What's your iTunes Playlist Scheme?

[0227672]

I've got a pretty out of control library (50GB and growing) and I'm finding it more and more difficult to hear the song i want when I want. How do you organize your iTunes? Any ideas to help out?

 

[duky]

I think your best bet is to use Smart playlists that take into account the Ratings and Play Counts. Skip Counts also are pretty important cause songs with high skip counts I probably just don't like, or don't like listening to. For my iPhone I have a basic smart playlist with a limit of like 1000 songs that chooses songs based on a few factors, either added in the last 2 wks, or play count of over 20 or recently played. It works pretty well with keeping my phone in tune with what I want to hear.

But then every week or two when I get tired of what I'm listening to I make a new playlist with my current best songs. I usually name them based on my mood, or the climate, or like time in my life so that they can be personalized and I find it easier to know what's in the playlist.

If that doesn't make sense sorry, but it does in my mind..

 

[0227672]

What about genres? How would i keep my chill songs, my rock songs, and my party songs all separate? Tagging would take forever and a day i feel.

 

[0227672]

bump to da bump

 

[Gray-Wolf]

Organize by Albums, Artists, genre, Genius lists or any other method. I have by several myself.

Native american music
Classic Rock music
New Age Music, ect.

Mix music (Fav songs on one playlist)

Genius lists of like music

 

[ddoonie]

What about genres? How would i keep my chill songs, my rock songs, and my party songs all separate? Tagging would take forever and a day i feel.

This is probably your biggest problem. I think proper tags are a necessity for large libraries. I could not navigate my large library if i didnt have it tagged properly.

 

[Yeti60]

I have a 10.5 GB library and I don't have any trouble. Everything is labeled correctly (or very close to being correct) and I simply organize my music by artist. So I have no trouble getting right to what I want to listen to; usually I just shuffle everything cause all my music is great.

So I'd say just make sure your music is labeled correctly; your artists are together, your albums are together, and genres are the way you want them.

 

[messedkid]

First thing I did when I redid my Library, was get rid of most "subgenre" tags.
ie. Metal, Punk, Alternative, Alternative + Punk, Ska, and any variation all became Alternative.
Hip Hop, Rap, Gangsta Rap (lol), and R&B became Hip Hop
etc...

Smart playlists for every Genre. Hip Hop, Pop, Dance, Country, Rock, Alternative, Comedy and Reggae.
Smart playlist for *4 stars and up*
Smart playlist for "Added Recently"
Manual playlist for my shuffle.

Also installed the itunes plugin for Quicksilver to quickly launch any song I currently want to hear.