Dear Apple,

No, I don't want to upgrade to iTunes 8.1.

Please stop asking.

Why?

I don't want to upgrade to iTunes 8.1 because several iTunes upgrades ago I upgraded my desktop iTunes, hooked up my iPod, and had you automatically erase my iPod. I consider that to be rude.

I delete songs off of my iPod all the time. This means I do NOT want the Mac at home to re-load them every time I hook in. So my list on my iPod is UNIQUE. It represents hours of my time. I do NOT want it wiped out.

After that happened TWICE, I stopped upgrading iTunes. I've talked to multiple other folks who have done the same thing.

So, no, I don't want iTunes 8.1.

If you really want me to buy into upgrading, add tagging. I've looked at your list of features, http://www.apple.com/itunes/features/, and you don't do what I want you to do.

I want to be able to take:
Diggin' Up Bones Randy Travis Country The Very Best of Randy Travis (Remastered)

and tag it:
slow, country, 80's, alone

Then I want to be able to take:
Here I Go Again Whitesnake Blues Monsters of Rock

and tag it:
hair bands, alone, rock, 80's

Then when I want to list to a bunch of broken hearted guys, I can just select the tag, "alone."

The nice thing about tagging, is that I can tag anyway I want. So if I want to put U2 (Joshua Tree - Achtung Baby era), INXS, NIN, and Velvet Revolver all in a tag group and call it, "leather pants," I can... of course, you would need to allow mass-editing.

Tagging is not a new idea and people have been asking for this for years. No, it's NOT the same as building 8,043 playlists. What if I only want to cross section of "slow" and "leather pants" today? What if I want "nerds" and "girls"? (And I will decide where The Sweater Meryn Cadell misc Angel Food For Thought goes later...)

Tagging is one of the more powerful ideas of the Web 2.0, I don't understand why you don't enable it. Of course, I also don't understand by Blogger and LibraryThing don't have threaded comments....

Fill that wish and maybe I will think about iTunes 8.1.

Thanks,
-Me