iTunes as a music classification system - How do YOU use it?

[alex_ant]

Hi,

I am a somewhat new Mac user just starting to get the hang of iTunes. At first I didn't like it, because most of my MP3s had weird/no ID3 tags, but now that that's close to being fixed I can see its power. My music collection consists of:

- My own ripped CDs
- Full concert bootlegs
- Miscellaneous individual songs from concerts
- Miscellaneous other songs, including collaborations between artists/bands, demo songs, unreleased songs, b-sides, etc.

I am fairly anal about classification. I try to preserve as much information as I can about each concert, including date, song order, venue, city/state/country, whether it was an audience or soundboard recording, sound quality grade, whether it has any unofficial titles, etc. (It annoys me to no end when people trade live recordings of individual songs and do not attach the date & venue on/at which they were played - how are you supposed to tell where they came from?) Before I used iTunes, I would classify my music inside a directory (folder) hierarchy like so:

Artist/live/1998-04-25 Blahblah Tour - Melbourne, Australia - Waverly Park - "Unofficial Bootleg Title"/01 - First Song.mp3

Artist/albums/Blahblah/01 - First Song.mp3

This had the benefit of making everything all nice and organized, but it was not easy to browse without an abstraction layer (such as iTunes) involved.

My problem is that iTunes of course uses ID3 tags to store its metadata, and these ID3 tags do not seem to be robust enough for me to store all the information I want to store. There is an Album field and a Comments field, but they are both too short and that doesn't seem to be enough fields anyway. Basically I would like to hear from others in a similar situation to mine who have converted to iTunes and have managed to preserve all this stuff somehow. How do you manage your digital music? What classification system do you use? How much trouble is it? Don't you hate it when people put things in their ID3 tags LiKe tHiS?

Thanks and mad props in advance, or something.

Alex

[alex_ant]

Follow-up question - In addition to preserving information, how do you browse it? Assuming you have concerts you want to browse - iTunes only gives you Artist, Song, Album, Track, and Time (and perhaps Genre) categories to browse. How would you browse a bootleg which is not on an album? Just put its information in the album field? But that would be non-aesthetically-satisfying! Aaaaagh!

Alex

[buffsldr]

<caution:heavy dose of sarcasm to follow> First of all, let me say that I am absolutely shocked that you have bootleg material on your comp. How dare you! All of my songs are evaluation copies that I am evaluating for the next year or so that I will delete as soon as I am done "evaluating" them.

But seriously, iTunes does rock for orginization if you bite the bullet and get those tags filled out.

[alex_ant]

Originally posted by buffsldr
<caution:heavy dose of sarcasm to follow> First of all, let me say that I am absolutely shocked that you have bootleg material on your comp. How dare you! All of my songs are evaluation copies that I am evaluating for the next year or so that I will delete as soon as I am done "evaluating" them.

But, I will too! I swear, officer, I swear!

But seriously, iTunes does rock for orginization if you bite the bullet and get those tags filled out.

That's what I'm beginning to see. I was just wondering how it would be best to fill out the tags. Is there any kind of tag-filling-out standard amongst bootleggers? I've just started to tag a few concerts and I'm simply putting the old information I had contained in the directory name as data in the Album field of the ID3 tag, so that this information is searchable by iTunes. Is this how everyone else does it? I mean, hypothetically speaking, as I'm sure there is no one else who would actually allow themselves to be responsible for having bootleg material on their hard drives... of course...

Alex

[hicksypoo]

Somebody should write an applescript for this. Or at least some of it.

[krossfyter]

how do you get the songs to burn in order all the time? i notice that sometimes they burn our of order...randomly or from the last song first and the first song last? what do i do to fix that?

[eyelikeart]

Originally posted by krossfyter
how do you get the songs to burn in order all the time? i notice that sometimes they burn our of order...randomly or from the last song first and the first song last? what do i do to fix that?

u don't happen to have a title menu selected that would warrant that do u?
ex. listing songs by "size" rather than by "name"...

[King Cobra]

The way I use iTunes is that I just listen to music when I do basically anything on the Cube. He!!, I am even listening to music as I type, AND I listened to rock music for my Honors Chemistry report. Perfect score.

When I need/want to censor music I import the mp3 (actually, multiple mp3s) into iMovie. There I go about censoring out parts and I export the final product to QT, then I convert it to iTunes. The final product sounds excellent.

Finally, I use iTunes to export these songs and others to iPod, or to a CD to burn.

I already have around 100 mp3s, and going for 200.
______________

Anytime is a great time for iPod.

[Backtothemac]

Having over 4,000 mp3's it took forever to classify them. Alex, I use genre and artist to classify everything. I do use some comments in Album, or in comments, but not much. Genre is cool for me because I have all of my music broken down into playlists based on Genre. That way if I want 80's I have an 80's playlist, etc.

[stromie952]

I used iTunes to clean out my hard drive, it was just too full (I got bit with the iTunes 2.0.1 bug). Even after the "incident", I use it all the time for importing music, and then encoding the AIFFs with the LAME encoder using an AppleScript I found. Best quality I have heard for MP3s anywhere!

[D0ct0rteeth]

Originally posted by Backtothemac
Having over 4,000 mp3's it took forever to classify them. Alex, I use genre and artist to classify everything. I do use some comments in Album, or in comments, but not much. Genre is cool for me because I have all of my music broken down into playlists based on Genre. That way if I want 80's I have an 80's playlist, etc.

I have basically the same setup... and have setup playlists for "genre" and "mood" as well as one specifically for the gym on the iPod

With about 7000 mp3's I exclusivly search by keywords... and I cannot imagine any other way... (Miles+Kind+Blue = Miles Davis - Kind of Blue)

Thank god for iTunes.... now all i need are nested playlists

C-

[sjs]

Seeing people talk about having 4000 or 7000 songs on their computer...well, I don't mean to start a flame war, but:
1. Didn't Steve say we shouldn't be "stealing" music?
2. Do you use Limewire as your evaluation- acquisition tool?
3. Has anyone ever put a virus into a popular song that is being downloaded alot?
4. If that is possible, but never been done, I am sorry I brought it up...

[D0ct0rteeth]

no offense taken... im a fire fighter... no flames here

infact i whole-heartedly agree....

FYI; I have purchased easily over 600 cds and a major hobby is collecting live concerts....

yes i have downloaded music.... but if there is any crime in downloading a rare, live or unreleased song than please let me know...

<very trite rant>

Not to get hollier-than-thou; but support the artist! and don't complain about the price of cd's.. there are many places for cheap music or split the cost with a friend. (used cd shops)

buy a cd for 5 bucks... sell it back for 2 bucks later... 30 cents a song

Dont rip of creative people...

</very trite rant>

as for virus' they are usually visual basic scripts and although they can be disguised as an mp3 by renaming the extention, you usually are searching for the file by a ID3 tag.. which the virus wouldn' t have... risk is there although slim

I find what I am looking for to rarely be on limewire... and more times than not Im not very patient to spend the time searching and downloading. I usually have to talk to other collectors or friends

C-

[Backtothemac]

Well, here is the best response that I can give you.

1) Not all of the 4,000 were bought by me.

2) Although Steve may say don't steal music, I don't think it is stealing.

2a) If I buy a car, and let you drive it, is that theft?

2b) It is like when I was a kid and would tape songs off the radio
make tapes, and trade them at school.

3) I do support the artists whose music I download. I go to their concerts
buy their shirts, etc. That is where they make their money, not from CD
sales.

4) Yes, a VBS can be disguised as a virus, but it will not harm a Mac.

5) The majority of the ones I have downloaded came from Napster, and
Morpheus during my PC daze. Now I use Limewire, and aquisition.