Filed under: iPod Family, iTS, iTunes
TUAW Resolutions: Organize iTunes
I had been living near my iPod's 30GB threshold for many months. So I recently resolved to take a few days and get my iTunes library into better working order. Here are the steps I personally took to organize iTunes. Some of these are pretty extreme and may not be universally appealing but you might find an idea or two among them that you might want to apply to your own music collections.
Nothing lives in the iTunes music folder. I decided I didn't like living with iTunes' default library management. I switched off "Copy files to iTunes Music folder when adding to library" in Advanced preferences. Yes, new purchases go into that folder, but I treat it more like a sorting and holding area, not as a final destination. Now I sort all my media using my personal folder management. I'm far happier with the results.
Limit the iTunes Library. I completely emptied my iTunes library. Selected all songs, all TV shows, all movies and I just zapped 'em (from the library, that is, not from the computer). And then I rebuilt everything from scratch. My newly organized music folder really helped. I only reloaded items that I felt I had a good chance of listening to or watching. Now instead of living at 30GB, I'm more like at 15GB. I'm more likely to find something that I really want to enjoy than to settle for what I stumble across (I am not, as you might guess, much of a "shuffle" settings-type person). When I want to add items back into the library, I just drag in the proper folder from my secondary storage. And when I've had enough of an album? I zap it. Couldn't be easier.
Keep new artists in a try-out holding area. I now tag all new albums and artists to isolate them from my regular music library. They either get promoted to keepers after a while or they get deleted out of my library and my life. This really helps me give new music the attention it deserves and keeps me from cluttering my library with artists I dislike.
Freshen TV episodes. This was a really hard resolution to keep time-wise and effort-wise, but it was really worth it. I spent many hours recording fresh new episodes of my kids' TV shows, and getting rid of the stale ones. It made the kids a lot happier to find fresh content on the iPod, which helped distract them in any number of sitting-and-waiting or watch-while-driving situations. And since I recorded the episodes myself rather than paid for them at the store, I didn't feel as if I was throwing away important purchases. A win all 'round.
Create a playlist for disposable one-listen items. I download a lot of radio interviews and other "one-listen" items that I want to hear and then get rid of, as opposed to podcasts that I subscribe to. I set up a single folder for these on my hard drive and a corresponding playlist in iTunes. Once I've heard them, I delete them from iTunes, my iPod, and the hard drive. It's like having an e-mail in-box for iTunes and it works really well.
Prune podcast subscriptions. I looked honestly at my podcasts. Did I really listen to all of them? Sure, I had signed up for the Battlestar Galactica podcasts, and I even listened to many of them last year, but this year? Not a one. I let it go.
Backup everything. This just speaks for itself. All my new backups mirror my new folder organization. I backup all new items as I move them out of the iTunes Music folder. It a handy way to let me know what items are new, as they don't leave that folder without a backup.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Scott said 10:32AM on 12-31-2006
I don't agree with most of this... in this day and age, 30GB is nothing.. What does it cost in terms of storage, $10? Sure, keep your iPod neat - that's easy enough to do without wiping your iTunes library. That's why Apple built it that way.
Why get rid of 'stale' content? Maybe you'll only ever want to load it up one more time, but when that time comes and you don't have it, will it be worth saving a couple of megs? The beauty of digital archiving, as we have it today, is that we don't really need to throw stuff away. And when you have a database that is as easily navigable as the iTunes library, getting rid of 'old' or 'stale' content is unnecessary.
I do agree that Podcasting can be 'pruned'. After all, we can reliably download all that stuff again in the future should we need it. But other than that, buy another hard drive and just keep your iPod less cluttered. Why get rid of stuff, even if you don't think you'll use it that often?
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Konstantino said 10:18AM on 12-31-2006
You know, that's a good idea. I should probably do that now (it doesn't make much sense that iTunes would make a second copy of every single song in your library.)
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Van Daniel said 10:38AM on 12-31-2006
I have play counts and ratings that go back to 2002... so I can;t just delete all that and rebuild it... I sadly have to pick through all of it with a fine toothed comb. I really want to do that, but MAN, it is going to take a while.
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alej744 said 10:33AM on 12-31-2006
I have album artwork for every one of my tracks. =D
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team gingerbread said 10:36AM on 12-31-2006
I'm a huge fan of having a separate playlist for new songs. I set my smart playlist play count minimum to 10 listens so I can decide if I want to keep or ditch the song
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jOe said 10:39AM on 12-31-2006
Personally I am all for letting itunes do all that work for me. I find the process if even looking at the folders exhausting. That's one of the features that first got me excited about using itunes over other digital juke boxes. I can manage the songs themselves, and all the messy folder work can be done by magically in the background.
I do like the idea of removing everything then only importing what your actually going to listen to as a good house keeping step. I have been meaning to do something along those lines for a while now.
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team gingerbread said 10:41AM on 12-31-2006
...as for the not copying music to iTunes thing, I think that's utter rubbish. Most of the new music I get is either from cd's or is downloaded straight to my desktop so it just makes sense to copy music files to iTunes and delete the originals.
It beats having a cluttered desktop
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Andy said 10:48AM on 12-31-2006
This is what smart playlists are for.
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Wilbur said 10:55AM on 12-31-2006
I've read many times that one person or another doesn't like iTunes' default library management, and that they go and organize their MP3's using their own system. What is never explained is how exactly the new system is better than the /Artist/Album hierarchy that iTunes uses in the default iTunes folder, with compilation albums going into its own folder. That seems like a perfectly good system to me.
Erica, can you provide more detail as to how you organize your music files, and what you like about your system better than the iTunes system?
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Andrew leitch said 10:56AM on 12-31-2006
I like iTunes organisation. The whole point in it and also in iPhoto organisation is that you never look at the files and folders. I've never looked at my Pictures or Music folder and though "Oooh that's messy. I need to sort it" because it's already sorted in my iTunes and iPhoto views. One thing i'm not so fond of is the redundancy of my Movies folder as it's now a storage area for referenced and/or mid-conversion movies and TV episodes
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Seth Battis said 11:16AM on 12-31-2006
Um... why not just use some smart playlists?
There's lots to be annoyed with in iTunes, but the folder organization seems pretty trivial -- you should never have to look at it, so why does it matter to you how Apple chose to organize them? It's like complaining about the xml structure of a preferences file: why do you even notice this?
iTunes tracks a wealth of meta-information on every song. I have a "15" GB iPod (really only 13.5GB) and an over 40GB library. There's always something new to listen to on the iPod, as well as old favorites -- because I sync the smart playlists rather than my entire library.
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Leonard Nimrod said 11:09AM on 12-31-2006
I'm with Wilbur in feeling iTunes Artist/Album/Song heirarchy is a great system.
The only problem I have is with the3 CCDB info that creates extras Artist folders when there are featured artists. For this I merely move the featured artist to the song info and viola,it's all fixed.
Please explain the dynamics of your "non-iTunian" setup.
PS: I do agree with Andrew on the point of Apple's default folders in the Finder. If you are using iTunes you don't need a Music forlder there, not to mention that iTunes is slow to load video from iTunes. Also, I'd like to see Movies replaced by Video as this is a more general title.
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Dave Barnes said 11:10AM on 12-31-2006
Wilbur wrote: "how exactly new system is better than the /Artist/Album hierarchy that iTunes".
Well, Wilbur, I challenge you to use the standard system for classical music and jazz.
Who is the artist?
1. The composer of the music?
2. The writer of the lyrics?
3. The conductor of the orchestra/band/group?
4. The orchestra/group?
5. The lead vocalists? Which one?
6. The featured performer?
Don't get me wrong. I love iTunes and think it has done wonders to get more people listening to more music than ever.
But, iTunes, as an organizational cataloging system, stinks.
,dave
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Word Diggity said 11:17AM on 12-31-2006
Erica, could you describe your organisation scheme? I'd like to know how you're doing things. Maybe I'll be inspired. :)
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Thomas said 11:23AM on 12-31-2006
I don't agree with deleting content at all - I just configured a load of playlists to display content based on specific criteria. For example I have a base playlist that excludes all tracks I don not want to stumble across - short clips, live comedy performances, documentaries, really long tracks that I only want to listen to as part of an album and so on. I then use this as my base library and build various other playlists from it; playlists for ratings, groups of ratings, ratings I have only listened to a number of times, ratings that haven't been listened to for a week, a month and so on.
Also, whenever I add new music, unless I know what I want to rate it as, I automatically rate it as 3. This way I stand more of a chance of listening to it by chance since if I leave it as 0 then I'll likely not get around to it. I then have a playlist for all 3 star songs which have not been played more than 1 so that I can even spend some time rating stuff and differentiate between stuff that hasn't been rated and has specifically been rated but looks like it hasn't.
If I'm unsure what to rate something, I'll rate it higher so I stand more chance of hearing it again and can change my mind if I need to.
In terms of my library, I add everything to it but I don't keep it in my music folder. I have video in it so it bugs for that reason alone, but because I access it purely via iTunes it makes it pretty useless in terms of using it via the finder. As such, I moved my library to a custom "media" folder and can then use my music folder to store stuff I don't want added, haven't had a chance to deal with and so on and so forth. The same goes for my iPhoto libraries, I never need to access the folders directly so why tie up the conveniently named directory?
If storage becomes a requirement then I'd just get more, it's far easier than deleting stuff from my library, stuff which I've paid for. Using decent playlists and folders for those playlists allows you to control your listening as much or as little as you want.
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Erica Sadun said 11:25AM on 12-31-2006
My structure is...eclectic. I keep all my audio books together (even though iTunes doesn't seem 'em as audio books). I keep all my work-related stuff (like the Napster collection) in another folder. Classical music and Workout music each have their own places to live. I also keep my complete albums separate from my individual track collection. It's very personalized, but it works for me.
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KeynoteKen said 12:32PM on 12-31-2006
Andy,
"This is what smart playlists are for."
Couldn't agree more. I've found that what Apple really wants to do is keep the tedium of "where stuff is" abstracted from the user so that all you need to think about is songs and playlists.
I don't think I'd recommend any of this to a new user as they'd lose a LOT of the valuable metadata like playcounts, stars, last played and other things that make smart playlists work. This is probably just one step down from manually altering the directories on your player... and we see how well that worked for those "also ran" players that came before the iPod.
"What is never explained is how exactly the new system is better than the /Artist/Album hierarchy that iTunes uses in the default iTunes folder"
I think it's better for music that appears to require more metadata than popular music. So, I'd simply change
"But, iTunes, as an organizational cataloging system, stinks."
to
"iTunes, to catalog classical music and jazz, stinks"
As most listeners will only need
Who is the artist? and... well from that list, that's it.
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KeynoteKen said 12:39PM on 12-31-2006
From the description of your library, I think the difference is between those who want to put the effort into the physical manipulation of the folders and those who want to put the effort into the iTunes metadata. For example, if I wanted to create a playlist of Classical music, I just create a smart playlist including everything with the genre "Classical" but this would ONLY work if I'd gone through my library and labeled all my music this way. While this takes some time, it also means that if I only want Classical music from a specific composer, I'm one playlist away from having it and didn't have to move a single file.
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Geoff said 12:43PM on 12-31-2006
I would hate to lose all of my ratings along with Play counts that I have built up for the last couple of years. I lost a lot of info like that when I switched from PC to Mac and it was a nightmare setting up the playlists again along with smart playlists and the like.
I agree that I should probably trim a lot of stuff from my 70GB Music library that I rarely listen to.
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Geoff said 12:49PM on 12-31-2006
Also this is a reason for Apple to Allow multiple libraries to be created, this would allow easy separation of tracks while not having to worry about the physical location of files, it would also make it easier to split the physical location of music (e.g. on a laptop with two libraries, Faves would be on the laptops HDD and Other would be on an external HDD.
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