Starting Over or When your itunes directory looks like a tornado hit it

[peeaanuut]

I had to do a rewire on the computer this weekend and in doing so I realized I had too many external drives. I ended up downsizing the number of drives I have for media to 3 from 5. A 500gb drive simply for music that will be nearly full when I am done. A 500gb drive simply for TV shows and a 250gb drive for movies only.

But in doing so I realized that my artists/tracks/albums/album art/numbering were absolutely horrible. So instead of dropping everything in and working with it from there, I am adding slowly and fixing as I go. This way i know that what is in iTunes in fixed and labeled properly and not all over the place. So far I have 2,000 tracks in with just over 21,000 tracks to go.

So moral of the story? Make sure that when you rip, import, purchase or whatnot and load into iTunes, that you get it right the first time and dont let your itunes library get so jacked up that you have to start over. You just might regret it.

of course I didnt have anything else to do this weekend accept watch Tampa Bay lose so its not like I was wasting time or anything. lol

 

[saxman]

Very good advice. I have a large classical collection and basically setup a format that I continue to use from when I first started importing. It's nice some 15,000 tracks later that I started it out right.

Although I have had to restart my library too many times for various reasons, but since things all the tags are in the files, it's not been a problem. Good thing I don't use play count or ratings for anything

 

[peeaanuut]

I use playcounts and ratings for loading my iPod quickly. I set up a bunch of smart playlists based on playcount/rating and than within genre/artist etc. So in doing this I had to start all over which is fine cause I was getting tired of the music on my iPod. So for now Im just loading the most recent 30 or so gigs of music to the iPod to get some of the playcounts up and eventually it will work itself out.

At least for next time I will have the tags ready to go and it will be easier to rebuild if I need so.

Another bonus about this that I didnt think about until i began loading it was, with so many tracks, I forget about a lot of songs and artists and I am rediscovering, if you will, artists, songs and albums. Kind of a good change of pace to get out of the listening rut I was in.

 

[wyatt23]

a neat trick to do is to export an XML file of your library every so often. this way you can import it later on. if you decide to move all your music later on, you can even open the XML, do a find and replace of the directory where it was with the current directory, then reimport the XML. comes in VERY handy.