iTunes Has Slowly Destroyed My Will to Collect Music | Hacker News Reader

iTunes Has Slowly Destroyed My Will to Collect Music

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100 pointslisper107 comments

In recent years iTunes on OS X has managed to achieve the feat of becoming more bloated, sluggish, and yet also losing important features.

I've spent most of the last five years hoping Apple are re-writing the thing from scratch, and have been neglecting any meaningful updates to the current fork in the meantime, but I'm losing hope.

I dunno. Reading this I can't help but feel like maybe the author is doing it wrong? I'm going to be charitable and admit that Apple has made iTunes incredibly difficult to use effectively, especially since the store is awful and they really, really push the iTunes store on you. That the interface is so slow and inconsistent doesn't help either.

My advice to anyone who has any desire to use iTunes is: acquire your music from elsewhere as actual mp3 files, tag them using something like Mp3tag[0] and then drag and drop them into iTunes. Make sure you check the "Keep iTunes Media folder organized" and "Copy files to iTunes Media folder when adding to library" options in the advanced settings. The only control you're really giving up then is the exact naming scheme of the files in the folder. But "<library directory>/Artist Name/Album Name/01 Song Title.mp3" is a pretty sane convention in my opinion. I have close to 18,000 albums in my iTunes library that I've added this way over the last decade and a half. It works pretty well and I have no problem reasoning about what music I have.

I totally agree with his complaints about Apple Music though, it's pretty inscrutable. But I wrote my own music streaming server with Sinatra and iOS app to go with it so I always have access to whatever is stored on my hard drive at home in a way that makes sense to me. If I'm not at home that's what I'd rather do, no syncing or anything weird.

0: http://www.mp3tag.de/en/

I would definitely argue that "make sure you have these advanced settings configured or you're screwed" is a sign of hostile software. I'm totally unwilling to use iTunes or Apple Music for my collection.

That said, if you're particular about your music collection, it's basically always going to take some curation. Giving up because Apple didn't make that easy isn't entirely Apple's fault.

> make sure you have these advanced settings configured or you're screwed

However, those very settings are on by default.

My recommendation would be to not use Apple but if you can't do that for whatever reason running your own Plex media server at home and installing the Plex app on your phone should be the next best thing.

I got a freenas box running at home where i keep all my conntent with plex media server running in a jail giving me access to my entrire library anywhere I am without having to worry that some miss click is going to destroy all my hard work.

Owncloud, Plex etc are a great replacement for the mainstream clud based services out there and you have full controll over them.

I would never give up controll over my data for the convenience of the cloud. It feels like gving up one of your findamental rights like the right to free speach to me.

That's completely backwards. If you want control over your music library you would keep both of those options disabled.

Apple has been selling standard AAC non DRMd music since 2007. No AAC is not a proprietary Apple format. It is supported by everything under the sun and is licensed just like the MP3 format. Apple has nothing to do with the licensing.

Someone has to say it: why do people keep using it? If it's not doing the job it's supposed too, or worse, actively deleting your music it's time to scrap it!

There's still nothing better than iTunes, at least on OS X.

It's the best of a bad bunch.

I've found Swinsian to be a viable alternative: http://swinsian.com

No file organization?

Having the files automatically organized when the metadata is updated is literally the entire reason I've stuck with iTunes so far.

My experience is that iTunes can't handle anything but perfectly neat metadata about album versions of songs. Every time I've fed it live music, or alternate takes, or anything else weird, it's choked so badly that I ended up wishing for no organization.

Agreed, for a lot of people "no organization" is a feature unto itself. iTunes is famous for mangling already cleanly-organized collections of folders on disk, etc.

There has been an option since 2003 for iTunes not to copy songs into its own hierarchy and just leave files where they are.

HN is populated by enough "geeks" to make this recommendation relevant: use beets.

http://beets.io

It's more powerful than iTunes and can sync with databases like Discogs and Musicbrainz to keep data up to date.

+1 for beets. works like a charm, integrates quite well with mpd, does exactly what it's supposed to.

oh and it's written in python, which means it's quite easy to hack upon it.

Agreed! It has made quick work of organizing my library.

http://coppertino.com/vox/mac is a good alternative.

I'm very happy with Amazon Music.

Combine it with an amazon cloud storage account and you can sync your library across numerous devices without being locked into any particular platform. It's pretty nice.

Its pretty apparent that iTunes does too many things at this point in time: Music (Store / Streaming / Radio / Cloud / subscription ), Movies, Apps, phone management, media player management, and encoder.

Problem is no other applications have access many of these core features Swinsian is nice but I use iTunes Match so I can access my music on phone and I still use an iPod for my car as I find myself in the back country on weekends where cell services is edge at best or simply non-existent.

In the "don't delete my music" category - google music is pretty good. You can upload your files without deleting them and then stream from web or mobile app. I haven't tried playing offline from the browser, but caching on my phone is fine.

In the "don't delete my music" category - google music is pretty good.

It makes me sad that's even a category for consideration. wtf

I wish Plex would finish what they started.

Clementine [0] is cross-platform and the Linux version is excellent (not flawless, but never destructive).

But if your music collection is already sorted into filesystem folders, all you need is VLC!

[0] https://www.clementine-player.org/downloads

Google Play Music is great, as long as you have below 50 000 songs in your library.

Having your whole library accessible everywhere (for free!) is awesome, but downloading stuff for offline access is also easy.

The remote app on ios, and the ability to stream to multiple airport expresses, in sync.

Because iTunes is the only way to get stuff onto your iPod/iPhone.

Not entirely true. I have been using Winamp to load my iPod for a few years now. Yes Winamp is still around and it still whips the llamas a.

Clementine on Ubuntu Linux. I use it to sync my iPod classic.

I use desktop iTunes primarily to backup my phone to my computer. Even backing up has been unreliable recently https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7111898

Personally, I wish Foobar2000 was available for the Mac. It is my favorite GUI player (I personally love mpc/mpd).

DeaDBeeF is basically Foobar2000 for OS X/Linux. It's still very alpha though, especially on OS X.

http://deadbeef.sourceforge.net/

Most Linux apps on OS X kinda... suck. There's a cross-platform toolkit (usually GTK+) that outputs some vaguely native-looking widgets, but the program itself usually doesn't adapt to it's host OS conventions very well (for example, using control instead of the system standard command key for keyboard shortcuts).

DeaDBeeF on OS X is in Cocoa actually - and that's why it so unfinished - the Cocoa interface simply hasn't has been developed as much as the GTK one yet.

That's good to hear. Too many Linux -> OS X ports don't have the care or thought given to them to make them good. For example, Inkscape not only commits all the violations I described above, it has an excruciatingly long startup time and requires opening a separate XQuartz instance (an X11 equivalent) to run.

I mostly agree, and I really dislike the XQuartz/X11 OS X apps.

That being said, it is also annoying that a lot of plugins (which is what Foobar 2000/DeaDBeeF is based around), like the visualizer ones, only works in either GTK or Cocoa, not both. I don't think the fragmentation of plugins is a good thing. Hopefully they have a plan to deal with that.

I remember liking amaroK but of course that was like ten years ago so who knows if it's anything like the program I used to use.

From what I've seen of iTunes ability to keep album art that I've added or automatically download ones I'm missing, there's no way in hell that I'd let it match my music collection.

Some of the cover art is ok, some is meh (special edition banners), and some is in the WTF range (one zydeco album especially).

Not that I have that much that's not mainstream, but I'm kind of particular about the stuff that's in there.

If you're looking for something to organize, tag, and locate album art I recommend musicbrainz. They have an app for osx. It's not incredibly intuitive at first but I'm currently cleaning my collection up with it

They also have an API that you can use if you're programmatically inclined to automate the process. It does have limits, so be mindful of including delays between requests.

http://musicbrainz.org/doc/Development

Musicbrainz is fantastic, as is beets:

http://beets.io

When I was a young teenager in the early nineties I dreamt about having all the worlds music available to me via the internet.

This is more or less the reality today.

Access beats ownership anyway IMO.

A lot of people repeating that line will change their tune when Spotify finally goes out of business in a couple of years time.

Streaming Music in the cloud is not going anywhere.

Not sure why that would change that?

There have never been as much access to music as there is today. It's a good thing.

Price conflicts. The streaming system is obviously worthwhile, but we haven't negotiated a price point where users, streamers, and artists are all willing to play ball.

At the moment, it seems like someone always has to take a loss, and the rationalization might be ugly.

http://www.businessinsider.com/spotifys-growth-has-gotten-fa...

And we will call this the golden decade of music access, as our children fetishize the 2010s

Yep it's only going to get tighter and tighter (legitimately so, IMHO).

Just like we fetishize the Napster era.

Outside of Apple I'm of the opinion Spotify will be the only one that survives as competition. Tidal? Much more likely.

Besides, Spotify is playing ball with the record labels. As numerous articles are indicating though, the RIAA is out for blood on YouTube. That's going to be much more contentious in the future I'd wager.

I consider reliability to be a fundamental element of access. If I have music on my hardware, I can always play it. If other people are granting me access to download music from their hardware, I can play it whenever I have access to their hardware, up to the limits of whatever constraints they have chosen to apply to their service, which may include having to spend money or listen to ads.

Different people have different needs; I'd rather have a smaller collection of music I can count on than access to all the music which is encrusted with hassle and advertising.

Sure each to their own.

But I believe you will belong to a diminishing group of people who do so and nothing wrong with that.

Would you rather be in control of your life, or would rather it be at the mercy of the whims of a faceless corporation?

Sure each to their own.

Be in control of my life?

What do you mean? You are not in control of your life if you rent a car? An apartment? A set of Ski?

I mean that you are less in control of your music collection if it's in the hands of a company rather than if you own it yourself.

The fact a majority are happy with the current state of affairs doesn't change this. Your comment about "belonging to a diminishing group" is irrelevant?

And you have a much smaller music collection because you have to buy it all yourself to own it. So I am not sure what freedom it it you think you have that I don't? I can just buy it if i really want it but mostly it's available.

So it simply make no sense to talk about freedom in this context.

You are confusing two very different things.

Not sure when this turned into a dick swinging context but, let me explain: you don't "have" a music collection, by definition mine is bigger.

No by definition you own more than i do. But I have access to more than you do.

The difference is subtle but important.

I can listen to exactly the same music as you can and much much more.

Until the day said access is unilaterally revoked.

Or until the day your house burned down.

Guess who is most vulnerable?

I'm sympathetic to this (well, if I trusted access to continue uninterrupted and offline), but for me we're nowhere near there yet.

Anyone with sufficiently unusual music tastes can't possibly get their content via 'access'. And that's not a high bar - even tame interests like EDM, jam, or jazz are completely unsolved via access in my experience.

Actually Spotify's numbers show that people listen to much more off-chart music when they only pay for access instead.

So there are many ways to look at this.

Sure, but the point is there are many off chart artists and tracks that I'm aware of, or own, that Spotify provides no access to. I've also found great underground albums by artists that one day went dark on Spotify. That happens all the time on all streaming services, especially YouTube. For obscure selection, the competitors to Spotify are even worse.

Overall access is still a ways out. Access is taken away as easily at it is given. Without ownership you lose the ability to ever share that experience you once had access to.

Sure but this IMO is greatly countered by the fact that because you don't have to buy the music you get to listen to way more music.

There are a lot of music that you would love but you aren't listening to because you don't know it exist. The chances of you experiencing that is bigger if you have access to more music without having to buy it.

I don't understand why you say access beats ownership.

Do you think this only about music? Or books? Or movies?

If so, do you apply it to other things in your life? Do you own a car, or do you only rent? How about your home? Is it better to rent, or buy a place to live? Clothes? Why buy a pair of jeans, when you could pay a monthly fee to have new jeans delivered to your house and return the (month) old ones?

For me, IMO, I would rather own my music, books and house, but rent my car and clothes.

Because access is something that can be cut off or denied.

And at the end of the day, as long as I can walk naked to my home listening to music and reading, I will always be happy.

I would rent all that if it was as easy as Spotify, Google music etc.

Although a house is not comparable.

Why own something if I instead can rent everything when I need it?

If I could I would rent everything. Some things I would rent for a long time others for a short.

But each to their own of course.

Except it isn't all the world's music. I have literally thousands of recordings that you can't stream, because they aren't available.

Now, it is quite likely that you have no interest in at least the vast bulk of those, because they're obscure bands from my youth, live recordings of acts you don't care about, experimental music from the 80s, etc.

But rental access to the RIAA machine is a far, far cry from "all the world's music".

As for access, well. To each their own. I subscribe to the cliche that if you don't own the substrate, you don't own the data, and it can go away against your wishes. Now, Spotify an friends don't seem to play games like the studios do with Netflix, but that's almost certainly a matter of a business environment that doesn't encourage it, not "dedication to serving music lovers" or whatever.

It isn't that I need to "own" music. I don't know what exactly that's even supposed to mean in a world of bullshit IP laws that make less sense daily. It is that bits on your own platter is the only way to ensure your own continued access. And again, maybe you don't care - maybe the menu is more important for you than the particular flavors on it. But I know I'm not the only one who likes listening to things that are utterly unavailable on any service, for streaming or "purchase".

Thats not what I am saying. I am saying that if you could I think it beats owning it.

I agree that a world in which absolutely everything ever recorded is available, and there is no risk of access ever going away, is superior to one in which I store my own bits, pay for my own disks, etc.

Let me know when we get there.

I was thinking about this while driving recently - both the iTunes / Apple Music approach, and the way I go about organizing and sorting my things.

As a guy who grew up with Mac until playing catch-up with Win95 (and some DOS to fit in), being familiar with digital storage techniques has formed over time. I get the concept of certain files being certain places - system files versus personal files versus program resources. This kind of structuring appeals to me.

Thus, rather than totally embrace the "OS as Helper" technique that Windows likes (put everything in "Music") or going the iTunes route (behemoth management program with hooks to other stuff), I maintained some of my fencing habits. Sure, I use the "Music" folder but that's only for purchased music. In a separate folder - which makes things easier to back-up I think - I have my "Music Projects" folder.

In my workflow I've got my DAW projects and output separate from what I'd consider the 'commercial music' area, and this might have saved a lot of stress that Pinkstone went through. Maybe not, but my hunch is it might have helped. iTunes can't touch what it can't see, and letting it anywhere near a collection of bootlegs and/or "less than legal" origin files is something I would avoid out of general suspiciousness. That applies to original works that don't fit any standard cataloging function either; I don't think that would help me.

Personally I'm still satisfied with Winamp, a couple skins and visualization things (it does help me ID3 tag my music as well), and honestly can't recall if I've ever installed iTunes in the past 10 years. I genuinely don't think so, and while my own process has flaws and issues (overlap of versions, DAW files are big, etc) there's some protection I kind of like in a way.

I've purposley avoided Apple Music for this reason. I still use it as my main library, but i've starting using Google Play Music for their radio stations, which I have found superior to iTunes.

Anyone have advice for moving off of iTunes completely? Do you backup to S3 or a external disk?

I just spent a while offloading a bunch of music from a Macbook Pro that had to be returned to an educational institution after years of use. I was able to get to the music files directly and copied/pasted them over to large flash drives. I did the same for photos on that machine. From there I uploaded them to a network storage device where they've just been chilling until they're downloaded to a new machine.

I loved iTunes back when I had an iPod. Used it a lot, and made managing playlists a lot easier than what I had before, which I think was MusicMatch player, or something.

iTunes could rip my CDs, it could make playlists, and I could sync the whole thing to my iPod. I honestly don't see what other features it would need, but if I understand correctly, Apple managed to turn it into a horrifying monstrosity.

Nowadays, every once in a while, I accidentally launch iTunes on my Mac, and I have no idea how to use it anymore.

First, having an alias to the "Automatically add to iTunes" folder on my desktop has helped quite a bit with adding non-Apple ecosystem music (primarily from Bandcamp) to iTunes. It doesn't seem to make too many wrong choices, but then again, likely the people who package the mp3s do their best to work with the ecosystem.

Second, I've stayed the eff away from iTunes Music. It likely doesn't have what I want anyways, but compared to their hardware, it just seems more like some executive's idea of how to improve Apple's income from iTunes rather than an actual music lover's platform. And iTunes is kind of a hot mess trying to do too many things while execs decide to keep tinkering with it rather than doing the multi-product rethinking they would need to make it work again.

Third, a few times a year I make sure to backup everything that isn't on Apple, and most of everything that is. And not via "Time Machine" either, which you should be doing, but actually copying the iTunes music folder or any other downloads onto external media.

http://beets.io/

beets has done an amazing job helping curate my music. I'm sure it's been covered here before.

Has it gotten better at tagging classical music? I used it for a while a year or two ago and back then it was pretty bad for tagging classical music.

I tag everything the same way, no matter what I use to listen to the music, the OS I use, tag app, music source etc. Just Artist, Album, and track number. Clear all the other fields. For classical, I appreciate that there can be different labels releasing different masterings of the same recording, or different conductors of the same piece, or a given conductor conducting the same piece with different orchestras etc but for me I'm happy sticking that info as part of the Album. For example: Gurrelieder (Boulez). I don't see any point in getting anal about it all. You can stick the notes in the folder you store the music in, or have filenames with extra details but as long as the music player lets you drill down from artist to album, and plays the tracks in the album in the correct order, that's good enough. I don't waste my time with cover art etc because if I want to look at it I can do that on a pc or in real life; i'm never going to be staring my my phone while it's playing, and it's never going to be quicker to wade visually through cover art to find what you're looking for (although I guess it might aid lazily browsing through your collection if you're not sure what to play).

Very sensible advice I think. Your system insulates you from things outside your control.

To chime in on my workflow here, I used to be a heavy user of windows media player, until streaming became big and I bought into the Zune system - for which the software was incredible.

You could download media from the online library and it'd count as part of your local library, and you could create auto playlists that filtered all of your music (streaming and local) into those playlists. Then, you'd just auto-sync those to your devices.

This method isn't possible on any service anymore, and I believe it's because of increasingly more restrictive licensing. The closest I've found, and what I use today is google music. I upload all of my local content to them, and then mark songs that I 'like' as liked. GMusic has an autoplaylist of all my likes that I then sync to all my devices, including my car which has an android stereo.

I encourage everyone to step outside the Apple/Spotify walled gardens every now and then and resurvey the offerings - iTunes is just such an awful bit of software that it makes their service a non-starter for me. GMusic has a great mobile and web client, with download support which is all I need.

I dislike iTunes as well as the built in music player on my iPhone just due the bad UI and some difficulty downloading songs to my phone. I also use it with iTunes match for all my music and I listen many hours a day and do curate my collection with it.

It's not perfect, but it's not exactly clubbing baby seals. It's always respected my metadata changes even when things start out wrong. I think I got boned a few times when match mixed up explicit/non-explicit versions, but that is it.

I still very much enjoy collecting music and I don't think iTunes is getting in the way of that. I really have to wonder what the author did to delete their entire collection in iTunes? That isn't a thing that is supposed to happen easily on desktop. The stuff I have synced with iTunes match is even harder to delete and there is warning when you try to delete the cloud copy.

On phones yeah it's just a brain dead disaster with multiple ways to have it wipe.

My belief is that iTunes is purposefully broken and will likely be broken up into separate apps.

On the music side it forces people to use streaming services instead which the music industry prefers to digital ownership, and Apple's own service is doing well. They've (Apple) always played ball with the music industry as everyone must, they've just managed to get better deals than most when working with them.

Where it really hurts is in podcasting. I think podcasts & audiobooks would be much bigger if syncing worked worth a damn on iTunes.

On the i-device side, syncing should be be removed wholesale from the media player. Honestly, it should be relegated to a little task icon like Caffeine. The only reason this isn't the case is because the storage capacity of these devices is so (needlessly) tiny, again perhaps purposefully in order to prevent day to day users from keeping a lot of downloaded music/videos locally.

10 years I had 10,000+ songs on my iTunes - their version updates and switching computers (prior to / not fully utilizing Time Machine) slowly decayed my library down to ~150.

Then along came Spotify, Soundcloud, etc and I haven't returned to iTunes. No Apple Music either. Not sure what would get me back to my iTunes habit of 10 years ago...

This is why I still use iTunes 10. After that point, the program no longer had the organizational features I'd been depending on ever since iTunes 4 or maybe even earlier. It's unfortunate that there isn't a similarly feature-rich music organization app for OS X available (and I've tried them all).

I updated at some point and regret it. Do you know if it is possible to downdate my iTunes and go back to 10?

I used this: https://awesometoast.com/downgrading-to-itunes-10-7-from-itu...

Thanks, will check it out.

I haven't (willingly) used iTunes in years. When I do, it's only to reset a frozen iPod.

Shazam: music discovery while mobile

KEXP Twitter feed: music discovery while streaming at work

Amazon: one-click purchase

Clementine: Linux media manager including iPod sync

AllMusic: artist research

In 2016 Apple insists on wiping my iPhone's mp3s clean if I connect it to any PC or Mac other than the main PC or Mac that was used to transfer mp3s on to it.

Golden rule of owning your own (purchased or created) content: only use 3rd party content organization applications. I don't use iTunes for my music. I don't buy things from amazon for my kindle.

Regarding UX: iTunes is proof that bad UX doesn't matter as much as "location". Users somehow figure out how to use apps if they matter enough to them.

The other golden rule of owning: never buy DRM-enabled content, even if you can break it, because doing so only encourages the actors pushing for DRM.

And bought content needs backup.

I've been using Subsonic because it was free software but since it moved away and is now closed source I stopped paying and am now using Syncthing to sync all my files in between my computers and my Sailfish OS phone, I have to say that this is the best way I can enjoy my music yet.

I know a few women who tell me they're horrible at using computers. When I asked why, they said "because I can't even figure out iTunes."

Between dodgy iCloud and bloated iTunes, Apple has destroyed the "computer self-esteem" of a generation.

iTunes is the reason I got rid of my iPhone.

I highly recommend Vox [1] as a lightweight alternative to iTunes.

I've used it as a compete replacement for iTunes with the exception of when I want to add music to my iPhone.

[1] www.coppertino.com

iTunes is working as designed, enslaving users to Apple's "cloud". A few power users might not like this, but they're a small fraction of the user base and don't matter to Apple. That's the reality.

The new UI designs in iTunes are almost as bad as the new UI designs in xCode.

iTunes has a simple solution they could employ — simply don't delete the original music from the device they are "cloning to the cloud".

Same.

Wasn't that claim determined to be a hoax?

I know something has deleted several dozen MP3s from my collection. The end result of which is iTunes would refuse to sync my phone. Because those two features belong in the same app, and all. In the end I had to delete my entire iTunes music library and start fresh, just so my phone would sync

That was the experience that moved me from an iPhone to android several years ago - not only that I had to wipe my phone to sync, but that

* I couldn't back up what was on the phone (without first wiping the phone) * that iTunes wouldn't let me re-download any music I had bought (this was pre-iCloud) * this was the second time it happened to me - the first time was with an iPod pretty early in their existence, so I was willing to accept incomplete options. (I'm rough on laptops, which is what I had been syncing to)

Seeing that they had no interest in improving this situation after years of being aware of it, I bailed. I'm told that Apple is now better about repeat downloads from their store and have stopped considering the PC as the source of truth for the device but they still are terrible for families with multiple accounts but not one Mac/PC per user.

Frankly, I'm glad Apple is out there pushing boundaries, but I've not missed anything from my iPhone. (my Macbook remains a great Unix-ey device)

(Assuming you're referring to the James Pinkstone story referenced in the beginning) Sort of. Pinkstone was telling the truth in that iTunes did delete all his music, but after some follow-up with Apple it was determined that it was a bug and not, as he speculated in the first post, the result of a conspiracy to control what happens to music you already purchased (the Apple CSR was just clueless; which is well within the realm of possibility)

That doesn't really matter to this story's context though: the Slate author is complaining that its the general shittiness of iTunes, not any sinister agenda on Apple's part, that is destroying his desire to collect music.

wha? link? something…? Why do you even think it's a hoax? Your comment ounds like just spreading baseless doubt to me…

Yeah iTunes is long past it's prime, Vinyl or CD is really the only way to collect music now I suppose. I would discredit CD a bit due to quality of mp3, but whose to say you cant buy a collection of FLAC CDs

I hate to be rude but this author is a dumbass. In big bold letters he has "On a basic level, I don’t have a music collection anymore because Apple made it too hard and frustrating to maintain one." when instead it should read "I didn't take care of my own music library and instead left it to a third party who didn't do what was in my interest."

I still have a music collection, and am quite happy with it. That's true because I had the sense not to let iTunes within 100 yards of the thing.

A better article might be "Apple services are completely incompatible with having a music collection."

Technically Apple is a 2nd party with lipservice toward being a third party. Much of iTunes content comes to users through Apple.

I have 30,000+ songs in my music library. I've taken the time to meticulously tag each and every song when adding music to my library.

I currently use MusicBee and love it. It's somewhat lightweight and its tagging tools are great. I've also used Media Monkey for a few years and that also has great tagging tools, but it's not as lightweight as MusicBee.

I only ever use iTunes for purchasing songs I can't get via other channels such as b-sides or whatever.

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