[sethops1]

Call me crazy but iTunes/Music has always been one of the things I like most about macOS, at least after going through the settings and disabling all the features trying to push you into a subscription. I still manage my own ~500 file mp3 collection instead of paying monthly.

[Marsymars]

I feel like iTunes/Music gets worse with every version, to the point where I've effectively abandoned it finally after macOS 26.

My music collection is some tens of thousands of files served via a DAAP media server - since macOS 26, Apple Music will only play music for 5-15 minutes before giving up and just stopping.

For years, it's had a trivially reproducible bug where pausing Apple Music while playing from a DAAP server, then restarting the DAAP server will crash Apple Music.

After trying basically every airsonic/subsonic/plex/etc. alternative, I finally settled on simply using foobar2000 to play from an SMB share.

[gmt4]

I share the sentiment, even with fond memories of foobar2000/winamp/audacious, I've gone the route of just resorting to a "simpler" setup, just a collection of shell scripts to manage mpv to play my files from my disk/shares/http

This is how it looks on macOS, and Linux:

https://gmt4.github.io/mpvc/assets/mpvc-fzf-mac.jpg

https://gmt4.github.io/mpvc/

[surganov]

I used iTunes for a long time with a library of around 1,000 albums. If you weren’t too lazy to add proper covers and ID3 tags, it was actually pretty enjoyable to use – especially together with an iPod. But the problem is that iTunes imposes a very “flat” structure on your library, while for some collections a hierarchical folder/subfolder/file structure just works much better. Not to mention that you can keep all kinds of related files alongside the music itself – booklet scans, lyrics, interviews, links, PDFs, and so on.

[Hamuko]

I imagine the shittiness of iTunes doesn't really show up as much with a music collection as small as 500 files. I remember it being a slouch with more files. I'm currently at 73,000.

[egypturnash]

Works fine for me with my current collection of 21k items.

[agys]

I buy mostly music on Bandcamp and iTunes/Music is my sole driver for my 30k local song files. It's unfortunate that it has been neglected over so many years. There is a plethora of well known bugs and the sync with iPhone works most of the times, but not always and is in general quite cumbersome. The UI has become ridiculous over time (for example: it features two search/filter fields). It would be an easy mark to simply fix and polish it a bit. Sad.

[cosmic_cheese]

iTunes/Music has its merits but in my opinion has been in decline since between versions 6 and 10 depending on the aspects being spoken about. For most of its existence it was subject to constant bloat and always felt a bit "off" compared to other Mac apps due to its nature as a cross-platform Carbon app full of bespoke UI widgets, and though its feature set got pared down and it technically became AppKit-dominant in the transition to "Music", it still doesn't feel right and is out of step with the rest of the OS.

A proper AppKit iTunes-style player with the best parts of iTunes across versions but without the bloat would be a beautiful thing. Even better if it's FOSS so it doesn't get abandoned a few years down the road, as paid players tend to. While there's several apps in this general direction like Doppler[0], nothing really nails it satisfactorily.

[0]: https://brushedtype.co/doppler/

[bitwize]

Quasi-normie computer users: Linux will never take off on the desktop. I want to use my computer, not spend all day configuring it.

Also quasi-normie computer users: Windows/Mac is great as long as you go into Settings/the registry/PowerShell and disable all the user-hostile anti-features first.

[wl]

It seems like most of the iTunes hate has historically come from people who used iTunes on Windows because they needed to use it to sync their iPods. Apparently it wasn't very good on Windows?

I do agree that it had been getting worse and worse on Mac before it was rebranded "Music" in 2019.

[sunaookami]

iTunes on Windows was horrible and it was even more horrible when trying to use it for managing Apple devices. Obscure errors, convoluted error mesages, slow... I will never miss it. One of the worst software ever created and I'm glad it's dead. I like Music.app under macOS though as someone who used MusicBee under Windows.

[wmichelin]

I also hate the idea of streaming, but I have been super lazy in the past

I have listened to 44,000 songs on Spotify over the last 13 years. It has brought me a ton of value, but I would love to move back to owning my music as files. I've been getting fancier with managing self-hosted infra at home, especially using AI to help me out.

Maybe I'll get back there, but I also can't imagine only listening to 500 songs!!!!

[bombcar]

iTunes is still the best I have, mainly because it syncs well with iPhone, but also because it (kind) of just works, and I have a pile of applescripts to beat it when it doesn't.

I still wish it was a bit better at finding lost files, but maybe I'll vibe code something to do that for me someday.

(I'll have an album in the folder it doesn't see anymore, point one song at it, and it can't "find the rest" of the album, but I have to point each one out)

[justsomehnguy]

> I still manage my own ~500 file mp3 collection

Huh?

Just checked my 'collection':

     Total Files Listed:
           17250 File(s) 232,520,192,270 bytes
            6431 Dir(s)  1,053,563,486,208 bytes free

Not audiophile scale, for sure - but only 500 looks quite low. No wonder iTunes can manage it snorts.

[HDBaseT]

I just checked mine;

208,778 Files 1,799 GB

Mostly MP3.

*slightly inflated file/music count due to album covers/metadata.

[graphememes]

complete opposite, i hate it

[Kon5ole]

ITunes and Aperture were the apps that made me buy my first mac. Music and photos were just handled so easily, unlike anything else that came before. Smooth, intuitive and quick, everything else felt stale or broken.

These days Aperture is long gone and Itunes will let me make playlists where if I own the song, I can't play it cause it's not synced. If I don't own the song, it plays fine.

It's like nobody cares anymore, and back around 2008 that was the killer feature of the Mac - it was the computer and OS where it seemed like someone cared, about every little thing.

[johnsillings]

you're crazy