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

This is not a Catalina-specific bug. It's happened to me randomly with iTunes over the years, and the fix has always been the one you suggested. I've stopped using iTunes/Music for ripping, so I haven't actually encountered it with Catalina.

 

Oh yeah, that was happening to me like two or three iTunes updates ago, then it stopped. And yes, that was how you fixed it then too.

 

Interesting as this is the first time I’ve seen it. Maybe it’s because I switched back to Music after using XLD to rip for years?

 

When I inserted a disc, XLD would freeze and I’d get the pinwheel of death for several minutes before recovering. The rip itself would take much longer than before even though the files were going to a temp folder and not Music.

My issues may have been resolved by a clean install of Catalina but the Music issues were just too much to continue to deal with. That’s the one application I use daily.

 

XLD updates about every other time I open it. Never had to worry about 32bit.

 

I never let third party apps add stuff to iTunes. I Generally rip to a dedicated folder and then move to iTunes. Then I can decide if I want to keep the .cue sheet and logfile.

 

34,838 songs in my library, 828 GB, 29 genres, tons of custom metadata and album art, many multiple versions of the same albums.

I waited until 10.15.2 to install Catalina and tried to do my homework and backups and prepared everything to the best of my ability.

Much to my relief, once all of the library conversion and relocation processing was done, I haven't had any problems at all with macOS Catalina Music. Nothing appears to have been messed with, lost, or otherwise screwed up.

I could go on at length about other Catalina headaches and annoyances, especially all of the new, opaque security settings and notifications, but in general I feel like I've been lucky.

I'm still advising friends and family to stick with Mojave if it's working well for them. I haven't found a single new feature in Catalina that makes me feel it's worth the potential hassle at this point, and most of the cool new stuff I wanted to check out (such as using an iPad as a second display via Sidecar) doesn't work on older hardware like my 2015 MacBook Pro.

 

More good & helpful information. I have a similarly sized lib (bit bigger, but not in a significant way). Several computers, all with Mojave and all eligible for Catalina. Was wondering about the "new feature" angle. Staying with Mojave for now.

 

Ditto... and such an important point. If I hadn’t bought a new computer with Catalina on it, I wouldn’t have upgraded my old system because after reading a lot of articles, I can’t think of a single new feature that grabbed my attention.

No doubt there’s some behind-the-scenes improvements and efficiencies (the new file system being one of them), but there wasn’t a, “Wow... I’ve gotta have that feature!” moment for me.

I think Apple made a mistake when they went to a yearly update of the OS. Releasing on a somewhat fixed schedule instead of “when it’s really needed and/or ready” has been a headache for numerous software companies and their users.

 

My experience is about the same as yours. I have about 47,000 tracks using 1.2 TB. I spent a lot of time cleaning up my hard drive and dumped all of my 32-bit software. I also waited to 10.15.2 to install Catalina. My install went very well and can’t really complain. No upgrade is perfect, but it has been nearly 2 months and I have no regrets.

 

Spot on @btltez ! Many folks have no interest at all in hand-curating their own music collection. That's fine! Everyone is different. As for me? It's one of my greatest passions in life. My collection is massive. 95% of my songs are Lossless. I've given every single song in my iTunes collection it's own individual artwork- mostly super hi-res scans of CD artwork including all of artwork- covers, back covers, inserts, band photos, as well as hi-quality photos from books like "Led Zeppelin by Led Zeppelin", etc, etc- giving a visual element which looks amazing on an iMac, and which adds so much to the music. iTunes is just far better while using it's best feature:

*Displaying "Fit to Screen" full-size album artwork* [How to enable this feature on *iTunes*: Command-Click (while holding the Command button, click) on the tiny album artwork square up in the iTunes header. This pops up the album artwork medium-large and center on your screen. Then, right-click that, and choose "Fit to Screen".]

I cannot possibly "upgrade" to Catalina yet, and I sure as heck won't "upgrade" from iTunes to Music App. Why give up my favorite feature for no reason? (For me, there are no useful Pros to upgrading to the new Catalina and Music App, from what I've observed on other's systems.) I plan to go at least 3-4 more years with my current iTunes and OS setup. (I bought a new iMac just before Apple killed iTunes-- having seen the wretched writing on the wall about what was to come.)

 

You sound like a guy that would love using Roon.

 

After a couple months of the Apple Music application I can safely say my biggest gripe with the software is the "Search" mechanism. A simple library search produces results which include a muddy convoluted combination of Songs, Artists, and Albums.

Those of us are familiar with any sort of database tools such as SQL, ACCESS or EXCEL understand the value of a query produced in some sort of logical tabular form. When searching in iTunes it did generate such results in an organized "song view" format (table view).

The search function is pretty useless to this point, but I will give it a pass given that this a 1.X version of the application. Other than that application is far from terrible. Here's to hoping Apple can rectify this in short order.

 

In response to my own post: There is a decent solution available by hitting command+shift+F or You can turn on the Filter field by selecting Show Filter Field from the View menu.
There is also a very comprehensive discussion in regards to this issue on the apple support site.

Filtering Apple Music in Catalina by Genr… - Apple Community

also there is a hidden GENRE option on the side bar

Here is the answer, as simple as hovering over LIBRARY in left sidebar, clicking edit and selecting GENRE

How do I play genre in new Mac Music App - Apple Community

 

Nice to know! The regular search function on the left side seems to only provide an Album view of a search. Command+Shift+F allows you to stay in the Column Browser which is where I interact most with my music. The only downside is that you can’t have the Filter field on all the time. As soon as you switch to a different Library option (Songs, Albums, Artists, etc.) it goes away and you have to turn it on again. Still, I’m glad I’m aware of that option now.

 

Good to know! I’m still on OSX 10.4 and must be using an older version of Amazon Music, I recently downloaded purchased tracks from the application, no problem. I usually don’t download them more than once after they get shuffled over to iTunes. It’s possible to download albums from the amazon website as a zip file, but I think they limit how many times you can (Google Play is the same way).

 

Whoa... That's dedication. Or did you mean 10.14?

 

Haha, yes I meant 10.14 High Sierra! Normally I would be on 10.15 Catalina by now, but the major changes to the OS and dodgy reviews have me holding back.

 

Do you mean 10.14 *Mojave, or *10.13 High Sierra?

Ten years ago, I would have updated to the latest, but older and wiser me runs the oldest version still receiving security updates and compatible with my mission critical software. In my case, that's 10.12 Sierra.

 

Consarnit! I'm correcting myself once again, it's MOJAVE 10.14.6 ! I sound like an old man, I'm not I swear. I don't even call every mp3 player an "iPod".

 

Two major, MAJOR issues with Catalina.

1) View mode in Music loses all Playlist views so you cannot see what's on a device or re-order it there. I can still see Playlists on the iPod or Phone. Cannot right click to send a song or playlist there either. Now have to manually drag . . . which is a drag.

2) Podcasts is a total failure. Won't recognize either my iPod or my Phone (which is an 11!!) So moving podcasts to the devices has become impossible. Seems there is an option to autosync most recent or "x" most recent podcasts automatially. But I don't want that. I want what I want on there, when I want it.

A total failure. If I could burn off Tim Cook's hairs one by one, I'd do it.

 

I despise that new app so much I totally changed the way I consume podcasts so I don’t have to use it. I really do like Apple and their products, but sometimes their decisions to remove features that give you flexibility and efficiency really baffle me.

 

Do tell, please. I may want to do that. I found that I could put podcasts back on through Finder, but there doesn't seem to be a way to manually move them. It's either sync everything unheard in Podcasts app or nothing. That's not what I want. I want to put them on as I wish, with control of each. Always had that and am dismayed they took that away. (It's the same in my phone so this appears to be a software issue, not an obsolete hardware issue). The engineers in charge should have all of their expensive San Jose or San Francisco real estate confiscated for this crime.

 

Well, you might not because it’s actually a bit more complicated. But I got so pissed off at the frustration of trying to do simple things in the new app that I used to be able to do, I wanted to find another solution.

I get a lot of my info sites (including new posts to this site) via an RSS reader on my desktop. It’s called Vienna, but there are tons of RSS programs. So rather than bouncing around to sites looking for updates each day, all the updates come to me via Vienna. I follow about 90 sites in Vienna.

Most podcasts have an RSS feed set up by default to feed into all the podcast apps, so getting that URL into Vienna is easy.

So a podcast is updated on some site, and I see it in Vienna. I click the link that takes me to the podcast episode and can either listen to it there, or download it to my desktop.

From my desktop, I’ll do one of two things. I’ll either AirDrop it to my phone if I want to listen while I’m out. Or more likely I’ll listen to it on my desktop in an app like VLC where I can play the podcast at a faster speed. I have about a dozen podcasts I follow and they’re all talking-head sorts of stuff that I can consume just as easily at 1.5x the speed (or higher).

Frankly, it’s not a system I would recommend to everyone. But I’ve been using Vienna so long that it’s just a part of my daily flow. Adding the podcasts was simple compared to what I felt was a much more difficult management scheme with the new Podcast app. They took away some management control that I didn’t appreciate. I’m sure, given time, I would have figured out the new system and gotten used to it, but I couldn’t be bothered.

 

Quick PSA for those that use Max to rip CD's. It was 32-bit and hadn't been updated in ten years - but the developer has just released a new 64-bit version! Head on over to his website and grab the update if you've used Max in the past pre-Catalina.