Anal About Your iTunes?

[eRondeau]

I love music and I love iTunes. I have invested probably hundreds of hours into my music library, ripping music in AAC, rating songs, and assembling high-quality cover art for almost every track. The day before yesterday I had around 3,300 songs -- all top quality, either ripped right from my own original CD's or purchased from iTMS. All regularly backed-up on iPod, Lacie HD and DVD. I was SO happy, and SO proud of my collection!

Then SHE called. A cute female friend of mine received a pink iPod mini for Christmas, and needed help loading it up. Only problem -- she wanted HER music and only HER music put on. So she came over last night with five .mp3 CD's she had accumulated over the years, mostly from PC file-sharing networks. Now, I realize that I could have taken steps to keep my library separate from her songs, but I was weak and starry-eyed and figured I'd just merge them now and fix it up later.

So the upshot was, she left happy with 3.5GB of her weird New Age music and assorted Gregorian Chants filling up her pink iPod, and I've now topped 4,000 songs in my iTunes library. Only thing is, I have this weird feeling that I've somehow "contaminated" my formerly-pristine collection with 96-and-128K .mp3's sourced from God-knows-where. I feel like I've just introduced some kind of dirty disease onto my Mac; like I've eaten my lunch from a garbage can; like I've just slept with a porn star without wearing a condom. I know a byte is a byte is a byte, and that lots of people are perfectly happy with Kazaa .mp3's, and that my original collection is still there, unblemished, in all its AAC glory. Yet the thought of it still bothers me more than it probably should.

So I guess my question is: Is this normal behavior for a 30-something Mac guy??? Anybody else out there as messed-up as I am??? And how do you find cover art for a Gregorian Chant???

[marknicholls]

Well if your collection is so well backed up, why cant you just restore your collection from your backup?

[Diatribe]

Well if your collection is so well backed up, why cant you just restore your collection from your backup?

Exactly, the backup files should've never touched that NewAge crap :D

I'm not really anal about my iTunes but I make sure the quality is good. For me this means no tunes below 224k AAC and CD rips only.
I do have a couple of downloaded songs at a lower rate but only b/c I haven't yet found those on CD.

[marknicholls]

I must agree, i am kind of anal about my music. All my ID3 tags must be correct, and all the album art must be correct as all the art shows on my PDA which is docked by my TV so it looks kinda cool ;)

[thequicksilver]

I'm a little anal about things like column sizes - which must be consistent between playlists - and genres, which must be eradicated without fail. (Would you call both Elvis Presley and the Spice Girls 'pop'? And if not, what would you call Elvis? Nobody can agree, therefore they blow.) Also like to have accurate years for my date based playlists, much better way to categorise music.

But as for encoding, well, as long as it sounds ok, then it's fine by me. Suppose I'm only visually anal. :)

[MacDawg]

Interesting what we are anal about...

I need titles to be consistent... in other words, nothing all caps, or all lower case. They need to be "titles". Artist needs to be absolutely consistent too. I use genre, so that has to be fairly consistent, though there are certainly gray areas. Most of that gets lumped into 'pop'.

Playlists need to have the browser "on", set to continuous play and random.

Other than that, I'm not too picky. Guess I'm visually anal too. I can't hear sound quality difference too well, so I'm not a stickler there.

Woof, Woof - Dawg

[Diatribe]

I forgot something... :D
My list has to be organized exactly like this throughout iTunes and it's not supposed to show a scrollbar, I hate that. :D

How do you guys have your columns set up?

[Blue Velvet]

I feel like I've just introduced some kind of dirty disease onto my Mac; like I've eaten my lunch from a garbage can; like I've just slept with a porn star without wearing a condom.

Personally, I wouldn't know what any of those things feel like... you know, a lot of guys around here would probably also skip the condom.

And they'd probably also not get too upset about 'different' music contaminating their precious collection...

See it as an opportunity to listen to something different, to learn a little about Gregorian chants... you can always delete them later. It's no biggie...

Saying that, a colleague gave me a disk 3 months ago with some indy MP3s of uncertain provenance which remain unlistened to, but maybe you should lighten up a little.

After all, it's not often you get a free lunch, even it's not immediately to your liking.

p.s. Album art on a screen -- it's overrated.

[MacDawg]

p.s. Album art on a screen -- it's overrated.

I thought this was going to be really cool... but I lost interest in it real fast. I'm usually doing something, either on the computer (MR?) or in the room, and I don't have time to sit and listen and look at the art work too.

Woof, Woof - Dawg

[lavar78]

I'm a little anal about things like column sizes - which must be consistent between playlists - and genres, which must be eradicated without fail. (Would you call both Elvis Presley and the Spice Girls 'pop'? And if not, what would you call Elvis? Nobody can agree, therefore they blow.)
It doesn't matter what everyone thinks the genre should be; it only matters what you think. FTR, I'd call Elvis and the Spice Girls "pop." However, I use allmusic.com to add music styles to the Grouping tag (because I don't use Grouping and I want to keep Comments uncluttered). In this case, Elvis would have things like Rock & Roll and Pop/Rock while the Spice Girls would have Euro-Pop and Dance-Pop. Then I can make smart playlists that incorporate certain styles. It's a lot of work to set up, but it works really well once you're done.

[thequicksilver]

Here's my columns.

Still can't see the point of genres though - if you look at my mostly electronic based playlist, each little bit is divided into so many sub-genres. The instrumental stuff I listen to a lot of - is it chillout, ambient, melodic trance, instrumental house, or something completely different? It gets to the point where it's just easier to dispense with them altogether and group my music by year and different playlists to represent different moods.

[mike3k]

You should have created a separate account for her with a separate iTunes music library, which would hold only her music.

[ChrisBrightwell]

Or you can sort on the "Date Added" column and nuke them from there.

[MattG]

I'm very careful about making sure stuff stays organized. Correcting misspelled words, making sure album titles/artists all get labeled properly. I also don't like putting crap in my library that was downloaded from who knows where. Everything in my library is either ripped from CDs or downloaded from iTMS.

I like it to look pretty :p

[Diatribe]

Here's my columns.

Still can't see the point of genres though - if you look at my mostly electronic based playlist, each little bit is divided into so many sub-genres. The instrumental stuff I listen to a lot of - is it chillout, ambient, melodic trance, instrumental house, or something completely different? It gets to the point where it's just easier to dispense with them altogether and group my music by year and different playlists to represent different moods.

Nice playcounts :D
Genres are only useful if you listen to a lot of different stuff. I have about 20 different genres and I already put rock/pop together...
Since I listen to classical music, punk, r&b, rap, pop, rock, metal, etc., etc. genres are needed to find what I am looking for.

[vollspacken]

I don't collect CDs in order to keep my MP3 collection lean and clean

I don't care about cover art

BUT pre-sorting into folders (for example "Drum'n'Bass, Garage, Jungle & Grime", "Jazz, Latin & Score" and "Electronic, Techno & House") and then "fine-labeling" them is very important to me...

vSpacken

[Lacero]

A cute female friend of mine received a pink iPod mini for Christmas, and needed help loading it up. Only problem -- she wanted HER music and only HER music put on.
I would have created a new user account for her, so only her tunes is in a separate iTunes music library, so it doesn't affect your stuff.

Did you create a separate playlist for her. Since you could pretty well delete all her music by selecting it in a playlist and pressing Option-Delete, which will delete it out of your library as well. :D Very useful option!

As for others hating album art, I love it. Ever since the iPod nano and 5G iPods came out, I'm an avid collector of 600x600 high quality album art. My collection of about 34,000 songs with 7% already tagged as complete. (meaning full album art, lyrics and at least 128 Kb AAC).

I also love high quality album art, so I can create nice looking compilation CDs using iTunes album art print feature. I love it! :D

ps. I was searching for 'star rating' in MR but only this post showed up. Oh well, nothing like resurrecting old threads. :p

Here's to the Crazy Ones http://forums.macrumors.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=35452 (http://www.uriah.com/apple-qt/movies/think-different.mov)

[killuminati]

I'm also really anal about my itunes collection. I had about 2,500 songs on my powerbook all with album art and lyrics and then a couple days ago my hard drive crashed and i lost everything.

I had backed up my music to my imac a couple months before but there were only 1600 songs and it was before I had added album art and lyrics to everything :(.

[SummerBreeze]

Yay old threads!

I'm a bit insane about my itunes library. I have album art for everything, and rating for everything. I have to update my ipod all the time, because I want the playcounts to be correct. And of course the tags are perfect.

A friend once gave me a burned cd and told me that I had to listen to it. I was all up for it until I realized that she had burned two cds onto one and their tags didn't automatically show up. So I spent an afternoon googling the lyrics to figure out what the song was, then googling the song title to find the correct information. It took me awhile, and I considered it time well spent. It's stuff like that that makes people think I'm crazy.

[floyde]

So I guess my question is: Is this normal behavior for a 30-something Mac guy??? Anybody else out there as messed-up as I am??? And how do you find cover art for a Gregorian Chant???
Well I'm a 24 Mac guy and that seems perfectly normal to me. I do suffer from OCD though :rolleyes: :) (true story:().
You could just show the "bit rate" column and delete anything below your standards, or show the "format" column and then get rid of anything with the word mp3 on it. Or..., you could give in to the sweet, sweet pleasure of "dirty" music ;)

edit: oh, wow, this thread is very, very old

[OutThere]

ps. I was searching for 'star rating' in MR but only this post showed up. Oh well, nothing like resurrecting old threads. :p


This thread, in fact, died before you even registered here. :p

[cgratti]

Why dont you just create another user account on your mac and let her have that account to import her music from her itunes?

Why would someone even have an iPod with no Mac or PC to load it with music or charge it from anyway?

[conradzoo]

Question. How do you get rid of mispelled genres? Everytime i Type (whenever i'm not browsin thru the list) like say 'Alternative' it reads 'Aternative'. Very annoying... at least.:confused:

[Lacero]

Question. How do you get rid of mispelled genres? Everytime i Type (whenever i'm not browsin thru the list) like say 'Alternative' it reads 'Aternative'. Very annoying... at least.:confused:
Browse by Genre and select all the songs tagged with 'Aternative' and change them all to 'Alternative'.

I simplified my genre listing to 28, down from 44. Makes management oh so easy.

Here's to the Crazy Ones http://forums.macrumors.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=37117 (http://www.uriah.com/apple-qt/movies/think-different.mov)

[iSaint]

I like correctly spelled and capitalized info on my iTunes. I only have about 15 genres, and a couple of them are some that I've made up (AlternRock for example - not quite punk, but most of what I listen to from the 80's through today). I've become more anal about my iTunes layout and content.

I downloaded a bunch of Usher and 50 Cent and other junk for my daughter, and also feel like my music collection has been violated somehow.

[Aarow]

I have mine set to the default 128 whatchamacallits , I can't really tell the difference. My columns are : Name, time, artist, album, playcount.

[ITASOR]

I'm so uptight about my iTunes Library that I refused to help my computerless good friend put songs from their CDs on their new iPod. :eek:

[wiggy4ever]

Can you actually hear the different between say 160 and 196 and 224?Exactly, the backup files should've never touched that NewAge crap :D

I'm not really anal about my iTunes but I make sure the quality is good. For me this means no tunes below 224k AAC and CD rips only.
I do have a couple of downloaded songs at a lower rate but only b/c I haven't yet found those on CD.

[Clix Pix]

Once I discovered iTunes and its flexible cataloging scheme, as a librarian, I was sooo happy! At last, a decent and easy way to organize my music! I've tinkered around with the various categories in order to have my music categorized the way *I* want it to be, and ensured that the spelling and punctuation are correct, too.

Yeah, I'm pretty anal about my stuff.... a friend who has a Windows PC is interested in iTunes and in getting an iPod, so I very carefully explained to her that I'll be happy to get her set up with iTunes and an iTunes Music Store account, and when she gets her iPod, helping her with setting that up, but there is NO WAY that I'm sticking my iPod on her PC, period, not even to demonstrate how the whole system works. I'll tell her, but not show her. My iPod is a Mac baby and it stays that way, only connecting to its mothership, my iMac..... When my friend gets her own iPod (which I think will be very soon), fine, we'll set it up with her Windows machine and that will be that.

OTB

[iMeowbot]

Why would someone even have an iPod with no Mac or PC to load it with music or charge it from anyway?
There are separate chargers, and there are friends to do the loading. It's not only computer users who got tired of lugging CD players :)

[wiggy4ever]

there also are people on craigs list who if you send them all ur music cds, they will load your music onto an ipod for free, albeit they keep ur cds as a charge for the ipod and service of loading your music on itThere are separate chargers, and there are friends to do the loading. It's not only computer users who got tired of lugging CD players :)

[Seasought]

So I guess my question is: Is this normal behavior for a 30-something Mac guy??? Anybody else out there as messed-up as I am??? And how do you find cover art for a Gregorian Chant???

Well, my wife did something similar on my old Dell box (what I was using until I switched) and it was rather painful. I'd be listening, happily when suddenly some god-awful, back-woods, country song would start up. I, ripped violently from my little bubble of audio-heaven, would scramble to both stop the music and find out what it was so I could remove it.

You are not alone. As for the Gregorian chant cover art, not sure I'm much help in that area. :D

[narco]

Gregorian Chants are nice, but not a ton of them. I get the same way with my music, luckily it's easy to delete -- just sort your library by 'date added' and delete all the files from around the time you added her songs. Quite frankly, the thought of contaminating your library with music gives me a gross feeling. I am constantly trying to make my library perfect after years of neglect, I couldn't see messing it up!

I have close to 22,000 tracks now -- most ripped from CD, some from vinyl and cassette, others from Soulseek (only extremely rare stuff that hasn't been available since the mid-80's). I've been transferring my collection since iTunes 1, trouble is, I haven't fiddled with genre/album art and all the other fun stuff until last year. Not to mention, back then I only used MP3 and now I want everything in AAC/128.

So yeah, I think you should go through her collection and find one or two albums you like, tag it properly and toss the rest. It'll give you a better feeling, I think.

Fishes,
narco.

[narco]

there also are people on craigs list who if you send them all ur music cds, they will load your music onto an ipod for free, albeit they keep ur cds as a charge for the ipod and service of loading your music on it

Wait, they actually keep the CDs, or they give the CDs back and keep copies of the ripped music?

Fishes,
narco.

[brepublican]

Gregorian chants? Did I hear Enigma anyone? LSD?!!

600 x 600 album art ROCKS!! (Especially on a 12" screen - it fills up like 70% of the screen when you view it) I've spent a lot of hours on my iTunes Library of over 8,000 songs correctly tagging, labelling, replacing old fetch art with 600x600 album artwork. About half done = time well spent. No lyrics though, still using iTunes 4.9.

[Sirus The Virus]

Ever since the start of my music collection I have always tagged everything perfectly, with high quality album art, some even have lyrics. I am extreamly picky when it comes to organizing my music collection. Someone posted this Link (http://tpemble.urfbownd.net/itunes/) in a thread somwhere here, I have to say this is a great tool to have. I used Amazon before for artwork. Now I've gone trough my songs and replaced most with the artwork with the clean high resolution iTMS art. I find organizing my music relaxing for some reason. :)

[Lacero]

Someone posted this Link (http://tpemble.urfbownd.net/itunes/) in a thread somwhere here, I have to say this is a great tool to have.
I'm anal as the next anus, but the iTMS album artwork comes in way too big at around 300-500 KBs each. I bring them into Photoshop and do a square crop of 600x600 pixels and re-save them so they fall under 120 KBs. I've found that to be the sweet spot in terms of image quality and file size. They print nicely at 200 dpi.

Here's to the Crazy Ones http://forums.macrumors.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=35452 (http://www.uriah.com/apple-qt/movies/think-different.mov)

[mannix87]

Only thing is, I have this weird feeling that I've somehow "contaminated" my formerly-pristine collection with 96-and-128K .mp3's sourced from God-knows-where. I feel like I've just introduced some kind of dirty disease onto my Mac;

i feel the exact same way whenever friends ask me to burn CDs for them or convert formats for them. If it's an mp3 file that's been introduced, and it's been merged somehow w/ the other songs in the iTunes with a different format, after the "service" for the friend has been rendered, I immediately scroll down to the end of the library using the "Kind" column (see preferences, check on the box provided or "Kind"), and there you'll find all the mp3 files sorted for you to delete right away. all formats are arranged alphabetically, AAC audio file, Lossless, and then mpeg audio file so they're pretty easy to find. If this is not enough exorcism for you, then you might have a problem indeed. :)

[ChrisBrightwell]

I've tinkered around with the various categories in order to have my music categorized the way *I* want it to be, and ensured that the spelling and punctuation is correct, too.Please don't let me be the only one to see t he humor here.

[jeremy.king]

Please don't let me be the only one to see t he humor here.

Are you referring to the misuse of "is?"

[Jaffa Cake]

You have my sympathies, eRondeau...

When my girlfriend moved in with me over the summer, I agreed to put her music into my iTunes library so she could carry on synching her iPOd. The end result is that my iTunes is now littered with the likes of Atomic Kitten, G4, Will Young, Wet Wet Wet and a great many more crimes against good taste I daren't even mention here. Luckily, I've got a smart playlist set up to make sure that our songs are strictly segregated and none of her bad stuff gets anywhere near my ears. Still, the fact that it's on there does make me feel a little dirty, and not in a nice way either...

[DMPDX]

So I guess my question is: Is this normal behavior for a 30-something Mac guy??? Anybody else out there as messed-up as I am??? And how do you find cover art for a Gregorian Chant???

You arent alone. Even though I am a little bit far from 30, Whenever I get a bad feeling about something I've installed I have re-installed os-x. Pitiful I know, but it keeps my image of my pristine PB alive and well. Anal? yes. OCD? maybe:confused:
But I think we all can relate to the struggle in keeping everything that has to do with your mac the way it should.
-D.M.

[Plymouthbreezer]

Yeah, I'm anal about iTunes.

The big album gabs do bother me... I've been slowly working at google'ing the songs and filling them in.

[eRondeau]

Talk about a retro trip down memory lane! If you're interested in how my particular iTunes library problem was finally resolved, click here....

http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=114386

I suppose time wounds all heels...

[2nyRiggz]

i keep mines clean.....very anal about it. i check over and over to make sure everything is in the right place. m..u..s..t be perfect


Bless

[SilvorX]

I've gotten more and more anal about my music over the last few years but I'm far from anal about music, I used to encode mp3s in 64kbps.. at first i thought it was perfect, over time I realized how very terrible it sounded, so i deleted all my music I imported from CD and reimported the CDs in 160kbps mp3.. then aac became a standard on iTunes and quicktime so deleted the imported music again and i'm where I'm at now with 128-160kbps aac

[Clix Pix]

Please don't let me be the only one to see t he humor here.

:Blush: OMG, I can't believe I did that! LOL! Hee, hee, it IS kind of funny, isn't it? [hastily rushes to the relevant post to edit and correct glaring grammatical error]

OTB

[quigleybc]

I am also a freak about my iTunes music collection.

I'm approaching 100 gigs, and it's all AAC 192.

I recently backed up using Toast 7's "disc spanning" option (18 discs) man that is a great feature. SO convenient. I love Toast.

Clutter is a life saver for collecting the album art work, love clutter.

Live archive.org is awsome for collecting all my hippie concerts that I enjoy, love live archive.

Collecting music and being anal about it, is one of my favorite things to do.

When I listen to my friends talk about how they prefer Win Amp to iTunes I actually get angry...use windows, dell, whatever I don't care, but to deny yourself iTunes is a friggin sin IMO....


SO, no you're not alone in being anal about iTunes,

[frankblundt]

in order to qualify as truly anal you MUST re-name all named artists as surname, firstname.
although it gets a bit clumsy for Cave, Nick & The Bad Seeds..
but at least the Walker brothers and their solo outing are altogether.
and the year of issue (for re-ssues and compilations) along with original release year.
haven't gone as far as cat #'s,
yet.
and where are my fields for "produced by", "label", ...?
and how do you deal with (feat. ...) - screws up yer listings if you include it under artist, seems a bit clunky to add it to the song title

had my collection sullied by Whitney for a time - delete delete is the only path to redemption.

genre's are pointless - is Prince pop, or rock, or funk or what?
and don't get me started on "alternative"

[mannix87]

i
and how do you deal with (feat. ...) - screws up yer listings if you include it under artist, seems a bit clunky to add it to the song title
*snip*

genre's are pointless - is Prince pop, or rock, or funk or what?
and don't get me started on "alternative"

i agree 100%. I actually made a mistake of following what iTunes suggested for naming a genre; good thing I realized quickly you could provide your own name; but essentialy w/ the playlists, the genre is useless.

as for multiple artists in a song, I make do with "feat. so & so"; this defnitely beats messing up your artists list

[nw43]

Anyone else tried Coverflow (http://www.steelskies.com/coverflow/) as an alternative for browsing your music collection (well, I know some people have becuase I got the link from here!)

It's a great app which lets you browse through covers for all your albums - and searches for images automatically too. Certainly makes choosing an album more interesting than looking through a big list.

[Greenjeens]

Feel like I'm in good company...
I've burned 99% of my huge CD collection to Apple Lossless format. I'm not going to lose any of my bits!
Allthough much of the music doesn't benefit from a high resolution lossless format and it takes up a HUGE amount of space, I know when I burn compilation CD's they are going to be the best quality possible.

My little 16 year old neice let me borrow some of her favorite music..so I downloaded some current music I liked and now have "contaminated" my lossless collection (or AAC itunes reripped of course, to strip the DRM).

I could tell right off which one's she got from file sharing sevices yuch! Great music to start with, so compressed, that it sounds like crap! As soon as I can find the cd's I'll be dumping the mp3 junk.

Luckily it's easy find any "junk" music in the iTunes library by either searching the "date added" or "size".

Practically speaking, although I dislike mp3, it's very useful to jam a bunch of music on one CD and then play on a car CD/MP3 player. It's just much easier to hold a large collection for playback in the car, where high resolution audio is not so important, due to all the background noise.
The other option for discs with high song capacity and quality is to burn to DVD audio and get a CD/DVD player for the car. Mobile DVD players are expensive and manipulating large numbers of tracks without a monitor is also more difficult.

I love using iTunes to organize a large music colection. An important addition to the music, is the ability to find the lyrics. Finally, having the ability to quickly locate lyrics to songs I've been listening to for years, without knowing what the lyrics were, is like rediscovering a key aspect to the those songs meaning all over again.

Pearlyrics is one of the best lyrics locaters I just discovered (here on Macforums)
Better get PearLyrics while you can still find it, it's a free download, but was shut it from further distribution on usual download sites, like VersionTracker.
pearLyrics 0.6 (v0.6.1b)
http://thepiratebay.org/details.php?id=3418692

iTunescool is OK but doesn't find many song lyrics. Costs ~$6 or so
iTunesCool 3.7

Still haven't backed up my iTunes library to disc. Even though a dedicated to iTunes, Seagate 200GB external drive is new...we all know that any spinning drive can die at any time.
Losing 4,570 songs (120GB) would be a huge loss in invested time...better get on that back up, pronto.

Did some tests and using DVD discs with Toast7 "Mac only" version "Data Disc", with "disc spanning" writes _very_ quickly and seems like the best way to back up to disc.

Anyone have a better iTunes library, backup to disc plan?

-
Dave

[FadeToBlack]

Yep, I'm also anal about my iTunes. I have my entire collection in iTunes. I also have album art for every album in there. I have a more minimalistic approach to the way my iTunes looks, though: no ratings, genres, playcounts, just the Name, Time, Artist, and Album. I did keep the Top 25 Most Played Smart Playlist, though. Here's a screenshot:

http://img41.imageshack.us/img41/5161/itunesscreenshot125061mn.th.jpg (http://img41.imageshack.us/my.php?image=itunesscreenshot125061mn.jpg)

[frankblundt]

Anyone have a better iTunes library, backup to disc plan?
Dave
A second external drive, just for backup.
I backed up to DVD but the number of discs required got a bit ridiculous, and i'm still updating my library, adding covers and so on, which made a mess of trying to keep track of what was backed up. I toyed with RAID 5 for a bit until i ran out of space but then also worried about the whole box dying of something, so went for an external as a backup drive, kept elsewhere.
Might seem like overkill, but it's taken me over a year to get all this stuff in and get the details the way i like them (i'm extremely anal), so as insurance it seemed like a reasonable cost.

[Greenjeens]

A second external drive, just for backup.
I backed up to DVD but the number of discs required got a bit ridiculous, and i'm still updating my library, adding covers and so on, which made a mess of trying to keep track of what was backed up. I toyed with RAID 5 for a bit until i ran out of space but then also worried about the whole box dying of something, so went for an external as a backup drive, kept elsewhere.
Might seem like overkill, but it's taken me over a year to get all this stuff in and get the details the way i like them (i'm extremely anal), so as insurance it seemed like a reasonable cost.

Ok, someone else has thought of this too..good! My 120 GB library would work out to about 25 DVD at what, 50 cents a piece. Data DVD discs burn incredibly fast, for some reason. IIRC, it was like 6 or 7 minutes per disc, but I was burning straight mp3's Does that sound correct to anyone else?

So, $12 to archive my collection from potential catastrophe and perhaps 4 hours max time spent burning, seems like a cheap insurance policy. I'd need to swap out DVD's evry once in a while, since the backup disc spanning would just wait until the next DVD was loaded.

As far as keeping track of new iTunes additions...can't you just write the date on the burned DVD's and when it's time to add more songs to the DVD archive, select a playlist from "date added" info in the iTunes preference and burn the latest tracks to another DVD?

I've got a 30 or so verbatim DVD-Rs staring at me from their cake box, but no spare hardrive, nor spare $200 to purchase one at present.
Unless there's some compelling reason not to proceed...seems like there's not much left to do but go for it and report how it turns out!
-
Dave

[frankblundt]

As far as keeping track of new iTunes additions...can't you just write the date on the burned DVD's and when it's time to add more songs to the DVD archive, select a playlist from "date added" info in the iTunes preference and burn the latest tracks to another DVD?
True enough, for most people DVD backup would be my recommendation too
it's only that in my case it's about 100 DVDs, and by the time i gave up on it i was already up to my fifth round of added + recently modified. and if i did have to re-install them i'd have to load the old ones first, then overwrite with the newer ones, except where the artist/album names had changed... (i change my mind frequently about the "best" way to name things) - for a large collection like mine it just wasn't working for me and a spare drive that i can auto-synchronise is easier to deal with and back up to more frequently.

[Greenjeens]

True enough, for most people DVD backup would be my recommendation too
it's only that in my case it's about 100 DVDs, and by the time i gave up on it i was already up to my fifth round of added + recently modified. and if i did have to re-install them i'd have to load the old ones first, then overwrite with the newer ones, except where the artist/album names had changed... (i change my mind frequently about the "best" way to name things) - for a large collection like mine it just wasn't working for me and a spare drive that i can auto-synchronise is easier to deal with and back up to more frequently.

Yikes 100 DVD's that's a quite a bit of archiving, but done a little at a time would be more managible.

I made a burn playlist hoping to keep the tracks and albums together in order to minimize seeking on the hardrive. I wonder if this matters? i do try to store albums together.

Anyway Toast picked up the track numbres FIRST and then alphabetized each set of track numbers so it had to seek all ove the hardrive. Next time I'll leave only the artist and album before I drag over to toast.

Also Toast doesn't want to create duplicate song titles and I couldn't find anyway to nix that preference. So I lost some multiple song versions...darn.

I might try just to burn Data DVD right from the iTunes library. There is an advanced setting for this...if I had to do it again.
Perhaps the iTunes Data DVDs would allow multiple song titles to be used, as well as keeping the playlist tracks oredered as I listed them(dunno?) instead of Toasts default alphabetizing of all track titles. And worse, tracks 1 a-z, then tracks 2 a-z etc. So song titles are scattered all over the drive...talk about anal, but it doesn't keep a whole 4.7GB disc from burning in more than 6.5 minutes. Seems like a fast burn to an 8X rated DVD-R.

I'm on disc 18 of 28 and things were going OK until disc 6 hung and would not finish recording or eject, so I had to abort the burn and then shut off the burner to get it to stop. Then delete the already burned tracks from the Toast playlist, since the sequence had to be restarted. This is how I found the default track, then alphebetical song title burning preference.
Just started up the burning sequence again and everything is working well. Oh well, it's just a backup, but i need to see how the iTunes DVD data backup option works in comparison.

-
dave

[DJMastaWes]

I try and keep mine organized.

http://i10.photobucket.com/albums/a101/chillcafe/Screen%20Shots/iTunes.png

[Glenn Wolsey]

I am ,everything needs to be perfect in my library. I need to work on finishing off my 600x600 album art collection.

[geekologist]

Only thing is, I have this weird feeling that I've somehow "contaminated" my formerly-pristine collection with 96-and-128K .mp3's sourced from God-knows-where. I feel like I've just introduced some kind of dirty disease onto my Mac; like I've eaten my lunch from a garbage can; like I've just slept with a porn star without wearing a condom. I know a byte is a byte is a byte, and that lots of people are perfectly happy with Kazaa .mp3's, and that my original collection is still there, unblemished, in all its AAC glory. Yet the thought of it still bothers me more than it probably should.



You do know that music from the iTunes Music store is 128 kbps right? I don't really mind 128kbps for a buck, but I rip all my cds is 192 kbps.

[eRondeau]

You do know that music from the iTunes Music store is 128 kbps right? I don't really mind 128kbps for a buck, but I rip all my cds is 192 kbps.

You make a valid point. But by its very nature, all music compression is a trade-off. I've got a 25GB iTunes library stored on a 60GB iBook, ripped at 128kbps AAC. I've currently got only 9GB free. I'd dearly love to re-rip my 300 CD's using ALE but I'd run out of room. Even at 192k AAC I'd have to start tossing Garageband, or iWork, or font collections. So on balance, I found that 128k AAC is a fair trade-off between sound quality and file size. Apple clearly agrees, judging by their choice for the majority of their Music Store songs. And for those of us out in the sticks where dial-up is our only option, file size / download time is also a big consideration.

[PlaceofDis]

You do know that music from the iTunes Music store is 128 kbps right? I don't really mind 128kbps for a buck, but I rip all my cds is 192 kbps.

also there is a rather big difference between 128 MP3 and 128 AAC. significant difference if you ask me.

[eRondeau]

also there is a rather big difference between 128 MP3 and 128 AAC. significant difference if you ask me.

My very favourite Smart Playlist is called "All .mp3's"...

"KIND" "STARTS WITH" "MPEG"

...separates all the nasty .mp3 files from the happy AAC's. I've currently got 763 .mp3's out of a total library of 5223 songs. Several times (usually after several beers!) I've come very, very close to deleting every song in that playlist in an attempt to "purify" my iTunes library. But at the last second, I think about how much I'd miss "Save a Horse, Ride a Cowboy" and I move on to something else. See, I'm completey hopeless. :confused:

[Project]

Wow...stumbling upon this thread is like your first meeting with the alcoholics anonymous group. Feels kinda refreshing and validating to know there are others just like me (and by the looks of things, even worse! I mean, catalog numberS?!!)

Seriously though, I take my iTunes collection very seriously.

Correct cover art for most of my tracks (I stopped getting new music to give me time to sort the cover art out for what I already had)

MP3s must be at least 192kbs

Fields need to be completely filled in. I despise gaps for album name and year of release. Despise them. I have a smart playlist for YEAR = <blank> to weed them out and fix em.

As screen space on my 12" iBook is minimal, I have to find the perfect balance between number of fields. I HATE having fields set to be shown, but dont fit on my screen. Also, each field needs to be perfectly spaced out so I can see the complete text.

Im working on adding the producer to the tags for all of my 4 or 5 star tracks.

All tracks have to be rated.

I back up my database files and smartplaylists etc daily, both to iDisk and an external hard drive. The music can be re-ripped. The playcounts etc are incredibly valuable to me and are irreplaceable.

All titles and artist names must be properly capitalised. I use a script from Doug for this.

Absolutely NO track numbers should be in the titles. I hate this with a passion. I click the name field to sort alphabetically and weed outr the ones at the top of the list starting 3) bihikfheihf. etc.

All tracks must have a genre. I stick to 7 genres. It makes for powerful playlists.

Ive noticed a new offender in recent months. Podcasts. Youd be surprised how they can just hide in your iTunes folder, taking up space.

[frankblundt]

... Ive noticed a new offender in recent months. Podcasts. Youd be surprised how they can just hide in your iTunes folder, taking up space.
indeed, and i don't think there's any way yet to stop them showing in your library, or videos presumably.
haven't gone as far as cat #s, but labels definately (nice to be able to search for all the Flying Nun albums etc)
Thinking idly about getting a 23" screen just so i can see more in Itunes :o
maybe when my redundancy cheque comes thru...

[Project]

indeed, and i don't think there's any way yet to stop them showing in your library, or videos presumably.
haven't gone as far as cat #s, but labels definately (nice to be able to search for all the Flying Nun albums etc)
Thinking idly about getting a 23" screen just so i can see more in Itunes :o
maybe when my redundancy cheque comes thru...

Dude I seen a 30" ACD for the first time in my life the other day, and I loaded up iTunes. I swear I had every conceivable field set to view, and I could see them ALL. iTunes still only took up like a quarter of the screen.

It seriously got me thinking about investing in suttina little bigger.

[eRondeau]

Wow...stumbling upon this thread is like your first meeting with the alcoholics anonymous group. Feels kinda refreshing and validating to know there are others just like me....

Welcome, brother. You are now among friends. God bless you!

[frankblundt]

Dude I seen a 30" ACD for the first time in my life the other day, and I loaded up iTunes. I swear I had every conceivable field set to view, and I could see them ALL. iTunes still only took up like a quarter of the screen.

It seriously got me thinking about investing in suttina little bigger.
hmmm. how to convince my wife that it's actually so we can get a bigger TV...?

[yg17]

I'm anal about ID3 tags and pretty much everything has album art, but I dont care where my music comes from, as long as it sounds decent.

[Glenn Wolsey]

Oh, and every song I rip from CDs now must be Apple Lossless.