In a recent post I complained about the slow tunes of innovation in iTunes and asked for your opinions about what features Apple should add to its music player. And there was a whole lot of response. So let me summarize some of the additions readers made to my list:
- Support for lossless audio formats like FLAC or SHN
- Ability to play MP3 tracks with seamless, inaudible transitions
- A way of dealing with/weeding out duplicate files
- Fix Sound Check so it really works to fix the dynamic range of tracks.
- Better playlist management, including the ability to nest playlists inside “folders” and drag playlists into any order
- Remember the last song you played/where you were in a playlist when you quit iTunes
- Encoder plug-in support
- The ability to sort artists by last name first
- Assign multiple genres (in addition to my request for multiple artists) to a song, so that a song categorized as Jazz/Christmas appears in both Jazz and Christmas genres in the Browser.
- More complex Smart Playlists, going beyond “all” or “any” options
- “Last Played” category in Smart Playlists
- Screen saver that shows currently playing iTunes track
- Support for high-res album art
- Customizable radio station listings
- Better auto-location of missing music files
- Support for burning CD text
- More options for how iTunes organizes your library in the filesystem
- Support for “disc at once” burning
- Per-song control over crossfading
- Live Searching extends to playlists (playlists not containing found tracks would disappear)
- Edit song data remotely, via Sharing
- Make playlists for shared music
- Transition effects for when you pause, play, or choose Next Track
- Fix the positions of the Library, Radio, Music Store, CD and iPod icons in the source menu
- Multiple importing presets, selectable from a pop-up menu
- A “Sync Best” option for iPod users. For example, to sync all of the songs rated 4 or 5, and as many of those rated 3 as possible
- Group songs together (post-rip), so that while they’re separate tracks, they always play as a group
- Central repository for music in a home, with syncing and/or merged view of shared libraries
- Present your iTunes library in a Music Store interface, complete with Top 10 songs and albums, customizable favorites in scrolling windows, etc.
I don’t know how many, if any, of these features are under consideration at Apple, but I will try to pass your thoughts on to Apple. At that point, we’ll all just have to hope!
Thanks to everyone who contributed to this list.