Don't "upgrade" to Catalina if you have a large iTunes library

You’re welcome.

 

Well, as I said before, I'm using iTunes 12.9 in Cataline due the Retro app that I said.

I can confirm that functions perfect as used to do. The best of all this, it's the app it's converted to an standalone, so you can move from a computer to another. It's like a drag and drop app like... mmm I don't know... whatever one.

Give it a try. I know, maybe we are a bit hard to make changes, but Music really sucks.

 

THIS is the best news of the year out of Apple!! Whatever else they have done and/or announced this year, it absolutely pales in comparison to the fact that they are bringing back the Column Browser.

Pooping out the new "Music" app without the Column Browser really made me finally question my allegiance to Apple. ...an absolutely horrendous and embarrassing omission on their part. Did they really think that none of us have large curated music collections anymore, and thus a dumbed-down interface with bloated white space would be something nice for us? No way in heck I would have ever installed the new "Music" app until it had the Column Browser available.

2019 Apple Highlights...
>Bringing back the Column Browser? Do it! This is the stuff for major Press Releases, Apple!
>The new OS for my iMac? Totally unnecessary.
>Splitting up iTunes? Certainly not very important but >acceptable< to me as long as they bring back the Column Browser AND the "Fit To Screen" maximum size album artwork from iTunes... (The second thing which I expect they will never do which to me is very sad, and a major loss of core function (based on my usage).)

 

The Music app was definitely written to focus on those that solely use Apple Music to the detriment of anyone who had been using iTunes for the last two decades to manage their own library. I’m not sure what thinking went I to this other than making money by selling subscriptions. At this point it wouldn’t surprise me to see them drop local library support completely by 2025.

 

iVolume 3.8.0 with Catalina compatibility has been released. There is a little trick in the FAQ to restore your settings....

Help, iVolume 3.8.0 lost all my fancy settings and previous analyzation results!
For the Music app on macOS Catalina iVolume for Mac had to change the way how it reads the music library. Furthermore iVolume always supported multiple libraries and differences them by an identifier. However, by using the new method to read the libraries, all identifiers have changed, so iVolume sees “new” libraries since version 3.8.0.
If you are an advanced user, you can rename your old file containing your previous settings and results to the name of the new one. The files are stored in
~/Library/Application Support/de.ivolume.mac/de.ivolume.IDENTIFIER.plist
You may look at their modification dates to identify the right ones. Please quit iVolume before making these modifications.

 

I hope iVolume will be functional in Catalina. That explanation is not really an easy-to-understand "how to" but I'm confident everything's gonna be sorted out.

 

Does this mean iVolume loses all the volume-level metadata in files already scanned? It isn’t easy to understand. But, I’m not complaining...glad to have this upgrade.

 

yes when i look at Finder I see the artwork but when i open the same file in itunes, sorry, MUSIC, it doesn't see recognize the artwork.

 

i should look into this. my buddy suggested the same thing. its a newer receiver so i'll have to look around into these options. Thanks!

 

I'm not sure if anyone has mentioned this yet (and I don't know when this began occurring): if you've used Volume Adjust to adjust the volume of an entire album or group of songs together at once, then try to change just a single one of those songs to a different volume level now (using volume adjust again), it does not take. You need to adjust the same, original group of songs again to the middle level (or perhaps any level, I'm not sure), then you can adjust them singularly again.

I cannot believe how much time I've wasted on dealing with iTunes bugs over my lifetime, but it's absolutely absurd.

 

If you are using a Mac, give Swinsian a try. It is a nice alternative.

 

As with others who have spoken above, my own use of the column browser in iTunes is critically important to me. As a result I have not moved to Catalina and have had it in mind for some time that I should look into alternatives to iTunes. That led me a few days ago to find this thread and become a member of this forum. I want to thank well and truly everyone who has contributed to this thread.

I hope to give Swinsian a try, but want to know first how it will interact or not with my existing iTunes library. If anyone here knows, would getting and using Swinsian affect my ability to use iTunes if I wanted to switch back? As a perhaps related matter, would using Swinsian require me to create a duplicate set of music files from the ones I have for iTunes (which total, as I just checked, 764.82 GB, far more than the free space I have left on my iMac)? I have not been able to find answers to these questions in the FAQs or other information on the Swinsian site.

Also, if the point is mentioned in this thread I missed it, but I found on another blog a recent post by someone who tells everyone there that as a beta user he is 'happy to inform those following this thread that the column browser will return with the next macOS update. It is available in the 10.15.2 beta, and works as previously.' Fingers crossed on that, but I am still interested in finding an alternative, like Swinsian.

 

That is the first I've seen of Column Browser returning and simply hooray, hooray

 

The 10.15.2 update restoring the column browser has just been released

 

While I welcome these improvements, there is absolutely nothing about restoring the filtering to its former functionality. My ongoing project to rerip my CDs done over a decade ago has almost ground to a halt thanks to Catalina.

Music

• Restores the column browser view for managing the music library
• Resolves an issue that may prevent album artwork from appearing
• Fixes an issue that may reset music equalizer settings during playback

iTunes Remote

• Adds support for using an iPhone or iPad to remotely control the Music and TV apps on a Mac

 

I've been holding off going to Catalina, waiting for this.

Wish me luck.

 

It took more than 24 hours to upgrade a late 2015 iMac to Catalina and after all said and done...the computer was totally useless.

 

Thanks for that report.

I have a late 2013 iMac that was bought in August 2015, and now I know I can no longer update it. I turn it on so rarely now, mostly to add something to iTunes or to fill out an insurance form or store my tax return....I will see if this will be my last desktop computer. I think we are approaching the time when these machines will be obsolete.

 

FYI, I just saw an update come in for Catalina (10.15.2) which restores Column Browser and fixes an artwork issue in the music app, among other updates and bug fixes. More here.

EDIT: Oops. Should've gone to the end of the thread! I see several users like @Cerebus and @doppelganger beat me to it!

 

Good news for the column browser, however you still can't show album artwork in Songs view. This is important also. Has anyone found that this option has returned? I'm reading elsewhere that it was also brought back but I am not able to find it in the View options.

 

Would like to know this as well. Album artwork isn't an option under VIEW > SHOW VIEW OPTIONS.

 

Happy that the update brings back the column browser, which so many of us want and needed, but sadly they still haven't addressed the fact that DJ's, like myself, still need MUSIC to allow me to use the XML. files of every song for my DJ app, as used to be the case with iTunes. I refuse to update any of my APPLE computers until I know that they have worked that out or I'm out of business!

 

From the Apple User Forum:

Just a few days after my last post it now is official. Catalina 10.15.2 has re-instated the ability to control the Music.app on your Mac with the iTunes Remote app on your iPhone/iPad/Watch.


There is one thing which may at first sight seems to be a bit counter-intuitive when setting up the connection between your iDevice and the Music.app on your Mac.


Up until High Sierra and iTunes the easiest way to connect iTunes Remote app with your iTunes library was with using/activating Home Sharing. This does not work with the Music.app in Catalina (at least not when I tried it).


In order to establish a connection between the iDevice and the Music.app on the Mac I had to deactivate Home Sharing in the iTunes Remote app on my iDevice. You can do that under Settings (upper right corner when you open the iTunes Remote app) Also I had to delete all previously established connections to any iTunes Library. You can do that under Edit (upper left corner in iTunes remote app).

Once you have done the above two steps you will see a new Setup Screen in the iTunes Remote app prominently offering you "Connect with Home Sharing" or "Connect manually" in smaller letters (sorry, I don't have English as my default language setting - so the real options may read slightly different). Here I had to tap on "Connect manually". Once I did that my iDevice appeared in the side bar of the Music.app on my Mac with a little iTunes Remote logo and I received a four digit code on my iDevice which I had to enter on the Mac. Now the connection was established.

One more thought on this:

Thinking twice it seems logical that Home Sharing has to be deactivated and can not be used to establish a connection between the iTunes Remote app and the Music.app on the Mac. Home Sharing on the Mac used to be activated or deactivated within iTunes and as such is obviously closely linked to iTunes and iTunes is no longer available in Catalina. Now in Catalina the equivalent of Home Sharing is called Media Sharing and this is not controlled within the Music.app but within System Preferences in the section Sharing. In addition, the iTunes Remote app also still needs to work with older systems still running on pre-Catalina versions of macOS with iTunes. There you will most likely still need to use the Home Sharing option.

So the problem of this seemingly counter-intuitive behaviour is more that we were so used to one thing that we did not really thought about the consequences of the transition from iTunes to Music.app and from Home Sharing to Media Sharing. Apple certainly could have documented this way better. Also it would be nice to see an update of the iTunes Remote app which gives you a bit more guidance in the setup procedure.

 

Has anyone tried to reimport their old itunes libraries after the update?

 

I’ve seen posts claiming that displaying album art in song view has been restored but I don’t think it’s true. Presumably people have misunderstood language in the update notes about fixing other album art issues in the Mac music app and thought it was about a song view fix like the restored column browser.