14 
iTunes 11 is the best thing to happen to Apple’s media hub in a long time. But while the cosmetic changes are nice, there are still plenty of underlying problems with iTunes that need to be addressed. At its core, iTunes is still just a shopping mall with a snazzy jukebox attached. But it could be so much more.
Here are five fixes we wish were in iTunes 11, and are hoping for in iTunes 12.
If you don’t own a track you want to listen to, the only way to get it from iTunes is to buy it. That was a winning model for years, but a lot of people don’t use iTunes for the simple reason that they’ve turned to cheap subscription services like Spotify or Rdio instead. A flat £10 per month subscription fee for access to millions of tracks beats buying the latest hit record for 10 quid.
Apple’s reportedly been trying to get all of the major labels on board for some kind of radio service like Pandora, but that has yet to materialise. And even then, the value of Pandora is rapidly diminishing because Spotify is so much better. Some sort of streaming service, though, would be better than the none that we’ve got now.
If you pony up £25 a year for iTunes Match, Apple will store your music collection in the cloud and allow you to stream it. The problem? You need to use iTunes on a desktop or an iOS device to listen to the music. Lame if you use anything other than an iPhone, and double lame if you’re sitting at a computer that’s not your own.
Sure, Apple’s got an interest in making sure that the iTunes store is always just a click away, but the competition is offering a better service here. MOG has a a gorgeous HTML 5 interface you can use anywhere, and Spotify has said it will have one by next year. Google Music will let you store 20,000 songs in the cloud for free and stream them from anywhere for nothing. So why would you pay £25 for a less useful iTunes Match?
Simply put, iTunes does a crap job helping your discover new music. Recommendations in the iTunes store based on what other “Listeners also bought…” don’t count. It’s a sales pitch Apple hopes will tempt you into an impulse purchase. And Genius? Genius remains a joke.
Pandora’s Music Genome and Spotify apps are awesome for discovery because you can find new music and try it out without paying a toll. Unless Apple gets licenses for a music subscription service, or at the very least makes Genius more helpful, iTunes might just keep sucking at discovery forever.
No matter how smart the iTunes recommendation algorithm gets, it’s never going to be better at recommending music to you than your friends. In the wake of Ping’s implosion, Apple has finally added social sharing to Twitter and Facebook in iTunes 11. Unfortunately, it’s poorly implemented. You can only share from the iTunes Store, and there’s no way to see what your friends are sharing from within the application.
Consider Spotify, which has nailed social music with deep, deep Facebook integration. In the Spotify client, you can see what friends are listening to and easily send tracks them. If you’re not Facebook friends with someone, Spotify makes grabbing a URL easy.
With their one billion and 500 million users respectively, meaningful Faceook and Twitter integration is no longer optional. Apple needs to bite the bullet and bake social into far more strongly iTunes so that people can advertise what they like to each other. Apple sells more tracks, your music collection gets better, everybody wins.
For ages, the iTunes Store has been the cornerstone of the application, but whereas a decade ago it was a convenient way to legally get your music fix, it just feels tastelessly tacked onto the new streamlined interface. For all of Apple’s attempts to integrate your listening habits with your purchasing habits this time around, the store’s still not a seamless partner to the player. Apple should break it off into its own isolated zone, like the App Store on iOS or the Mac App Store on OS X.
iTunes 11 Arrives With a New Look and New Features
What's New in iTunes 11, and Does it Still Suck?
Are You Still Buying Music on iTunes?
I like how Google’s Play Store does it.
I have to disagree with the separating out the store deal. I USED to agree, it used to take forever to load, but the streamlining in iTunes 11 means i’m not really bothered by it now. The fact is, the app store is a devoted store because there is no other way to do it. And on OSX the app store is now the update hub as well. The idea of splitting your music listening and music purchasing into two separate apps seems a pretty stupid suggestion when it comes to customer service and their own marketing.
Besides, they should probably start by fixing some of the issues in it FIRST. Like the removal of 90% of the customisation, and other various issues floating around this new beta software we’re stomaching.
I think what is needed even more is a way of monitoring a folder and automatically adding new files. Unless there is and it’s hidden…?
in your library folder is a folder named ‘automatically add to itunes’
Yeah I want it to just monitor my msuic folder. I don’t want all my music in a folde called automatically add to itunes
it then moves & sorts it within the itunes library
but i want it in ‘my music’ folder….not an itunes folder.
in that case, http://support.apple.com/kb/PH1006?viewlocale=en_US
or you can also hold alt and drag the folder in, neither of which answers your original question though
I found a third party program that will do just that. Haven’t tried it yet, but there’s a free version which works (according to the blog article I read the free version has a nag screen and some disabled feature, but still has enough functions to get the job done).
Disagree on the last one. What’s the point of a separate app clogging things up? Videos are still DRM-locked so you may as well download straight into iTunes.
And the new ‘In The Store’ options in your incomplete albums are a nice touch and serve to integrate the store much better than before.
I STILL wish that they would use a better font on the Windows version though – no ClearType and a crap native font just makes the whole thing look exceptionally cheap.
And why isn’t there any chrome on it? If iTunes is open in front of a Word document it’s a total mindsplurge.
And why is it so glitchy? There’s UI problems all over the shop on Windows, I thought an extra month would have ironed it all out.
And why doesn’t it minimise to the miniplayer?
And why is the new icon ugly as hell?
And…
And…
I hate everything.
that is true about the logo, looks blurry on my screen
It will be a cold day in hell when Apple decides interoperability with rival companies systems is a priority.
#6 full screen video on one monitor while still being able to flick between the others, including other fullscreen apps without the monitor displaying video turning into a grey sheet…
Multiple desktops work great, but why are isn’t there a way to switch desktops on just one monitor?
are you on osx? then press ctrl and hit your left arrow keys
tbh i could be wrong, on a hackintosh
on mountain lion, ctrl and left works fine, as does 4 finger swiping, the problem is it changes both screens, so if you’ve got a video on one screen while working, if you flick to another desktop it changes the 2nd screen too.
You can set vlc/itunes to show on every desktop which sort of works, but if you swipe to a fullscreen app the 2nd screen shows that ugly grey linen
I’m totally with you on this one. I thought Mountain Lion would’ve fixed this, but no. And it’s not as if they can say it’s a worry about being too CPU intensive, because you can mimic the basic effect by manually resizing windows to full screen. Silly Apple.
When i first saw the new interface it looked just like google play.
Lawsuit detected.
No matter how good the algorithm gets, it will never be as good at music recommendation as your friends? I could not disagree more with this statement. People who have completely different tastes are bad at recommendation. Data from millions of users (some of which have nearly identical tastes) can be excellent if used correctly (which nobody does currently)
Correct; one of my friends owns a nikky minaj cd, I won’t be taking their advice on, well anything really.
Actually, I am very happy with iTunes. It does all what I want. I can’t think of any improvements for me.
That’s the problem with trying to improve something that is just a music library and jukebox with additional shop and hardware syncronisation services. For these purposes alone, they solved them all brilliantly several versions of iTunes back.
What you’re basically asking for is for iTunes to be what Spotify is…
I’m pretty sure I heard that Spotify were developing a web interface too.
An easier way to update the library, should you move or delete files.
I have to say I like the new updates, recommendations have always been great for me, seeing as I listen to some pretty obscure stuff, the recommendations have been great, and clearly not just listed to top sellers as loads of stuff with just one or two reviews that is spot on comes up.
My only real gripe with 11 is the fact they have removed the progress bar on the mini-player, so now no longer any way to skip forward/back on mixes, baffles me as to why this was taken away!!
iTunes / iPod App on Android is what is required!
It needs the goddamn ability to output audio to a second soundcard (without having to change your computer’s default soundcard) and it needs it now!!