133754UC3

by John of 133754UC3.com

Well if you’re listening Apple, or in this case reading, there are a few improvements that need to be addressed in iTunes. Rather than adding visualizations or piggy backing on the “Pandora” type of reccomendation add-in, I think it’s time iTunes addresses some essential problems in your program.

The more aggrivating problem in my opinion is the lack of a “folder watch” or auto adding feature in iTunes. This is common amongst other media players like WinAmp. Basically whenever music is added to your designated music folder it gets automatically added to your library. There are a couple programs that fix this issue in iTunes.

1. iTunes Folder Watch (Windows XP or Vista) - The demo of this program only allows manual adding of tracks, after it automatically scans your music folder. The full version (€7.5 or approx. $10.63 USD) will run in your system tray and monitor your folder and add new tracks to your library when added to your music folder. It even will create a playlist for the new music added so you don’t lose track of when and what new tracks you’ve added.

2. iTunes Library Updater - This program is freeware and has a similar functionality to the above program, although it does not have an automatic adding feature. The one thing it does have is the ability to clean dead tracks. These are tracks in your iTunes library that are no longer located in your music folder.

Another problem I ran into was that sometimes iTunes doesn’t like to add tracks to the library even when they are in an acceptable format. I’ve learned that this is due to the headers of an mp3 file. After searching for a solution I came across a program that analyzes mp3 tracks for errors including that of the headers and fixes them.

Mp3 Validator - Freeware that fixes problems with errors in mp3 files.

Finally a program issue that is an easy fix is when the tracks in an album are out of order. All you have to do is Select the tracks that need to be ordered correctly, Right Click and hit Get Info. Select the info tab if it is not already selected and enter for disc number 1 of 1