunes.

And now - I realise as I come to fill in the 'current music' field that I'm not listening to anything. So I hunt out a suitable morning album, and discover that once again all my .m3u playlist files are displaying the iTunes icon. Bastards. Fortunately, the Winamp context menus seem stronger, and I'm still offered the 'play in Winamp' option. So I am doing.

And by the way, don't put St Ivel Gold low-fat edition on your toast. Work usually provides us with some form of butter-substitute-for-the-gullible, but this week we have St Ivel. It's an odd texture, and it doesn't melt properly, and it sits on your toast and mixes up with whatever else you're trying to spread on it in quite an unpleasant way. Bah.

Comments

[al-fruitbat.livejournal.com]

Ooh, thanks. I had a hungering for an iPod while on holiday (a sudden desire to listen to Led Zeppelin) but a less-than-glowing technical review of iTunes helps soothe that itch ;-)

WinAmp is your friend

[wimble.livejournal.com]

My Winamp (5.03c) has a couple of useful options under "Preferences" -> "File Types".

Restore File Associations at start up. This'll do the same thing that iTunes is doing to reset all the associations, but back the way you want :-) (I imagine iTunes has a similar setting, somewhere, and you really want to clear it!)

And "Winamp Agent". Normally, I disagree with running agents, as I don't believe they really do useful things. But this one says:

Winamp Agent can maintain your Winamp file associations and show an icon in the system tray.
Disabling this feature may result in other applications launching when you open media files from Windows Explorer.

I, personally wouldn't run it. But then I don't have a too cooperative iTunes.

[diffrentcolours]

iTunes' format is proprietory

And that's why I won't use it. I can just about tolerate MP3, though I find Ogg Vorbis to be technically and legally preferable, but iTunes means I have to jump through hoops to do perfectly reasonable things with music, like play it on a Linux box or a non-iPod portable player, or burn it to CD. I've heard many tales of woe from Mac-otaku about how the DRM has caused them to lose access to hundreds of dollars worth of music, and I don't think that's a risk I want to take.

[venta.livejournal.com]

For comparison, you should talk to zandev - he uses it as Mac intended us to use it, as an all-in-one solution and seems reasonably impressed with it.

Re: WinAmp is your friend

[venta.livejournal.com]

Restore File Associations at start up

You think I don't already have this set ?

That's why iTunes annoyed me so much :(

I'll try running the agent, and see if it helps. Out of interest, is there any reason you say you wouldn't run it, beyond "I don't need to" ?

[al-fruitbat.livejournal.com]

Yes, but I also want to keep my winamp playlists (Unless you can run Geiss from iTunes?) and portable MP3 collection for other devices - and I really hate obnoxious bullying software that mucks about with things...

[venta.livejournal.com]

I'd agree - I was only suckered in by a song which was unavailable elswhere, and because I thought something like iTunes had a potential to be a good thing.

Once I get my laptop back, I think I'll be burning Bam Thwok to a CD (alledgedly simple from iTunes), and uninstalling the whole lot.

[diffrentcolours]

I might have to obtain a copy of Bam Thwok from a convenient p2p network. It might be illegal, but it seems to be my only recourse.

[venta.livejournal.com]

.m3u playlist files are displaying the iTunes icon

They still are :(

According to the "file types" dialog (I'm running Win2K), .m3u is a "Winamp Playlist File", to be opened with Winamp. According to Winamp's options, it owns .m3u files, and has the icon set as a grey and black version of the Winamp zigzag.

If I right-click on the icon, I get the Winamp context-sensitive menu. If I double click on it, it opens in Winamp.

So why the bloody hell is it displaying the iTunes icon ? Eh ?

[venta.livejournal.com]

Well, assuming you don't mind the slightly poorer audio quality of something that's been burnt and re-ripped to mp3, I'll happily pass you a copy once I have one. Or lend you the CD.

You still owe me a Goon Show CD :)

Re: WinAmp is your friend

[wimble.livejournal.com]

It takes memory and CPU cycles :)

At least it's an improvement over the RealAgent "agent", which, as far as I can tell is the majority of RealPlayer masquerading as a small, innocuous system tray icon. With associated spyware facilities.

[venta.livejournal.com]

(Unless you can run Geiss from iTunes?)

I don't know the answer to this question, but I'm willing to bet Lombard Street to a China orange that the answer is "no".

[wimble.livejournal.com]

F5? To refresh the display?

[diffrentcolours]

Yes, I also said I was going to lend you the Earth Loop Recall album, didn't I?

[venta.livejournal.com]

I'm not a muppet[*]. I tried that.

Also Ctrl=F5 in case it helped. Also closing the directory and opening it again, closing Winamp and starting it again. Changing the icon in Winamp and changing it back. Cursing. Spitting. Threatening. Glowering.


[*] Mostly.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Er, yes, I think you did.
Though was more of a forcible education program because I said I hadn't liked them live.

Of course, in order to effect this lending, I'd have to, like, see you or something :)

Re: WinAmp is your friend

[venta.livejournal.com]

Aye, fair enough. I thought you were hinting at some more sinister reason.

I fell out with RealPlayer over similar issues of file-format-stealing. I seem to have it cowed now: it'll play clips off Amazon for me, and the rest of the time it shuts the hell up and stays out the way.

[diffrentcolours]

Yeah, you should come down the pub more :p

Or I could just whap the relevant files up on my Soulseek share and you could download them from me ;p

[venta.livejournal.com]

Yeuch, pubs, don't like pubs. Nasty beer and stuff you find in them.

I'll endeavour to make it down this side of the heat death of the universe. And give you advance warning.

[mr-tom.livejournal.com]

I don't think that you can, but iTunes has a built-in Geiss-esque visualisation thingamejig.

I find iTunes a real step above Winamp - the latter always seemed very flaky and its handling and indexing of metadata was appallingly pedestrian...

(Nice turn of phrase, BTW. I work on Lombard St.) :-)

[zandev.livejournal.com]

I should clarify that the iTunes format for the music isn't particularly proprietory in that AAC is an mpeg standard. iTunes will also quite happily rip to various other formats including MP3.

However, the DRM system wrapping this (used by the iTunes Music Store, not by tracks ripped with iTunes directly) is indeed proprietory. It's also extremely restrictive.

I'm generally very happy with iTunes as a music player. However, I've not bought anything from the Music Store, and I'm unlikely to in the future. It just isn't competitive with just buying the CD, particularly as HMV and Virgin keep having sales.

[venta.livejournal.com]

In fairness, I should point out that I only use Winamp on a PC, and I only use it to play mp3'd albums. Each album has a playlist set up, I click on it, it plays. So although I'm very fond of Winamp, I've hardly tested it to its limits.

Nice turn of phrase, BTW

Thanks :) It's not original, sadly, it's in Brewer (http://www.bootlegbooks.com/Reference/PhraseAndFable/data/769.html) and everything.

[wimble.livejournal.com]

Ok, winamp's lying. It thinks that m3u's have that icon, and obviously, they don't.

Either: associate it with something else, and then get winamp to reclaim the association, or
Tools->Folder Options->File Types from an explorer window, select "m3u" file type, click advanced, and then "change icon". Mine's set to C:\Program Files\Winamp\winamp.exe

(That's for XP. I seem to think you're using something older. But the idea's the same, even if some of the buttons are in slightly different places.)

[diffrentcolours]

True, I should have specified the iTunes Music Store format, rather than the iTunes Media Player format. Out of interest, will iTunes rip to Ogg?

I'm told that mplayer on Linux will play non-DRM'd AAC files, at least. Doubt we'll see iTunes for Linux any time soon...

[venta.livejournal.com]

Mine's set to C:\Program Files\Winamp\winamp.exe

So's mine. Didn't help.

However, going through the file types dialog and associating .m3u with RealPlayer (dangerous!) changed the icon. Repeating and associting it with Winamp again has put it back to the icon I want.

Whew :)