organize my iTunes library

I’m rating.
And rating
and rating…

TO BE PRECISE: i did some math. i’ve rated about 0.06 percent of my library. that is, 450 songs exactly, out of 7361. but still. progress.

I’ve got all the genre fields filled in for EVERY SONG, thank GOD.

annnnd i’ve gone from about 9,200 songs to about 7,450!

nowww i’m moving on to the artist fields. in addition to making sure that i’ve got it all in there accurately, i’m gonna take out all the ‘featuring’s. so if the artist field for Cupid’s Chokehold says “Gym Class Heroes featuring Patrick Stump” i’ll change it to “Cupid’s Chokehold feat. Patrick Stump” and the artist will just be “Gym Class Heroes”. i think that will make it a lotttt easier to do iTunes.

okay. so after i deleted all the duplicates, i deleted the tracks that will NEVER be listened to: those pesky ones that are called ‘track 1’, ‘track 2’, ‘track 3’... on and on and on. I used to tell myself that i’d listen to all of them and find out what they’re called, but there’s really no chace of that, so i just deleted them.

now i’m moving on to genres. I think that my library is way out of control for a LOT of reasons, one of which is that the genres are mislabled or too specific. what i did was, i went onto the itunes store and found their list of genres. now i’m going through my library in order of genre, and changing EVERYTHING to something on this list:

- Alternative
- Blues
- Children’s Music
- Christian & Gospel
- Classical
- Comedy
- Country
- Dance
- Electronic
- Hip-Hop/Rap
- Jazz
- Latin
- Pop
- R&B/Soul
- Reggae
- Rock
- Soundtrack
- Vocal
- World
- Holiday

EVERYTHING fits into these categories, because they’re SO GENERAL. i changed all my “Rock ‘n Roll” and “Mellow Rock” into just “Rock”. “Alternative Rock”, “Alternative & Punk” and “Indie Alternative” all become “Alternative”, and so on. It makes it SUPER easy.

however, it’s taking FOREVER.

oh, well. i’d better get back to it.

I deleted all the duplicatesss, now I’m on to step two!
In the process of duplicate-deleting, i knocked almost 700 songs off the total of songs in my library :) i’m excited!

OKAY. so, in my library there are about 9,200 songs.

PLAN OF ATTACK:

1) delete duplicates
2) get all the genres, names, artists, and album names straight for all of my music
3) rate everything and uncheck things i don’t want on my iPod
4) get album artwork
5) playlists

right now, i’m on number one. and it sucks. but it’ll be worth it, no?

So, I made a giant list of artists of import to me. I then obtained discs and discs, greatest hits, key albums, etc. Nevermind how obtained, simply that it was done.

Next, comes tagging. I am using the comments field. I am copying the moods and themes from allmusic.com. I am using genres from there. And I am intending to learn more about the grouping field, thinking I can put extra genre info in there. Really depends on what’s kosher for there.

At any rate, with the current phase, I am going album by album and am currently finishing up albums starting with E. Progress is good when you have a plan and a system.

I added today a bunch of songs. Everything (except genre, again) is fine. It took a long time because of ID3 :(
You definitely need some patience to achieve this.

i have over 1,000 songs not sure how many and they keep multiplying so i need to organize them and make cds.
lol part of another goal i have, also make playlists to listen to based on mood so i don’t have to suffle and take time to find songs

Last week, I added some pictures+lyrics. Took me about an hour because of the “ID3”.
I still don’t know what to do about the genre thing. If I had to put everything in a generic genre, it would be rock or acoustic.

Later, that day: I tried to put genres to whole albums :)

Thing is: my iPod is quite good. There are still some pictures missing but the artists’names, the albums’ names… are correct.
The only thing missing is the “genre” column. I thought about checking out all “my” artists Myspace but I’ve just read something:
“Select a bunch of songs and put a generic genre such as rock, rap, blues…”
As soon as I get home, I’m gonna do it :)