A new user to iTunes with a question

Is iTunes interface skinnable?

Published on February 3, 2006 By DigitalDanes In iTunes

I recently got two mobile phones (a ROKR and SLVR) that have the ability to play music downloaded to the phone via iTunes. Since I've never bothered with iTunes prior to owning these phones(I use a totally different program to manage and tag my digital music), just learning to use iTunes was an adventure (I had to edit my registry just to get the stupid iTunes program to install on my Windows machine).
Now that I have iTunes up and running and have purchased and also downloaded music to my phones from the interface, I'd like to know if iTunes is skinnable (and what would be used to skin it?). I tried adding it to the WB5 per application setting and it's still the same old bland greyish colored interface.
Anyone here use iTunes and has it skinned? Tried looking up "skin", "appearance", and "changing look of" in the help files for iTunes and no soap. Since I don't own an iPod I can't use the 24 hour online chat help either.
DD

Comments

BlueDev

on Feb 03, 2006

I don't know of any official way to skin iTunes on a PC (not sure on a Mac), but you can use the Multi-plugin tool, and then find skins on Deviantart.

Link

Here is the link to Multiplugin. I have used it without any problem in the past.

j dott

on Feb 03, 2006

The multiplugin doesn't work with the latest update the itunes, but hopefully it will be updated soon because it does skinning well and has additional useful features. BTW, I've found that once I got used to iTunes, I like it a lot more than I would have ever thought.

DigitalDanes

on Feb 04, 2006

BTW, I've found that once I got used to iTunes, I like it a lot more than I would have ever thought.

It's ok, but I'm pissed off to find that any music I've bought with iTunes can only be burned to a CD 7 times (and the first time I tried to burn my playlist it knocked my burner out of commission and didn't seal the disks so they wouldn't play in either a PC or my car's CD player). I lost 2 times of the 7 allowable burns of the music just trying to get the thing to work correctly and burn the disks and end the sessions so they were usable. I feel that if I PURCHASED the music, I own it and should be allowed to burn as many copies of it as I want (not have to make copies of already burned CD's). I also found out that there's a licencing agreement with Cingular and iTunes for the phones and the agreement only allows 100 songs to be loaded on a memory card for the phone. In order to have more than 100 songs, I'd have to buy additional memory cards (512 minimum)and have a separate playlist on each card and swap them to hear more of my paid music. If I have the room on my memory card why shouldn't I be able to have more than 100 pieces of music I PAID for??? So far I can't say I've found anything that really makes iTunes stand out from any other music player out there (hell, there's some music that you can't even purchase on the iTunes store that is available on places like Napster and Walmart's music stores online). And the tagging isn't all that either...my music management software does a better job at tagging music that hasn't been purchased through iTunes and has a TON more generes and ways to sort it to make playlists (there's even a database to compare untagged music to so you can find the correct tags/artists/albums, etc. and it can even sort music into playlists according to your mood based on tempo and lyrics). If it wasn't for the fact that I have to use iTunes to upload the music to my phone, it wouldn't even be on my PC (just glad that I don't own or have to use any other software designed by Apple...how bland.....

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kona0197

on Feb 04, 2006

my music management software does a better job at tagging music

What software do you use?

DigitalDanes

on Feb 04, 2006

I don't know of any official way to skin iTunes on a PC (not sure on a Mac), but you can use the Multi-plugin tool, and then find skins on Deviantart.

Thanks, BlueDev! I downloaded it and tried it for iTunes6 and it worked. I went to DA and got the Blister skin to apply. Much better than that boring gray default!! Now I can at least have it look pretty...LOL
DD

BlueDev

on Feb 04, 2006

I hate iTunes. It is miserable. But I do use it to connect to the old iPod. Nothing else though, as it sucks.

I use foobar2000 to tag my music. Does a great job. Also, MusicBrainz has an excellent tagger.

DigitalDanes

on Feb 04, 2006

What software do you use?

I use MoodLogic (www.moodlogic.com). I have such an eclectic taste in music, much of the stuff that I've got (ripped from CD's I own) isn't in the databases so I get credits for adding/tagging the music myself which in turn gives me even more opportunity to cagorize my library of music and sort it even better.
DD

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