iTunes and classical "songs"

[Anthony Morton]

> Better still, I'd like to slip iTunes into my dead-and-useless  
> programs folder and use something that knows the difference between  
> music and "songs"... but I guess it's the only thing that cares to  
> talk to an iPhone right now.


As you've already said, the blame lies with CDDB and the record  
companies being inconsistent in how they classify their recordings.   
So it's not really fair to blame iTunes: you'd be hard put to find any  
software that will turn poor-quality input into a perfect user  
experience.

For my own collection I've resorted to editing the metadata to set the  
composer as the 'Artist' and the opus as the 'Album'.  There's a  
little-publicised feature in iTunes that helps with this: you can  
select a bunch of tracks and then open a Get Info window that allows  
you to make global changes.  This also helps where a work spans  
multiple CDs and the vendor hasn't set the disc numbers properly.

Tony M.