An ode to iTunes DJ

[Cupe]

An ode to iTunes DJ, a beloved feature that died before its time

I didn't think twice about installing iTunes 11 the day it was released in late November. After all, application updates frequently fix software bugs that attackers can exploit, so I've made a habit of installing them quickly. Given that the upgrade had been billed as a major makeover, I was eager to experience whatever new hotness Apple tastemakers had thought of next. I never thought they'd kill the feature that, six or so years earlier, had prompted me to forsake the once revolutionary Winamp and make iTunes my music player of choice.

I'm speaking of iTunes DJ, of course. The feature just oozed with the stylish aesthetics that Apple cofounder and former CEO Steve Jobs was legendary for prior to his death in 2011. When I fired up iTunes 11 for the first time, I was shocked to discover that Apple had killed it off. In its place was "Up Next," a new feature that some iTunes aficionados argue is a step forward.

But this Ode to iTunes DJ argues just the opposite. iTunes 11's retirement of the beloved DJ, not to mention another display mode known as Cover Flow (more about that later) are tragic design decisions that have irreversibly degraded my enjoyment of the Apple player, so much so that I reverted back to a previous version of iTunes and haven't looked back since. Reading the 40-page discussion thread here, it's clear I'm not alone.

Making music social

In the early days, iTunes DJ was known as Party Shuffle, but the aim was the same. It provided a way for a group of people in the same room to add their favorite songs to a dynamically generated playlist, an innovation that made online music social in a way that no one had quite achieved before. The feature made it easy for party goers to select individual tracks from an entire music library, to either build a song list on the fly or to add them to a preselected mix. iTunes DJ allowed songs to be played next or added as the last entry in a queue, seamlessly, without a moment of dead air.

Once people got tired of manually adding songs, iTunes DJ, as the feature eventually came to be called, would automatically pick tunes. The feature could be programmed to pseudo-randomly select songs from a particular genre, decade, or playlist, and it could also be tweaked to play higher-rated songs more frequently than lower-rated or unrated titles.

Over time, Apple designers imbued iTunes DJ with new capabilities that made the music player even more dynamic. One of them allowed iPhone-carrying partygoers to have a say in what songs they heard. One setting allowed people to actually place songs into the queue, while a different setting allowed people to vote on which songs got played next. The additions democratized the music-selection process in a way that was never before possible: tunes with more upvotes got placed higher up in the list. To prevent the lone party pooper from injecting a fatal dose of Air Supply or some other musical schlock into an otherwise smoking mix, hosts could restrict the songs that were eligible to be chosen or voted on.

iTunes DJ quickly became my preferred way to listen to music. With a library of 57,000 songs from a variety of genres, it's easy to forget about the Live recording of Calexico downloaded years earlier from the Internet Archive or the Duane Allman anthology a friend gave me as a birthday present that I never got around to listening to.

At the same time, iTunes DJ gave me a way to ensure that the songs I liked enough to rate with four or five stars (about 3,500) never got lost in the mix. Thanks to the development of "smart playlists," iTunes DJ was even advanced enough to always skip certain songs in my collection. Christmas tunes and children's music left behind after a visit by a nephew could easily be filtered out by assigning a one-star rating to them, resulting in a smart playlist that excluded such songs. I would then designate the playlist (called "Just the Good Stuff") as the source iTunes DJ would choose from, rather than from the library as a whole.

The result was a radio station of sorts that I could always rely on to play the songs I loved the most while still throwing plenty of surprises into the mix. The electronic throbbing of The Crystal Method and the haunting melodies of Elliott Smith were never far away, since I gave four and five stars to the best songs by both artists. But those songs went a lot further thanks to iTunes DJ's ability to inject long-neglected songs.

Another cool feature of DJ was the ability to manually add songs to the list, using either an iPhone or an Android device. If I got a sudden hankering to hear The Beatles "She Said She Said," iTunes DJ made it easy for me (or a guest) to manually add it, either as the next song or to be played last in the queue. The feature also made it easy to dish up playlists for special occasions. For example, my friend Pronoy has an undying affinity for 1980s music. Telling iTunes DJ to pick songs from a smart list of tunes from that decade and favor more highly rated tunes has never failed us yet.

Read more here: http://arstechnica.com/apple/2013/04/an ... -its-time/

[GREMM1S]

Summarised into itunes sucks?

Only use it to sync music to my iphone, can't stand the program otherwise.

Edit automatic podcasts is handy though.

[Gandy]

I use it to organise play lists, one good thing about it is plugs into nearly every software, whether it be traktor/serato etc, so sort it once and it's done, even with rekordbox it's just a simple task of drag and drop

[GREMM1S]

I use it to organise play lists, one good thing about it is plugs into nearly every software, whether it be traktor/serato etc, so sort it once and it's done, even with rekordbox it's just a simple task of drag and drop

That's true actually, have herd of issues with the rekordbox link though.

I only use Rekordbox these days so just have it all sorted there.

[Kodiak]

I like iTunes. I love the features of it, the design and layout make it easy to navigate big libraries. Have tried the alternatives and none work as well. Never used DJ but knew it was there and would have used it where the need was there.

If the get rid of the genius features then heads will roll.

[SolDios]

I hate how they have made it like 20 more clicks to add a song from search to a playlist

[russell]

I haven't upgraded to the new one yet due to all the negative comments.

[Mitch]

I hate how they have made it like 20 more clicks to add a song from search to a playlist

You do realise you can make it look exactly like the old interface

People are to quick to hate on new software

[Kodiak]

I hate how they have made it like 20 more clicks to add a song from search to a playlist

I must be doing something wrong cause I still do the exact same process? Type name in search, press enter, right click on song, add to playlist. Have I been doing this the hard way?

[styga]

I hate how they have made it like 20 more clicks to add a song from search to a playlist

You do realise you can make it look exactly like the old interface

People are to quick to hate on new software

how does one get it to look like the old interface?

[MintyCondition]

I love the new iTunes and I don't see why people hate it so much. The "play next" feature is great and something I have been wanting for a long time, and I never really used iTunes DJ. Only complaint is that the new search feature is a bit clumsy.

[Hobberz]

I use it to organise play lists, one good thing about it is plugs into nearly every software, whether it be traktor/serato etc, so sort it once and it's done, even with rekordbox it's just a simple task of drag and drop

That's true actually, have herd of issues with the rekordbox link though.

I only use Rekordbox these days so just have it all sorted there.

I make all my playlists in iTunes then bridge it into Rekordbox and it works great. Also if for some reason Rekordbox fucks up and you loose all your playlists, you have them in iTunes and it takes 5 minutes to add them back to Rekordbox rather than 3 days sorting tunes back into folders again.

[GREMM1S]

I use it to organise play lists, one good thing about it is plugs into nearly every software, whether it be traktor/serato etc, so sort it once and it's done, even with rekordbox it's just a simple task of drag and drop

That's true actually, have herd of issues with the rekordbox link though.

I only use Rekordbox these days so just have it all sorted there.

I make all my playlists in iTunes then bridge it into Rekordbox and it works great. Also if for some reason Rekordbox fucks up and you loose all your playlists, you have them in iTunes and it takes 5 minutes to add them back to Rekordbox rather than 3 days sorting tunes back into folders again.

Not a bad idea at all, import playlist from usb has saved me a few times too.

[styga]

I love the new iTunes and I don't see why people hate it so much. The "play next" feature is great and something I have been wanting for a long time, and I never really used iTunes DJ. Only complaint is that the new search feature is a bit clumsy.

i like the 'play next' feature, i just prefer the old layout they had, was a lot easier to navigate

[Mitch]

I hate how they have made it like 20 more clicks to add a song from search to a playlist

You do realise you can make it look exactly like the old interface

People are to quick to hate on new software

how does one get it to look like the old interface?

- Click "songs" up the top so all songs display in a list

- Click view -> show sidebar

- Click view -> column browser -> show / hide to your preference

[styga]

I hate how they have made it like 20 more clicks to add a song from search to a playlist

You do realise you can make it look exactly like the old interface

People are to quick to hate on new software

how does one get it to look like the old interface?

- Click "songs" up the top so all songs display in a list

- Click view -> show sidebar

- Click view -> column browser -> show / hide to your preference

thank you so much! the sidebar not being there was what i didnt like, now im sure i can get use to this new itunes