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

I just ordered a Mac Mini today which will come with Catalina pre-installed. So I’m happy that the column browser is apparently back.

While it will take time, I think I’m going to manually move my MP3 library into iTunes rather than let it import from my old machine... just take my time and do it artist by artist and refresh some album art which, over the years, has ranged from great quality JPGs to seriously?-I-couldn’t-find-anything-better? quality. That’s a task that should keep my out of trouble for a while.

Right now I’m at 599 artists, 2,279 albums, and 31,135 songs. The 599 really bothers my mild OCD. Gonna have to buy music from a new artist in the next week to get that to 600.

 

I just downloaded the latest update and now I can't import anything into my library.

 

The latest update did nothing to restore my missing artwork, unless there’s some magic Apple trick you are supposed to do.

 

I'm spitting blood. I've done all their fix-its and I still can't import anything beyond my desktop.

 

Okay, if I go to Music> File> Import it'll work but I can't drag music straight into the library like I've done for the last 20 years

 

Bummer

 

If you are using a Mac, give Swinsian a try, only $24.95 and there is a free trial that does not require any payment info. Supports all music formats and sounds better than iTunes for me.

 

There has been a bit of national discussion lately about Innovators vs. Maintainers. Innovators get all the glory, but the Maintainers keep everything working (Most jobs, including most tech jobs, fall under this category.)

Apple is losing touch with the concept of maintaining what works. Innovation for innovation's sake leaves Forum users here "spitting blood". Not good.

"If it ain't broke, don't fix it" should be taught to all Apple employees. iTunes in it's last version was just about perfect. (The day I am forced to upgrade to Catalina will be a sad day, but I vow that it won't be in 2020 or 2021.) Now, "iTunes/Music app" was so badly dumbed down & damaged, we will now spend years of blood sweat and tears to encourage Apple to incrementally fix it. It is truly infuriating, and also embarrassing.

 

I agree with everything you said except for the highlighted section. Steve Job's approach was that the Company should cannibalize and replace its own products before a competitor does it for them. It can be frustrating at times - my pet peeve at the moment is the iPad Pro's conversion from lightning connector to USB-C - but on the whole it's a strategy that's worked well for them.

With regard to Catalina, I'm holding off as long as possible as well, but we need to forget that we're the outliers in the Apple universe and their target users likely don't care about these issues, except for the DJ community.

 

Here's what I'm reading. Correct me if I'm wrong.

1. You do not have Catalina.

2. Yet somehow you know that the Music app in Catalina is "badly dumbed down and damaged."

Personally,I find Music to be neither. Within 48 hours, all 57000+ tracks in my library were in place, all with the proper artwork (including the custom artwork I'd embedded myself), and all my playlists were untouched. There's no artwork in Songs view, what a tragedy. The app itself functions as well as better than it ever did as iTunes.

Why, it's almost as if different people have different experiences.

 

I have not updated to Catalina. I keep my library indexed on my computer's hard drive, but the music files themselves are on external drives. I am not good with computers, and we (Apple customer support and I) had a heck of a time importing everything to my current computer after my old one began to fail. Does anyone know if this arrangement is going to make switching over more complicated?

 

just installed 10.15.2
the column browser is back, thank god
and it looks like they also fixed the album view issue (it no longer brings you to the top/beginning after viewing an album)
can't really comment on the artwork though

 

i had to upgrade the ram in my 2013 imac to run catalina,
so music runs pretty smoothly.
then last week they at least updated the remote app,
but it's pretty janky.
i estimate i've lost around 60% of my artwork,
and i'm in the process of rebuilding all of my playlists.
poop emoji.

 

I upgraded this weekend, holding off until the .2 update and a backup of 700 Gb of user data (which took some 6 hours to do from the SSD to USB drive - appallingly slow). Upon opening the new Music app, all the artwork was missing, in 46,000 tracks (6,000 albums). Left it running overnight and in the morning all artwork had reappeared - except for the handful of tracks I had which used the artwork provided by "Get Album Artwork" (almost all of my collection has custom artwork). So I had to redo "GAA" whereupon most tracks failed to update, presumably because those albums are not available in Apple Music (really? The band Garbage is not available from Apple? Nor "At Fulsom Prison"?). Other than that, it seems to work fairly well, although it has gratuitously discarded some of my preferences, such as my View Options in the Songs tab, and worse of all it seems that Search is now all but non-functional. Verdict: despite a decade of updates, it's still a pretty lousy piece of software and a lousy service.

EDIT: so it appears the Search functionality has been changed so that you have to "Show Filter Field". So now you have two different ways to Search, which together add up to less than the previous method, because it used to allow searches just within Song Names, Composers etc. Utter stupidity from Apple.

EDIT2: oh, and I just noticed: my AppleScripts have disappeared. What a disaster this company has become under Tim Cook and his cohort of corporate mediocrities.

 

Scripts have moved - previously they were in either: /library/iTunes/Scripts or [username]/Library/iTunes/Scripts.
The naming convention is: /library/Music/Scripts or [user name]/Library/Music/Scripts.

If you are using 'dougscripts' check to see if he's upgraded them to Catalina compatible versions: Doug's AppleScripts » dougscripts.com

 

Thank you! Yeah, figured it out anyhow... All scripts need to be fixed, to change references to the application "iTunes" to "Music"**. I did so for my own copy-selected-tracks-to-CD-tracks-but-without-dougs-bug script and it works fine. Annoyingly, as I go to re-download the rest from Doug's, while most are no longer relevant for me, the Search-Replace-Tag script costs $1.99 which I am too cheap to pay for, so I will figure that out when I decide I need it again (of course I am going to buy it at that point, heh)

** There are a lot of scripts on Doug's that haven't been updated, but this is probably because the original developers haven't got round to it, or don't care anymore. It looks as if the Music app's AppleScript dictionary is a straight subset of the iTunes one, so I would think you could just download an obsolete script, open it in Script Editor, and make the fix yourself - in fact, the fix is made automatically when you open an incompatible script, because Script Editor can no longer find the iTunes app, and prompts you to select another app in its place, ie. "Music". Voila, the obsolete script is no longer obsolete. Let me know, anyone, if this works for you as it did for me.

EDIT: so, I just tried fixing the supposedly obsolete version of Search-Replace, and opening it in Script Editor automatically fixes it, and it works! It seems that Script Editor remembers that application "iTunes" is now "Music" and applies the edit itself. So this is worth trying with any old AppleScripts you have that supposedly won't work anymore - just open them in Script Editor and choose "Music" when it will complain the first time that "iTunes" doesn't exist.

 

First time poster here. I just want to say that this is the exact type of forum I have been looking for. I have cruised through the forum from page one thru now and I just want to thank everyone for their input. I have been using SoundJam MP, I mean iTunes since it’s inception and I share the same concerns with my local library (49,420 here) that all of you seem to have had. I have been holding off for a few updates like a few of you. I am tempted to make the upgrade now and I am just hoping that following issues which are the most important to myself have been addressed before I take the dive.

1. Smart Playlists: I have one master smart-playlist composed of 30 tracks. These 30 tracks are compiled of tracks from multiple other smart-playlists. Each of these rely criteria, most importantly of which “last played” information.

2. Play-counts & Last played information: Does all play count and last play information care over to the new player.

3. Folders: I have buried a lot of playlists into folders, just curious if they are still around.

Any input would be a great help. Thanks everyone again. It's nice to see a few of us with large music libraries still around.
Dub

 

You are good - all three aspects you've listed remain unmolested and carry over fine. Just make a backup first of /Users in case something does in fact go wrong. And give it plenty of time to sort out the artwork on the first run of the app after upgrading - do NOT freak if it's all missing, and start trying to fix it - I am sure that will mess things up royally. Just let it run for 24 hours and hold off panicking until then

One little thing I noticed - I was convinced the Music app was refusing to honor the last played/play counts updated by me listening to synced tracks on my iPhone. But it turns out that the Recently Played pre-defined smart playlist now sorts by default in ascending, not descending order (ie. the most recently played track is now at the bottom of the list, not the top). Why the change? Who knows. Apple aren't saying.

 

I don't think this will make any difference. Just make sure the external drives are plugged in when you first run the new Music app, of course, and be prepared for a bit of a wait until things are sorted out, artwork-wise.

 

I appreciate that the app works well for you, but working better than ever? Just how do you search for a given composer now, for example, since the old functionality has been removed? That's a pretty basic flaw introduced for no good reason at all.

 

Umm, I think I'll wait a bit longer.

 

I'll let you know if I ever have any reason to search for a composer.

 

Good idea. Probably best to leave the quality assessments to the power users who can be bothered.

 

lol

Oh honey, if only you knew...

 

Help a brother out, if you are an expert, and see if there is a still a way to do what you could do before.