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How is your iTunes Library Organised?

Arran said:
I use the default list heavily, but recently I've been trying to replicate the experience of browsing a shelf full of CDs arranged by artist, along with a separate pile of recently purchased (hence heavily played) CDs. I've been trying to make it a bit more abstract, visual, tactile, whatever.

First, I created a smart playlist called "--- Browse Albums ---" where all of the following rules are matched:
* Kind does not contain Video
* Kind does not contain Movie
* Podcast is false
* Genre does not contain Spoken
* Genre does not contain Speech
That, basically, gives me a list of all my music.

Next, I selected this new playlist and clicked on the center 'View' button (up, beside the "Search" box). This gives me a cover-art-only view. Next, I selected "Albums" from the "Albums | Artists | Genres | Composers" set of buttons at the top. This makes sure that every CD has it's cover art shown. And that's it - I have a screenful of unique cover art arranged by artist. The nice thing is that iTunes remembers the display settings for this playlist, so whenever I return to it, I get the same view.

Next, to get the "pile of recently purchased CD's" I just created a similar smart playlist called "--- Browse New Albums ---" where the following rules were matched:
* Playlist is "--- Browse Albums---"
* Date Added is in the last 12 months.
I then applied the same "View" parameters and, voila: a smaller stack of recently purchased albums.

Note that the "---" on the front of both playlists pushes them to the top of the playlist list. It makes them easy to find, since I use them a lot. I really prefer this "CD browsing" experience. Call me "old-fashioned" if you want, I'm too deaf to hear! :)

Pardon?
Click to expand...

That's actually quite interesting. It seems to match the feeling of sorting through piles of CDs quite well, if you're into that sort of thing. ;)

But my question is, do you use an iPod with that setup?

And also, do you prefer to listen to your music album by album, or do you find it better to listen to a collection of songs? I'm not really one for the album type, but if I was, your system seems quite effective.
 
OriginalFormula said:
That's actually quite interesting. It seems to match the feeling of sorting through piles of CDs quite well, if you're into that sort of thing. ;)

But my question is, do you use an iPod with that setup?

And also, do you prefer to listen to your music album by album, or do you find it better to listen to a collection of songs? I'm not really one for the album type, but if I was, your system seems quite effective.
Click to expand...

No, it only works in iTunes. I tried to use the "--- Browse NEW Albums---" playlist on my iPhone, but when I select the playlist and rotate the phone to coverflow, it shows every cover on the phone (not just those from the playlist). So no deal there, I'm afraid.

Generally, I prefer to listen to my old CD's by album. I guess because that's how it was done 20-odd years ago when I started collecting CDs (and CD players didn't have remote controls for skipping!). If I listen to just parts of those albums today it sounds really odd. Like seeing an old friend missing an arm and a leg, or something like that. That said, the new stuff I buy now gets listened to in playlists, for the most part. So I guess the old dog can learn new tricks :)
 
I organize everything in my iTunes library by making smart playlists per artist. That way I can select which artists I want to put on my iPhone, or what artist I want to listen to at any given time so once the last song finishes it stops and doesn't go onto another artist.
 

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Benguitar said:
I organize everything in my iTunes library by making smart playlists per artist. That way I can select which artists I want to put on my iPhone, or what artist I want to listen to at any given time so once the last song finishes it stops and doesn't go onto another artist.
Click to expand...

How is that different than just using the browser? You can do all those things without creating a playlist for every artist.
 
Stormbringer said:
That's what I do too.

0* - not listened yet
1* - garbage - I delete these unless the whole album is good except a couple of very bad songs, in that case I leave the whole album
2* - not very good, but is listenable
3* - great
4* - awesome
5* - ingenious masterpiece
Click to expand...

Yeah that's what I do too, but I don't delete songs, to keep the albums intact.
For songs with 1 star I might uncheck them so it won't sync or play.
 
Consultant said:
Yeah that's what I do too, but I don't delete songs, to keep the albums intact.
For songs with 1 star I might uncheck them so it won't sync or play.
Click to expand...
Yeah well, I do that if the album is okay except a couple of songs. If I like only one song of the album I don't feel any need to keep the whole album...

By the way, I have a smart playlist which contains "0 stars" (not yet rated/listened). But if I rate it, the the song's being deleted right away from the playlist, and the whole playlist stops. In order to prevent this, I unchecked "live updating". But then the already rated songs stay there, and to update it I must go to "Edit Smart Playlist" and click "ok". Not that that's very difficult, but I wish there was a more simple way to listen to unrated songs and rate them without stopping the music...

Anyone any ideas?
 
I switched entirely to smart lists almost the minute they were introduced. I don't put artists or albums into smart lists b/c they are so easy to isolate in the browser. I do keep a non-smart list (a stupid list?) called Now Playing where I can round up a bunch of songs that I want to listen to now, and then delete them later (or put them in a smart list).

I have a smart list for each of the genres I have in my library (but I only include songs w/ a rating of 3 or more in these lists--again, if I want EVERY song in the genre I use the browser).

Then I have lots of lists organized by themes. I ID these songs using a keyword in the "grouping" category on the Info panel (which means I could find them independently of the smart list if I had to). These are further organized into the following folders: Eras ("'60s Music", "'90 Music", etc.), Moods, Themes ("Road Songs", "Workout", "It Had to Be You", etc.) Places ("California", "the Beach", etc.) Seasons, Nature ("Summertime", "Rain", etc.) the Genre folder, and a folder for iTunes smart lists like Recently Added, etc. I also keep all my free downloads in a list in the iTunes folder. I have about 100 smart lists. Some songs are in many more than one smart list ...

Works great for me.

I also keep a wish list of songs I want to buy later, maybe.
 
I have 16,000 songs w/ 95% having Album Art and properly tagged. I use the iTunes search feature to browse my songs.

I tag most of my songs like the following

Song name (ft. Guest)
Artist
Album


It looks really bad on your iPod when you have about 6 Busta Rhymes, "Someone"

What's It Gonna Be?!
Busta Rhymes, Janet Jackson

Busta has a lot of features and you'll be scrolling for days. I'd much rather look just open up his artist folder and all of his songs are in one place..


Here is my bread and butter. I listen to my playlists more than full albums. I have artists specific playlist, which contain either 15, 20, or 25 songs depending on the artists catalog. I also have monthly playlists containing 15 of my current favorite tracks. I haven't really gotten into Smart Playlists yet, I have the defaults and a "Top 40" which contains my 40 most listened to tracks.

Screen caps are below...

Playlists are contained in a title/category specific folder:

Picture2-21.png


Genre Playlists:
Picture3-9.png


Monthly Playlists: My playlists are also named so that the older iPods can also sort them out.
Picture5-8.png


Artists Essentials Playlists: Are my favorite songs from a certain artist.
Picture7-1.png



** Honestly, some of the organizing techniques I've seen in this thread seem really over the top and unnecessary. I use the star rating system

***** Great Song
**** Awesome Song
*** Song I should check out (If it's recommended by someone)

That's it... No smart lists needed.
 
WG5516 - that's a lot of playlists!!

I have 2 playlists, one for my iPhone and one for my wife's shuffle.

I really don't like using ratings, I find it impossible to judge a song. Some days a song is my favourite (5 star), then another day it's okay (3 star). Depends what mood I'm in. Plus, how would you rate songs that are pointless on their own (like an intro or a filler for example) but sound great when played before another song. Maybe I should use ratings after all, my above example is not going to cause too much of a problem, I guess it would be easy to score songs with 5 stars. Are the ratings embedded in the file? Or are they kept in the iTunes .xlm file?

I just find it easier to browse 'Albums'. Saying that I only have around 350 albums so I guess using this method for....5000 would be a pain!

I have a question, how does everyone organise their compilations, especially so Frontrow doesn't show an Artist if they only have 1 or 2 tracks?

Thanks.
 
KettyKrueger said:
WG5516 - that's a lot of playlists!!

I have 2 playlists, one for my iPhone and one for my wife's shuffle.

I really don't like using ratings, I find it impossible to judge a song. Some days a song is my favourite (5 star), then another day it's okay (3 star). Depends what mood I'm in. Plus, how would you rate songs that are pointless on their own (like an intro or a filler for example) but sound great when played before another song. Maybe I should use ratings after all, my above example is not going to cause too much of a problem, I guess it would be easy to score songs with 5 stars. Are the ratings embedded in the file? Or are they kept in the iTunes .xlm file?

I just find it easier to browse 'Albums'. Saying that I only have around 350 albums so I guess using this method for....5000 would be a pain!

I have a question, how does everyone organise their compilations, especially so Frontrow doesn't show an Artist if they only have 1 or 2 tracks?

Thanks.
Click to expand...

LOL Everyone that see's my collection says that. But they appreciate my playlists because everything is properly tagged down to the release date. I find that more and more of my friends are bringing me their cd collections and asking me to sort them out and make them some playlists.

Compilations I'm still trying to figure out. I use the following

Song (feature guest if any)
Artist
Album Artist = Various Artists
Album Title

I saw that someone above uses this format

Artist - Song (Feature guest if any)
Artist = Name of Compilation
Album Title

That doesn't work for me because I use Last.fm and I like to have my songs properly tagged.
 
Consultant said:
adameels, your star setting is not really intuitive.

This makes more sense:
0 star = not listened yet
Click to expand...

If you use the rating system for how good a track is then maybe that makes more sense.

However, I use the rating system for marking instead when I'm not at a computer, and to me a track is either great (5 stars), worth keeping (unrated) or absolute crap or just simply stale and old (1 star)
 
I've got three main playlists:

"Today (90s and Now)"
"Yesterday (70s and 80s)"
"Oldies (50s and 60s)"

Then, using ratings, I have smart playlists dedicated to my favorites of these.
 
Being a librarian, I am perhaps a little too particular about organizing my iTunes. For each track I have:

Song Title (any alternate title in parenthesis) [Take # or Alternate mix info or Live in brackets]
Artist & other random performer & more & more
Album Artist: Full name of group on the album
Grouping: (this gets a bit confusing) Producer name (for Jamaican music), Original issue label name (for Soul, Jazz), blank for other genres.
Composer: songwriter
Comment: Again, depends on the genre. For Jazz, all musicians are listed. For Jamaican music I list the rhythm the track is on. Otherwise usually blank
Year: Year of recording
Track Number: x of x
Disc Number: x of x
Genre: broken down into pretty specific types, probably about 60 or 70 different genres.
Sort Artist: Doe, John & Doe, Jane (So things show up in proper name order)
Sort Album Artist: Doe, John
Category: Release label
Description: Catalog number
Art: most is minimum of 300x300

I've been trying to figure out a way to utilize the Release Date tag, but that one is difficult to manipulate.

I then have everything in list view, sorted by Album by Year.

I have smart playlists for every decade from the 40s on (prior to that I just group it as 1900-1939), I also have smart playlist for broad styles (a Jamaican smartlist comprising of all the subgenres of Jamaican music, A rock playlist, etc.). On the top of my playlists is *New this week, which is for music added in the previous 7 days.
 
I have my entire iTunes library on a 640GB WD MyBook. Whenever I download a song I add it to my library and ever few days I consolidate my library to my external and then go and delete all the files from my computer.
 
Interesting to see how other people go about organizing their music.

For me I use the list view with the album art taking about a quarter of the space. Then I use the Album by Artist field. Then I use the sort album field and number the albums by year released. For example, for Nas, under sort album for Illmatic would be (1)Illmatic and for It Was Written it would be (2)It Was Written and so on. That part took me a long time to completely finish lol. The fields I fill out are:
-Name
-Artist
-Album
-Album Artist
-Year
-Genre (Even though everything is under Hip-Hop lol)
-Sort Album Artist
-Sort Album
-Rating (I just rate everything 5 stars though because I can't stand to see blank stars lol)



Everything is organized exactly how I want it. One thing I want to do though which I'm still trying to figure out the best way is where to add extra information. For example, when I search Ghostface Killah I want all his solo songs to come up but I also want his Wu-Tang Clan and Theodore Unit stuff to come up as well. Where would you guys suggest putting the members of groups so they come up in search. The comments doesn't work and I don't want to put them in composer.



Heres a screenshot of my iTunes...

 
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