Daniel Morrison 21 Oct 05

Agreed.

If you play around with the “beta” Just for You section, you can click “I already own this” for albums you bought elsewhere. Very cool and handy that they don’t care how you own it.

Taking this and your suggestion together, you could scan the Library and eliminate songs/albums that you have in it already. It seems that you could do most of the processing on the local machine too, making the experience quick and less “big brother’.

Anonymous Coward 21 Oct 05

From your desktop Use Spotlight with the album or track name.

Kendall 21 Oct 05

I agree. I also think that a feature that I know that I would use a lot is a wishlist. Seems like Apple would want to do this, a quick and easy way for users to find music they know they already want to buy.

w 21 Oct 05

iTunes has a Purchased Music playlist, to which purchased songs are automatically added. Not as through as your suggested solution, but not as tedious as searching your entire library.

Eloy Anzola 21 Oct 05

I’d agree. It would be nice to know if I already own the track.

They do give a warning AFTER you try to purchase something you already bougth.

Wishlists are easy, simply create a playlist and drop stuff from the store in it. Later, you can come back and buy the tracks directly from it.

‘Just for you’ is a bit clunky still, it doesn’t seem to correctly remember if I like or own stuff. It’ll improve quickly, I’m sure.

AJP 21 Oct 05

This would definitely be a sweet feature.

My biggest feature request is still the ability to redownload songs you have previously purchased. A hard drive crash (without a backup, not that I know or anything) does wonders to your purchased music collection.

Chris 21 Oct 05

I love how Amazon keeps recommending stuff to me that I’ve already bought from them. That’s just plain dreadful.

Tony 21 Oct 05

I’d like to be able to browse the iTunes library online from work (where I cannot install iTunes), and possibly even purchase music for downloading once I get home. I don’t spend a lot of time browsing around the iTunes music store at home, but I certainly could spend some time at work (lunch break, etc.) looking up interesting music. If they had this feature, I would certainly purchase much more music from them.

Dave Giunta 21 Oct 05

I would think that you could reduce the number of steps to see if you already own a song or album to two: 1. leave the store and go to your library, 2. type the name of the album or song in the search box.

But I see your point… wouldn’t it be nice if they made the reverse of those little gray arrow icons that appear in your library and take you to that artist/album/song page on the music store?

Matt 21 Oct 05

I’d like a feature where iTunes tells me about other albums or songs that are available in iTMS for bands I already have in my library whether I bought them from iTMS or not.

Bob 21 Oct 05

I really like iTunes but has anyone else noticed that the audio quality of their downloads is somewhat lacking?

I’d really like to use iTunes more, but this one factor keeps sending me back to CDs, which I can rip myself at a decent bit rate.

benny 21 Oct 05

I was looking at my purchase history yesterday in iTunes and found myself wishing it could be exported into something useful - CSV, XML, HTML, heck anything would be more useful than the flat image file they give you.

Mike Moscow 21 Oct 05

How can you not remember if you have bought a certain song before?

Bob 21 Oct 05

@ JF. So, what were you trying to buy? Just curious.

@ Mike. You’re pretty young, eh? Haven’t been collecting albums for very long I’d wager.

Ben 21 Oct 05

I hope they make you wait like you make us wait for Backpack features ;-)

Dave Simon 21 Oct 05

benny has a good idea - being able to output in CSV or something would be really handy.

This whole thing could be solved pretty easily, if we could open more than one iTunes window, or open the store in another window.

Then you could view your Library without having to leave the store, right?

Jeff Shell 21 Oct 05

Highlighting known purchases / installed songs would be nice. Short of that, you can option-click (or the equivalent on Windows) on any arrow in the song list to link back to your library. It appears it only has that per artist, but it’s a quick way to double check what Tom Waits you have or might still need, for example. Then you can click on the arrows in your library to go back to album/artist in the music store.

For the person wanting CSV export, it exists. File -> Export Song List. It will export whatever track list is currently active, whether it’s a playlist or an album selection or an entire library.

Jeff Shell 21 Oct 05

Oh - You can also open the store in another window. Just double click on it (or any play list or other element in the ‘sources’ column)

SU 21 Oct 05

I like the way Acquisition X handles it — when you’re browsing potential downloads, if you already have the file, they appear grayed out. At least that’s what a friend who uses Acquisition told me ;)

Lite 21 Oct 05

You know what would be even better in iTunes? If I could see the store without having to use that sorry excuse of a program called iTunes.

peter 21 Oct 05

just click to buy the song and if you have it already it will warn you.. counterintuitive and with it pitfalls (if you have one click shopping with no warnings on etc.).. but still..

Todd Warfel 21 Oct 05

JF said…

The only way to find out is to leave the store, go to my library, browse the library, and then try to find the track/album. I could open two iTunes windows but that�s a mess.

Actually, you don’t have to leave the store, search your HD, or any of that. If you try and purchase a song you’ve already purchased, iTunes warns you first and gives you the opportunity to cancel the action, or continue.

Now, a better model would be that the one’s you’ve already purhcased are visually indicated in some manner prior to clicking on the “buy…” button.

Jeff Martin 21 Oct 05

Todd Warfel said…

Actually, you don�t have to leave the store, search your HD, or any of that. If you try and purchase a song you�ve already purchased, iTunes warns you first and gives you the opportunity to cancel the action, or continue.

3/4s of my library is from the CDs I owned before I started buying from iTunes that I have imported.

not my real name 21 Oct 05

“This whole thing could be solved pretty easily, if we could open more than one iTunes window, or open the store in another window.”

Double click on a playlist, your library, even the music store to open it in a new window.

not my real name 21 Oct 05

SU - In my experience, acquisition sort of messes that up. It’ll grey out songs with the same title/filename/whatever credentials it uses for comparison on songs by different artists just because you have a song by a different artist that shares the same title/filename/whatever.

ceejayoz 21 Oct 05

Chris 21 Oct 05

I love how Amazon keeps recommending stuff to me that I�ve already bought from them. That�s just plain dreadful.

I’ve noticed that, and it seems to be where there are multiple versions of the same product - a VHS and DVD of a movie, for example.

Chris Carter 21 Oct 05

Despite it’s other inadequacies, I actually like how Yahoo! Music handles this situation: You add music to “My Music”, and then if you decide you want to remove the DRM, you purchase it. When you’re browsing music, the “Add to My Music” button will be greyed out if you’ve already got it, and it’ll have a little fire icon next to it if you’ve purchased the “burnable” (ie, DRM free) version of the music. It does this on music lists and on the songs themselves. Much like Netflix does for their interface (another great UI, in my opinion).

Don Wilson 21 Oct 05

I’ve been thinking what the next iPod major update could be, and I’ve come up with one thing - built-in wifi. I know there are many extremely small wifi chips out there that could be implimented into the iPod’s design. Imagine being able to purchase/transfer music between iPods and off of Apple’s iTunes service wirelessly? What about wifi syncing with your iTunes account? What about suggestive playlist downloads when you take your iPod to a concert. If you walk out of the concert and you’ve got an inventation to purchase all of the music that you just heard - wirelessly.

Just wait.

benny 22 Oct 05

I understand that you can export songs from your library - but I’m referring to the purchase history, with financials =) I’d like to be able to keep track of how much I’m spending on music a little easier.

Slow Motion, Quick Thinking 22 Oct 05

I didn’t read all the comments, so maybe someone pointed this out already:
ALT-Clicking the arrow next an item in iTMS, makes iTunes reveal the item in your library, if it is there.
It may still be there under another name, but maybe this will help.
:)

Patrick Haney 24 Oct 05

I completely agree. I noticed that you can now check a “I already own this” box in the new Just For You section, as Daniel noted, but I don’t see this information anywhere when you browse to that same album later. Perhaps this is a coming feature.

Another thing I don’t like, and maybe it’s because I haven’t figured out how to do it yet, is the fact that I can’t add an album to a wishlist. Sure, I can add individual tracks to my own custom “wishlist” playlist, but I’d like to keep a running tally of the music I’d like to own, whether by track or album, somewhere on iTunes so that I can view it from any computer and also have it shareable with others.

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