All ideas

233 votes

Auto update iTunes when bliss has changed an album

Dan Gravell 126 supporters

bliss integrates with iTunes by editing the music files that iTunes reads into its database. For artwork, it embeds the artwork into the file.

However, iTunes does not know that tags have been changed or artwork has been added. You have to use the "Get Info" option in the iTunes interface, for instance, to force iTunes to rescan for artwork.

Instead, bliss should tell iTunes that it should rescan automatically, once tags or artwork have been changed.

Note that a separate idea for rescanning iTunes when file locations have been changed already exists: http://bliss.uservoice.com/forums/21939-bliss/suggestions/1450921-update-itunes-database-when-bliss-moves-files

35 comments

VBourne

If Bliss is relocating files it would be helpful if these changes were automatically reflected in the iTunes database (*.itl file). This would avoid "orphaned" music if using iTunes as your primary music manager.

Paul H

This idea might be more generalized to "update iTunes database" - it would be useful to have all info modified by bliss being reflected in iTunes without having to do a "Get Info" on each item

Dan Gravell

I agree Paul - this is an old idea but I actually think it should have more prominence!

Dan Gravell

Agree with this. It also applies to other music players, but I guess iTunes should be first given its popularity.

Also see: http://bliss.uservoice.com/forums/21939-bliss/suggestions/1449569-auto-update-itunes-when-bliss-has-changed-an-album which relates to updating iTunes once bliss has changed something within the album, e.g. artwork, tags.

tanjuvdl

still not able to get itunes working again after first batch with music on NAS, so yes an automated update would be most welcome

Vincent Bourne

Any tighter integration with iTunes is welcome. Having just migrated from Windows to Mac with a large library any activity which alters the nature of the files or their locations has the potential to break things badly..... Combining Bliss with some "Doug Scripts" type iTunes updates would be ideal.

Roger

This would be very useful, especially when updating the music library for the first time !! Great idea

JFK

I'd love this feature. I have tried select all on my whole collection and get info and it never updated the metadata ??? I also tried de-selecting and re-selecting organise library and that didn't work either !?!

Dan Gravell

@JFK - does it work on an individual album? What metadata are we talking about here?

JFK

Eh Dan, I have come to the assumption that iTunes can't be trusted even when I sync my iphone/ipod it doesn't recognise my changes unless I play the album/tracks before sync even though on my hard drive the changes in question are present so it must be in the itunes library database file itself that changes need to be made....it obviously understands if an album is missing but makes no effort to scan for changes within the file (metadata/artwork) unless it has actually been played in itunes. I have searched loads of forums and there are random successes and FAILURES using different methods with some RANDOM side effects.....this is bad and desperate measures but someone has to try something so kudos goes to them.....I hope they had a back-up LOL

Dan Gravell

So a simple 'Get Info' on an individual album didn't work?

Anonymous

"Get info" in itunes after using Bliss doesn't update itunes with the art work for me. It would be great if this process was automated!

Joe

This would be awesome!! I tried re-adding the music folder (without deleting the existing music) but that doesn't seem to force a refresh of the database. When I start playing on the songs the album art appears, but this is obviously annoying on a large library. The only guaranteed way I've found the artwork to appear in iTunes is to remove ALL the music and readd the music folder, but then you lose the contents of your playlists!

Adam

Hi, this gets my first vote!
I have just downloaded Bliss last night and its already saved me hours of work and looks to be getting good results for artwork. It would be great if it was able to also auto-update iTunes after doing all that work.

I find ITunes frustrating at times (like many other users), but need it to run iPad and iTouch which I uses as controllers for my Sonos which is my real music system. So thanks for the suggestions on this thread and I look forward to hearing if this is possible to develop in a future version of Bliss.

Joe

This is definitely a game-changer for me - finding it hard to use Bliss at the moment as iTunes has so many issues once metadata has been changed :(

Paul Vickers

This gets my vote - I am stuck with using iTunes.
Updating it manually is hit and miss and a pain in the arse at best.

Anonymous

Tighter integration with iTunes would be a real opportunity for bliss to increase it's user base; and to reward existing customers who love bliss but don't want to stop using iTunes.

This would be a game changer for me as well as I have a very large iTunes library. The sooner the better!

Anonymous

+1 for this, the Get Info method is unreliable and I don't want to re-add everything and screw up my library!

Matt Jenkins

I use this little bit of Javascript run from a file on my desktop to refresh my library. It takes forever, but it seems to work:

var iTunesApp = WScript.CreateObject("iTunes.Application");
var tracks = iTunesApp.LibraryPlaylist.Tracks;
var numTracks = tracks.Count;
var i;
for (i = 1; i <= numTracks; i++)
{
var currTrack = tracks.Item(i);
currTrack.UpdateInfoFromFile();
}

Dan Gravell

Thanks Matt. That seems to update all the tracks already in the database. We possibly also need to add/remove tracks when they have been moved.

One of the big challenges of this will be platform independence: how to hook into iTunes on both OS X and Windows. Plus, whether to support remote iTunes instances. I think initially it will be local only.

Matt Jenkins

For OS/X you have good old AppleScipt - not sure how you use it for this job though, but there must be some form of documentation somewhere. The iTunes SDK documentation is probably the best place to start.

By the way, here's a VBS version which is much nicer as it gives you some feedback of what it's doing:

Sub forceCScriptExecution
Dim Arg, Str
If Not LCase( Right( WScript.FullName, 12 ) ) = "\cscript.exe" Then
For Each Arg In WScript.Arguments
If InStr( Arg, " " ) Then Arg = """" & Arg & """"
Str = Str & " " & Arg
Next
CreateObject( "WScript.Shell" ).Run "cscript //nologo """ & WScript.ScriptFullName & """" & Str
WScript.Quit
End If
End Sub
forceCScriptExecution

Set objApp = CreateObject("iTunes.Application")

Set objLibrary = objApp.LibraryPlaylist
Set colTracks = objLibrary.Tracks

For Each objTrack in colTracks
WScript.Echo objTrack.Artist & ": " & objTrack.Album & " - " & objTrack.Name
objTrack.UpdateInfoFromFile
Next

Matt Jenkins

The documentation you want is the "iTunes COM for Windows SDK" from developer.apple.com - I assume there is something similar for OS X.

Matt Jenkins

You have objTrack.Delete, and objLibrary.AddFile(...) that could be of immense use here. objTrack.Location can be used to determine if a file has been removed from the library (if(objTrack.Location == "")).

Dan Gravell

Thanks, looks like it'll have to be the COM API for Windows and AppleScript on OS X.

Matt Jenkins

Yeah, you won't find a cross-platform way, short of directly manipulating the iTunes database files (XML format I think), and heaven knows what iTunes would think of you doing that if it happened to be open at the time.

Dan Gravell

Yes, the other trouble with that is that it doesn't necessarily provide a way to 'poke' iTunes to let it know the data has changed.

Ian

I came to the conclusion early on that iTunes was useless for any serious music collection, so this doesn't get my vote. I'd find XBMC integration much more useful.

Vincent Bourne

Although iTunes has its faults, it remains the platform of choice for millions. Slick Bliss integration would open the joys of a well managed library to a huge marketplace, but the two have to play nicely together. So, this gets my vote to get things going. The holy grail for me would be to use some of the more advanced file location management features in Bliss, but I know my iTunes library would be toast if I tried this. I'll pop over and vote for that one in a sec.

Rico

I don't see the immediate benefit of having iTunes integration. I solely use iTunes for putting music on my ipod/iphone. And that is just a matter of dragging a few files from my music library on my NAS into iTunes. The music library on the NAS is larger then what the ipods can hold, mainly because I don't use mp3. My sole purpose of listening to music is on my living-room hifi audio system, which doesn't use iTunes at all (upnp streaming and NAS).

But maybe I am missing something? What I could see as a benefit is the rating-tag you can easily add in iTunes, but Bliss has nothing of that yet.

Dan Gravell

I suppose another way of looking at it is that some people use iTunes as the hub of their music collection and the "gold" source of information. If you just use it as a convenience player or conduit for music to an iPhone I can see your point.

Rob Knapman

I run iTunes Library updater (iTLU) on a daily schedule, in console mode, which as the name suggests updates my iTunes library from my music directory.
http://www.sofotex.com/iTunes-Library-Updater-iTLU-download_L31772.html
I have noticed that it will only work with iTunes 10 and below.
There has not been any development with this software for quite some time 2006 was the last update 1.2.2 http://itlu.ownz.ch
Perhaps you could do some sort of collaboration, then Bliss would be a truly all in one Music library tool.

Rob Knapman

I run iTunes Library updater (iTLU) on a daily schedule, in console mode, which as the name suggests updates my iTunes library from my music directory.
http://www.sofotex.com/iTunes-Library-Updater-iTLU-download_L31772.html
I have noticed that it will only work with iTunes 10 and below.
There has not been any development with this software for quite some time 2006 was the last update 1.2.2 http://itlu.ownz.ch
Perhaps you could do some sort of collaboration, then Bliss would be a truly all in one Music library tool.

Thomas Brown

Apple Music, as I understand it, has its own database which includes cover art. So whatever is newly embedded into the music file (by Bliss) may/may not show up as the image inside Apple's database. Finding some way to show that Bliss is solving a problem the user sees in the Apple Music interface seems critical to me. I am just beginning to learn how to update that database as a whole, if I can.

Stu

I suspect many people who use Bliss do so because MacOS has abandoned support for private libraries in iTunes/Music App. The whole point is to fix art in these databases. So having a fix for this seems critical to me.

Dan Gravell

@Stu How do you mean "MacOS has abandoned support for private libraries"? It's not that extreme is it?