i dislike iTunes. I tried it on PC, I tried it again on Mac. Much better on mac, but still, the added learning curve just isn't worth it, and I still use a PC from time to time.

i dont use itunes either. i just organize everything in folders and add it manually too.

i only use itunes to convert tracks to mp3s.

same here, I dont use itunes in serato, It's just one more thing you have to worry about everytime there is an update to either one. I just organoze everything in Serato

i use both itunes and crates but im getting a new ext HD and itunes is getting the boot from the ssl setup

I don't really find myself listening to a lot of tracks off my laptop, so my music isnt organized in itunes. I just add my music directly off my external. Smart playlists are cool and all, but I don't have the time to fiddle with that, nor when I actually do use itunes do I want it yelling that it can't find tracks because my external isn't hooked up.

dont use itunes with ssl either..

ive been using itunes with ssl since day one with no problems.

Mac but no iTunes for me, SSL crates all the way.

Smart Crates are a life saver.

Without that feature iTunes (for the purpose of organizing music) is worthless to me.

Smart Crates can easily be set up to help you with this.... but I always say it's up to the end user to determine what they prefer.

how fast can you get your itunes library up n running on my computer, say if your computer takes a big ole shit at the club?

i don't like itunes at all. I use quicktime to play my files by default (it loads faster)

but i do use itunes to import (convert CD's or TTM-57 AIFF files to MP3 format) and to edit tag information for mp3 files.

If your computer takes a shit at the club, you have bigger problems than which program organizes your music... but to answer your question, immediately. I use an external HD so I can plug it into multiple machines. To make it easier, I setup SSL crates as well. To do this, just drag and drop the smart playlists iTunes creates into SSL crates and you're done.

iTunes' smart playlists save me tons of time. The real power of smart playlists is playlists based on other playlists. I have everything I play keyed and all these files get filtered into 1 big playlist. I can then create sub playlists based on this information, genre, bpm, etc. For example, all electronic over 120 bpm go into a house/dance playlist, under that and hip-hip go into hip-hop, etc. You can also setup recently added songs that get filtered from each of these playlists as well and these will update automatically (for example, every 30 days).

I can't imagine doing any of that manually with folders in the Finder, using aliases to music files, etc. You'll drive insanely yourself crazy.

That sounds good. I might make mine do that too since I hardly play music on my laptop anyways...
Thanks for the feedback!

As far as I know iTunes isn't actually running in the backround. ScratchLive just reads the XML (PC's only??) file created by iTunes. It shouldn't have too much of an effect on stability.****someone please correct me if I am wrong****

I backup a copy of that xml file and the .itl (iTunes Library) file so I don't loose my smart playlist criteria. This is easily transferred to any other comp.

But like I said.. its up to the user. If you don't trust it then don't use it.

Serato just reads the iTunes library on a Mac (or my Mac) so Itunes isn't running at the same time as Serato (always wondered what would happen if they were both accessing the file at the same time????).

You could also create two Users, one personal and one for DJing and have 2 separate iTunes libraries (personal and DJ). Takes up more space but may be cool if all your DJ music is on an external anyway.

I just figured out how to change the default media player in Mac.
In case anyone doesn't know:
Click on an mp3 file (or m3u) in finder. get info (apple i). Change the open with box at the bottom. and select change all...

Pretty sure you play both at the same time but you can't make changes to them. Like change tags for example.

Very nice assessment. I agree 100%. In fact, I hate Apple, but I'm forced run this resource hog Itunes in order keep myself sane with this organizing.

where can i find the xml file on a pc? i need it for the backup purposes

C:/Documents and Setting/<your name>/My Documents/My Music/iTunes/

Me too .... with Nik39's ScratchTools ..gravy.

No iTunes for me... got my individual folders and I manually drag them to Serato crates, then I organize my tags in Serato...

Never tried Quicktime to play tracks, Ima give it a try.

Every day i create a new folder with the date on it and at the end of the day I add it to my serato Music Folder, import it and go through all the songs, fixing the names and fields, setting cues and building overviews.

If that is what you feel most comfortable with I would look into ScratchTool's.

I think it will make your life much... much... easier and will not change your system of organizing. I will only take automate some of the steps you have to take to match your folders to your crates.

If it matches folders to my crates, then thats money! I'll take a look, thanks for the tip....

WTF Itunes rocks with Serato! I love it and its beautiful! Great way of using a database like tool to organize your music for you so you dont have to spend time dragging and dropping music into the right place.

Itunes works for me guys

Fab

The only problem with itunes for me is when I copy music files into it overviews get screwed up.

specifically for me only a track number would show up and i manually have to input the song names. shoot ive got probably 5 thousand songs on my laptop

I organize all my music in iTunes and I like that I automatically have a backup of everything on my 80 GB iPod.

I use iTunes, and could not imagine managing my library without Smart Playlists.

The main thing that bothers me about it is the addition of another layer of software dependency (besides just SSL). If SSL incorporated Smart Playlists in the same way iTunes has them, I'd give serious consideration to dumping iTunes.

I also find iTunes quite lacking as a tag editor. It also has the irritating habit of sometimes (for no discernible reason) losing the artwork in tags (files that had the artwork, before they were added to the iTunes library). It's also a minor annoyance to have the irrelevant items from iTunes (podcasts, etc.) showing up in SSL.

Check your tag version. You should be using 2.3

Thanks.

I can't imagine how you deal with the tracks without i tunes... for me it's a very big help. smart libraries, playlist editor..