Not sure why this has sent me into a flaming rage (everybody at work is keeping their distance) but I haven't been this angry in, oh, a week. I've just received yet another iTunes email advising that it's the 30th anniversary of Combat Rock, surely not, only to find that their catalogue has priced, London Calling and Sandinista! at a higher price than the single album counterparts. Wasn't it the bands ideology that a double was the same as a single and the triple a little more than a double. I know I shouldn't let this nonsense upset me but at the time this was a genuinely big deal and part of the reason we all felt part of the last gang in town. Anybody else out there feeling enraged and upset over the uninformed trampling of cultural significance.

Until a few weeks ago I had 131Gb of music on my iPod Classic.

The sheer amount of bloat on it was starting to annoy me. There was some quality control to what was on it as I have well over 200Gb of music. I didn't just allow any old crap on it. And yet plenty of so-so albums were there.

An idea formed in my head. Junk the bloat that you never select to play as actual albums, or are particularly happy to see when it comes up on shuffle. It was an idea that persisted.

Ideally if I had the balls I would have wiped iTunes and started from scratch. Except this time instead of filling it up with everything I wanted straightaway, I would slowly add only five or so albums a week. That way the bloat would never get on it in the first place as I would never get around to (for example) Wild Moon Swings by The Cure.

But I have over a years worth of meta data. I am weak. And so instead I decided to just edit down what already exists.

For the most part I used a simple system called "Give Toss, Don't Give Toss". So if I could say to myself that I had some sort of an interest in an album then I kept it. But if it was there for the sake of it with no realistic chance of it being played, then why keep it?

I like Hazards of Love but I've never given a toss about The Crane Wife or The King Is Dead. So two of my three Decemberists albums went bye bye.

Motorhead had a four CD boxset removed so I'm now down to a one disc Best Of that only goes up to about 1985.

Rammstein have gone from two albums down to just Reise, Reise.

White Stripes are now represented by only White Blood Cells and Elephant.

I removed about five Cure albums.

The Sensational Alex Harvey Band had a 14 track Best Of reduced to one song, Faith Healer.

The Carpenters 1CD Best Of is now reduced to (They Long to Be) Close to You and Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft.

Led Zeppelin lost their 2003 live album How The West Was Won.

Iron Maiden kept all their studio albums but only two live albums, which are disc 1 of Live After Death and A Real Live One (the 90s material, not the 80s disc).

Some artists are too entrenched and respected that I decided to just keep everything that was at least okay. So REM, Pink Floyd, Beatles, Rolling Stones etc avoided having any albums removed. Sure I don't need Monster by REM, but I didn't really see a big enough upside to removing it.

On and on it goes. The gist of it is that a lot of stuff I don't care about has been removed.

I made a few mistakes. But I corrected them. The only loss was some meta data. Three Rihanna albums have been reduced to seven songs (the ones I could actually remember by title). Before the Dawn Heals Us by M83 should never have been deleted. I put back ten or so Rush songs after culling about nine albums (Counterparts, Presto, Hold Your Fire, Vapour Trails, Power Windows, Fly By Night, Rush, Caress of Steel, Roll the Bones and probably more).

I'm now down to 100Gb. That's 30Gb of respectable music that I've removed. And I'm keen to keep chipping away.

I've not missed anything so far. I've scanned through the artist list on my iPod and it's still a massive, long, epic stack of names.

I have a playlist of unplayed songs. It used to be two thirds of my music that had zero plays. It's now one third.

Whilst on the iTunes store I noticed how many bands' most popular songs were not my particular favorite. However, there were one or two exceptions such as Fool's Gold and Hey Jude. How many do other members agree with on iTunes, Spotify and other similar sites ?

Just got tickets for Buzzcocks and thought its about time I got a few more songs than the singles compilation. Found love bites expanded on amazon for £3.19. I think this meets my definition of a bargain. Anyone got any to add - remember seeing complete woody guthrie on itunes for £3.49 and whilst you don't necessarily need all of them its rude not to for the price of 5 tracks.

No idea if this is of interest to anyone - and I know the group appeared on the Over-rated Musical Artists thread but iTunes is giving away a free Beatles ebook/iBook/whatever.
It's The Yellow Submarine with digital knobs on. A bit too small on my iPhone (slow page transitions too) but would look quite pretty on an iPad, I would think. There's a link on the top right of the iTunes homepage if you're interested.

I've paid my £21.99 and am in the process of being 'matched'

It's nice having the record sleeve to look at while playing music in iTunes, especially a fabulous 70s creation. But what I really want (and would pay for) is an app/add-on/thingy that displays an image of the vinyl itself with its label, spinning round at 33 or 45 or 78, as appropriate, as I listen. I'm not obsessive enough to want a digital 'needle' in exactly the right place on the LP, but I would just like to watch the record turn. It's nostalgia, but it's also quite geeky and pleasing. I suppose the problem is it would need a database of images of actual records, and who's going to do that?

Am I mad? Does this exist already?

Did you know?...

...that you can replace existing music files on iTunes so you don't lose playcounts, genre tags, comments, placements in playlists etc.

Insert the CD into the computer, make sure the artist, album and song titles are exactly the same and iTunes will recognise the pre-existing files and will ask if you want to replace them?

I updated Blonde on Blonde by Bob Dylan from 192 MP3 to 256 AAC. The songs "4th Time Around" and "Obviously 5 Believers" were spelled on my 192 rips with "Fourth" and "Five" so those were ripped as new songs instead of as replacements.

You need to keep an eye on what your computer is doing to make sure everything's going to plan, but this should be useful information to know.

So, inspired by one of the recent TOTP 1976 threads, I thought I'd look up what old tracks are currently selling on iTunes (other download services are available) and came up with the following top 20:

1. Chasing Cars - Snow Patrol [556]
2. With or Without You - U2 (Festivals) [174]
3. Fix You - Coldplay (Festivals) [124]
4. Bring Me to Life - Evanescence [82]
5. The Scientist - Coldplay (Festivals) [71]
6. Best of You - Foo Fighters (Festivals) [85]
7. Fast Car - Tracy Chapman (Britains Got Talent?) [633]
8. Naive - The Kooks [138]
9. Son of a Preacher Man - Dusty Springfield [249]
10. Push It - Salt-N-Pepa [0]
11. Common People - Pulp (Festivals)
12. Hold On - Wilson Phillips (featured heavily in the movie "Bridesmaids")
13. Somebody Told Me - The Killers
14. Zombie - The Cranberries
15. She Moves In Her Own Way - The Kooks
16. Town Called Malice - The Jam
17. Talkin' Bout a Revolution - Tracy Chapman
18. Mr. Blue Sky - Electric Light Orchestra
19. The Chain - Fleetwood Mac
20. Romeo and Juliet - Dire Straits

If I spotted a specific reason why a track is selling (plenty of festival exposure at the moment for instance), I've put it in brackets. I also looked up the last 30 days' radio play for the top 10 [in square brackets] at comparemyradio.com, but this doesn't seem to be much of a factor, Snow Patrol & Tracy Chapman aside.

So, a very AOR selection, but there's some interesting stuff in here - Dusty? Salt-N-Pepa? And why do The Kooks have 2 old tracks selling right now? If you know why a specific track is selling (is it in an advert, a movie, on TV?) please pop it in the comments. Should I be surprised there's nothing here from the TOTP repeats?

Enjoy - if there's some interest in this, I'll happily update in a few weeks, and see how different it might be...

If this has been done before, I apologise. It's difficult to know though, if you search "podcast" on this site, lots of stuff comes up, oddly enough.

Anyway, I've recorded a podcast for a website I write for and it's now, quite literally, out there. I'm keen to get it onto iTunes and according to these guidelines, it actually looks easier than I thought it might be.

However, the thing I'm stuck on is where to host it. Currently, it's on Soundcloud, which I don't think will be any good. So, does anyone have experience of hosting podcasts and what sites would you recommend? Overall, I'm looking for something that's cheap (free, preferably), reliable and, if possible, provides stats on number of downloads etc.

Much obliged.

Or just wish it could do more?

Miro 4, an open-source iTunes of sorts, launches cross-platform, http://www.getmiro.com/#

(more detail in the comments)

Seemingly, of late, I have lost all of my mirth.

One reason. The pesky iPod scrobbling appears to have slapped me royally in the face.

Whilst I admit that Libyan military uprisings, tsunamis, global financial meltdown and the continued lifespan of Akon continue to trouble me, over the last week it has really annoyed me that over 70% of the things I've listened to on my iPod, my computer has chosen not to scrobble. A thoroughly modern concern. I listened to 50 tracks yesterday, when I synced-up this morning (sync no problems) it deemed only 5 worthy of scrobbling.

Any suggestions that I could put in place to help me overcome this and get back to the more important worries of life?

Please help, I'm a Radiohead fan, lists make my life, and the last.fm list is unrepresentative at this time of my listening habits. Probably more help should be seeked regarding this, but any technical suggestions regarding iPod scrobbling would be appreciated.

Thanks,
Alex

My wife and I are on a bit of a Fleet Foxes kick at the moment. Which is all very well, except once it's finished, if we're not vigilant (and we're not) it spins quickly through Albatross by Fleetwood Mac, Solitary Man by Flesh & Bones Skin, and then blindly starts into Florence and the Machines' Lungs without even a warning.

Now, I don't rate that album but we have a 4 month old baby in the house, and half an hour can pass before we realise we're being force fed that stupid album *again*. (And don't even ask what we're doing with it on iTunes - a friend recommended it. They will not be listened to again!). It seems contrary to all that is right that Lungs gets listed on my Last.fm profile on a regular basis, when it only sneaks in by dint of an alphabetical coincidence.

The alphabet sometimes creates some lovely juxtapositions - The Arctic Monkeys and Aretha Franklin, The Carpenters and Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine. But the Fleet Foxes-Florence proximity is not one of those lovely juxtapostions.

Does anyone else find themselves listening to bands they ordinarily wouldn't be seen dead listening to, because the alphabet places it next to something they love?

ps I've decided to delete Lungs. I know that makes me a musical fascist, but it has to be done.
pps I'm smithylad on Last.fm - I'd be glad to swap Friends links with any Word Bloggers, as long as you remember those Florence and the Machine plays are *not there by choice*.

So, I'm having a browse through Amazon's staggeringly huge catalogue, and find myself staggered by the discovery that you can't buy this as a download...

You can buy the song - particularly as a rather poorly done re-recording by Carl Wayne - but not in the famous version by The Move. Indeed, a number of their most famous tracks are missing.

We all know about the issues with The Beatles and downloads - now partially ironed out as they're available from iTunes - and things are available at some places and not others. But what other genuine classics can you just not buy in digital form?

Inspired by the earlier thread about the size of your iTunes library and with respect to Ivan who posted this question therein - 'How many tracks in your iTunes library are unplayed?

My stats are as follows -

Library Total is - 31,349

Unplayed tracks - 15,270

and just for fun, some more stats

Played once - 8,165

Played twice - 3,526

Played Thrice - 1,635

Played 4ice? - 922

Played 5ive - 577

That leaves - 1,344 played more than 5 times.

Not sure what it all means, but it's interesting to note that almost half of my whole library is unplayed!

If you want to join in but aren't sure how here's a quick guide;

Your library total can be found by simply clicking on 'Music' in the top left hand side of the iTunes window.

To identify the unplayed tracks open up 'View Options' and click the box next to 'Plays' and then 'OK' You will then see a new column at the top of your library called [surpisingly] 'Plays' click this column and this will order your library into 'Plays' order. It's then a simple matter of selecting the first song with a zero play count and then scrolling down until you find the first song with a '1' play count then select the last song with a '0' play count. Your selected songs will be highlighted blue and iTunes will display at the bottom of the screen the amount of songs with a zero play count.

Repeat as required for '1' play, '2' plays etc.