How To Quickly Delete Songs From iTunes
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We’re usually about giving tips on FreeMacBlog, but today I’m hoping that some of you can give me some tips.
Like a lot of iTunes users, I went on a wild tear of building up my music library in iTunes. It seems like I was ripping music cd’s left and right. (”What’s that? You have a copy of Mr Roger’s Greatest Hits? Can I borrow that to rip it real quick?”)
I’ve managed to keep a pretty good handle on my collection. Everything is tagged properly and the album artwork is included on all songs.
Well now it’s seems that I’ve been more about quality and less about quantity. I’ve been trying to trim down my collection. To do this, I just have the songs play random while I am working on my computer. When a song comes on, I’ll switch over to iTunes, find the song that is playing, delete the song from the library and the music folder and start the next song. I’ve been able to get rid of quite a few interludes on rap albums and other waste of space songs.
But here is my question. Can anyone think of a faster way to delete the currently playing song? I use Sizzlingkeys to jump between songs, but I really wish that there was an included keyboard shortcut to “delete the current song and skip to next song.” (I did write to the developer and request it. He replied that he’d see about getting it into a future release.)
In the mean time, does anyone have any other suggestions? It’d be great to trash the songs without having to leave the application I am working in at the time. Is there a plugin out there that is alluding me?
November 8th, 2006 at 9:40 am
Not quite the same thing, but I use a menubar rating thingy (http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/23568) to set the rating to 1, then every so often I’ll sort by rating and delete them all (after a quick read through to be sure I mean it). Unless you’re desperately short of space you don’t need to delete immediately.
November 8th, 2006 at 9:42 am
I just make sure every song has at least a one star rating and then use a shorcut (using free GimmeSomeTune - I’m sure Sisslingkeys offers this as well) to apply a zero star rating. Sometime later I switch to iTunes and delete every song in the appropriate “Zero star” smart playlist.
November 8th, 2006 at 9:50 am
Paul and narya, that is a great idea. I don’t really use ratings anyway so this could be a good use.
November 8th, 2006 at 11:14 am
Should be easy enough to find or create an applescript that will do this. Then you could set up a quicksilver trigger to run the applescript whenever you hear a song you don’t like! Check out http://www.dougscripts.com for tons of iTunes related applescripts.
November 8th, 2006 at 11:18 am
A script was my first thought (and usually one of the first suggestions from people) but I couldn’t find one when I went looking.
November 8th, 2006 at 1:00 pm
You may not need an Applescript to do this with Quicksilver. I know that you can select the currently playing song in iTunes as a “Proxy Object” (have to enable in Quicksilver prefs). I’m not sure if one of the actions you can do to the current song in Quicksilver is to delete it. If it is, then you’re set.
If not, I know that Quicksilver does give you access to a program’s menu bar choices. You’d just need to find the menu item for iTunes that deletes a song from your library and the HD.
If that doesn’t work or isn’t available, then you might need an Applescript after all.
November 8th, 2006 at 1:06 pm
I guess I should mention that I’m not a Quicksilver user. (But I appreciate the suggestions. That is sure to help others.)
November 8th, 2006 at 1:54 pm
I would just flick back to iTunes, click the little curved arrow icon in the right hand side of the now playing part to jump to the current song. Press Option-Delete, then Return to remove from Library, then m to move the song file to the trash. Done.
November 8th, 2006 at 1:55 pm
Wes, that is what I’ve been doing so far. I’m hoping to do it without having to leave the application I’m working in.
November 8th, 2006 at 11:58 pm
Okay. So as I have iTunes playing on shuffle, if I hear a song I dislike, I run an applescript I created which changes the genre of the selected song to “Delete Me”. I currently use FastScripts Lite to access scripts, but after reading some of the posts above, I am going to look into how to run the script using Quicksilver.
Later, I can easily use Browse View to select all the Delete Me genres and chuck ‘em.
November 9th, 2006 at 3:55 am
The script “Whack current track” from Doug’s Scripts will do your job. With a slight modification, it will neither ask you to confirm or set the confirm button to yes…
November 14th, 2006 at 12:21 pm
What I would do is just use Cmd-Tab to switch to iTunes, select the song and press Cmd-Delete. (In the window that appears, choose Don’t Ask Me Again if you’d like. To reset this effect you have to alter iTunes’ plist…) But that’s me. I clean house… I mean library, every so often (since I’m 11, actually my mom cleans house.)
November 16th, 2006 at 12:14 pm
I rely heavily upon iTunes 7’s capability to tell you which songs you skip the most. So I just use SizzlingKeys to skip the song, rather than delete it right away, and then I can come back at a more convenient time and purge my library of whatever songs I skipped before. Usually I go through several sessions of listening before I do actually go and delete a song, so that I can see which ones I truly don’t like, versus what I really didn’t want to listen to at that particular moment.
March 13th, 2008 at 9:37 am
I just bought a Macbook and I was putting my cd’s in i-tunes at work where I didnt have an internet connection. So 5 cd’s I burned showed up without having the artist and track name, how do I either delete these or go in and name them?