iTunes Match & SoundHound Make Beautiful Music Together

We've all seen the problems iTunes has with recognizing CD tracks that you may have turned into a special mix Audio CD you burned. If you've taken a collection of MP3s and burned them for an Audio CD, you are probably familiar with this image - Track 1, Track 2, Track 3, etc. You have no idea what those songs are - or at the very least, what the correct names are.

With an app, iTunes Match subscription, and some CDs you can change your 'unknown' collection into something useful and make them available to all of your iOS devices and Computers.

1. Launch the SoundHound app on your iOS device.

2. Insert a CD with unrecognized tracks into your Mac - you can import now if you wish as well.

3. Click Play on one of those tracks (Track 1, Track 2, etc).

4. Turn up the volume on the song, and then Click  'Tap Here' on the SoundHound app.  Within a few seconds, that song with be recognized. Incredible.

5. Now go into iTunes and CONTROL-CLICK on the track you are playing and choose 'Get Info'.  Now enter the correct data into the track. I'm not sure of how iTunes Match makes a match, but it doesn't hurt to enter the track info as precisely as you can.

6. Now iTunes Match should do it's thing and try and Match, or at least Upload to iCloud. If not, CONTROL-CLICK On it and choose 'Add to iCloud' and this should match or upload it to the iCloud service.

7. Check your other Macs or iOS devices - these newly updated songs will now be in your iCloud. If you had poor quality versions, now you can download the MATCHED songs in the higher quality 256kbps AAC format. Easily worth the $25 a year!

Use iCloud Now - With Auto Download - Mac Tips Daily! #404

With with Apple's latest announcement,  iCloud, we are all pretty excited. Even if you aren't a developer running the beta of IOS 5, we can still use a couple of new features apple has made available to all of us.

If you have an IOS device you can now go in and see what items you have purchased in th e past and re-download them if you want. Also, you can configure your device to automatically download new purchases, even free ones, onto your other IOS devices. To make this happen you need to flip a couple of switches.  I do believe you need to be running at least iOS 4.3.3 to take advantage of them though. 

Let's get to it:
1. From your iOS device - iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch, click on Settings. Now find the Store menu. Click on it and then you may need to click on your Apple ID name. Do this and then you should be presented with the automatic download options.  
You can turn on Music, Apps, and Books, and where applicable you can enable downloading over the cellular network or just do it when you have Wi-Fi available. If you have a limited data plan with your cell carrier, you may want to make this wi-fi only.

Do this on all of your devices.

Then, the next time you buy a song on iTunes, it will download automatically to all of your devices. The same thing for Apps and Books from the App Store.

If you buy an app on the iPhone, and it's not a universal version, meaning the same app works on iPad natively, then it won't auto download to iPad. However, if you want it, you can go onto your iPad under the App store and click on previous purchases and then install it that way as well.

2. Run Software Update and update to  the latest iTunes 10.3.1.

Once you do that, you will have that functionality on all of your devices now available via iTunes as well. You just need to go into the iTunes Preferences and click on Store, and then enable Automatic Downloads. If you purchase it in itunes, it will be sent to your iOS devices wirelessly over the air.

Fix iTunes Smart Playlist Sync bug - Mac Tips Daily! #397

Since the update to iTunes 9, my smart playlists have been scrambled and not syncing in the order I tell it to. I called Apple support and they couldn't offer a solution. However, they were very nice and informed me it wasn't the iPhone firmware, but it was an iTunes 9 issue. I had hoped iTunes 9.01 would fix the problem, but alas, it didn't. 

I needed to come up with a work around, since I use two very important smart playlists -- recently added & 25podcasts. Essentially I have a playlist that shows the recently added stuff, from newest to oldest.  I also have a 25 podcasts lists, that sort, you guessed it, from newest to oldest. The syncing problem was shuffling them all around and sometimes not even putting the correct content in the list. 

Here is a temporary work around:

1. Open iTunes 9

2. Edit your smart playlist (control-click or right click on it).

3. Enable live updating so that it will show the most recent content.

Click to read more ...

iTunes 9 Mini Player - The Return!

Updated on Tuesday, September 15, 2009 at 11:05PM by jcost

By now you've probably updated to the new cleaner looking version of iTunes 9. It looks great, but some people are having a hard time finding some old features. Specifically, I've read story after story about the demise of the Mini Player. Never fear -- it's still there.

How to do it:

1. Open 'iTunes 9'.

2. Go to the 'View -> Switch to Mini Player'.

Select this option again to switch back to normal.

3. If you prefer a keyboard shortcut, press 'Command + Shift + M'. This keystroke will alternate from mini to regular.

Click to read more ...

Enlarge iTunes Text - Mac Tips Daily! #393

If you are like me and running a high-res screen, everything seems smaller, especially the text. Instead of straining your eyes with iTunes, enlarge it. Great for Demos too.

Here is how to do it:

1. Open iTunes and go to the 'iTunes->Preferences' menu. Once you are there, select the 'General' tab.

2. iTunes offers two options for enlarging the text. The 'source', which is the left side of your screen where your playlists live. The 'List' is where your songs appear.

Click to read more ...