iTunes has been a frequent visitor on my computer, coming and going. The reason I haven’t firmly decided to use it for managing my music files is simply due to inertia.
Inertia—since the initial setup of my computer, music files have only increased, never decreased. I’ve used various music download software like KuGou, KuWo, QQ Music, Xiami, Suile, and TTPlayer. From a single Music folder to tens of thousands of mp3/wma/aac/ape/midi/lrc/… format songs and lyrics scattered across my computer’s disk.
A while ago, I read a long post on Maxpda comparing the Nokia E72 and BlackBerry 8900, which mentioned the benefits of using iTunes for music management. Since I also use an 8900 phone and frequently need to update my music, I decided to take the plunge. I deleted all music files from my hard drive except for those purchased from Xiami (freeing up over 20GB on my G drive) and fully embraced iTunes.
After the cleanup, it was time to refill with new songs. I had purchased about 300 songs from Xiami, so I first imported these high-quality tracks into iTunes. Seeing the colorful album covers on the screen filled me with joy—iTunes seemed like the ideal choice.
However, I started pondering another question: where should I download songs from to refill my library?
Given my music needs, Xiami alone couldn’t satisfy me. My Xiami account had less than 140 yuan left, and at 0.8 yuan per song, I could only buy about 180 more songs.
On the other hand, based on past experience, I tried using QQ Music for downloads. The results were satisfactory; even as a non-VIP user, the downloaded songs came with detailed information. Unfortunately, the download speed (throttled by Tencent) wasn’t great, and non-VIP users were limited to downloading one song at a time.
A friend then recommended trying Google Music Box. Initial tests were promising, and I quickly concluded it would be my go-to tool for music downloads. However, after downloading a few dozen songs, the software crashed completely. Reinstalling didn’t help—it just wouldn’t work anymore. (Puzzling)
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Later, I heard that Thunder could batch download licensed music from Top100 (Top100.cn). Testing it out, I found that while it could batch download songs from an album, all the filenames turned into “aspx” after download…
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Out of options, I resorted to downloading licensed music from Top100 one song at a time. The experience turned out to be surprisingly smooth.
I'm on a 30 yuan/month, 100Mbps campus network from China Telecom. The download speed from Top100 consistently stayed between 5-10MB/s, meaning a licensed song would download in about a second from click to completion.
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With such impressive speeds, things went smoothly. I exported my favorite music files from Top100, identified my favorite albums from Xiami's xiami.fm records, edited the exported file format in Excel, imported it back, and then batch downloaded all the selected music.
In total, I downloaded over 150 albums, around 1800 songs.
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The reason for downloading licensed music is that it comes with comprehensive metadata, making it easy for iTunes to organize the music into various categories.
If I hadn't deleted my old music and tried to perfect each song's information in iTunes, it would have taken months at a rate of one to two minutes per song.
Considering that the songs with higher collectible value were purchased from Xiami, I had no qualms about starting fresh.
PS:
A small tip for iTunes is that it can automatically fetch album artwork, mainly for Western songs. However, this requires an iTunes account.
Registering an iTunes account typically requires credit card verification. A workaround is to first purchase a free app from the iTunes Store and select "None" as the payment method, allowing you to register without a credit card.
As for the benefits of using iTunes, I can't say much since I've only just fully adopted it. Previously, I used iTunes' podcast feature to regularly update articles from justing.com.cn.
Finally, I believe an ideal music player for a phone should meet the following criteria:
1. Sound quality shouldn't be too poor (almost all phone players meet this).
2. Should sync with iTunes. To date, I still believe that when you have tens of gigabytes of songs (my collection is meticulously organized), iTunes is the only tool that can effectively manage such resources. Additionally, the rich resources on iTunes are a significant reason I stick with Apple products. In fact, when you have a large music library, finding a specific song can be challenging without proper organization. But with proper tagging (song name, album, artist, cover art, lyrics), iTunes is the best tool. Therefore, syncing with iTunes, especially syncing playlists, is crucial for me. If you haven't tried iTunes yet, I strongly recommend organizing your music with it. You might find syncing cumbersome, but consider why so many people worldwide use iTunes. Are they all forced to? Gradually, I believe you'll come to appreciate this tool.
3. The interface should be clean, displaying cover art without clutter.
4. Supports Shuffle and hardware playback controls (pause, volume, etc.).
5. Ideally, supports lyrics display.
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