Methods for iTunes Organization
I mentioned a couple weeks ago that I was going to take some time to document my iTunes organization methods here soon, and the time has finally come. I know that for a lot of folks, this kind of stuff isn’t that interesting, but for anyone using iTunes as their primary digital music player with a somewhat extensive library it can be fun to nerd out a bit on it. Everyone has a different method and I’m always interested to hear how other people organize their files and manage their meta-data.
So let’s begin with the display: how things look for me in iTunes. As you can see above, I only use the Name, Year, Track, Time, Artist, Album by Artist (though I mix that up sometimes depending on how I want to browse), Grouping and Bit Rate view options. They’re the most pertinent for me, and I like to keep that part simple. I was never really sure what to use Grouping for, and a couple years ago I decided I’d use it for record label. It’s turned out to be an incredible tool — I can search by record label and create easy playlists that way. For example, it was fairly recently we had people over and I searched for “Dischord” and had a pretty kick ass Dischord-only playlist going. Though in recent years many labels have started to diversify enough that a playlist based on that criteria isn’t necessarily that fun, if you started getting into records in the ’90s like I did, it’s super rad. A Dischord, K or Vermiform playlist can rock your shit off. Of course there are older labels like Harvest that are fun to shuffle through. Do you use Grouping? If so, how do you use it?
Another thing I’m pretty particular about is album art. Nothing goes in iTunes without album art. If it’s a single song on its own, I use the whole album’s cover art. If it’s from the web or otherwise doesn’t have any particular art associated with it, I find a photo of the band or something from a MySpace or website. I’ll get into playlists and mixtapes later. I wasn’t always this neurotic about the album art — one weekend I decided I couldn’t stand it anymore and went through and fixed all of it. iTunes actually has a decent tool for importing artwork that can find most stuff, but it’s not perfect. For a lot of ’70s and ’80s stuff I had in the library as straggler singles, it worked perfectly, though. More obscure shit, you need to find your own most of the time. It can be time-consuming but I have to say that being able to scroll through iTunes with album art for each track and album feels great. Additionally, it enables you to flip through your iTunes library by cover art, sort of like how you’d flip through vinyl in a collection, which is fun.
I know people who use playlists pretty extensively with iTunes. For me, there are usually only a few playlists, and they’re changing fairly regularly. For larger groups of songs that I want to play together, I typically do mixtapes (more on that later). Since I write about music here in Austin, I keep an Austin playlist for local music to listen to for review and consideration. I also have a playlist that I manage for putting music on my iPhone. Most of the rest of the playlists come and go — one you see there now is a mix I made for pal Hamish Robertson (“Negative”). “New Mix” is the playlist I have going for my next Flux-Rad mixtape. “2010″ is all the records, EPs and singles that have come out so far this year. Probably the most important playlist I keep in iTunes is my Inbox. When I first grab tracks from the web or get new albums to digest, they go right to the Inbox. These songs are in a folder on my desktop (also called Inbox). It’s there that I check out everything new. If I like it and decide to keep it in the library, it gets tagged properly, given album art, placed in its own titled folder and moved to the external hard drive. This also means that — because of how iTunes works — I’ll need to visit the main Music part of the app and search for that artist / album, delete the version that was located on the desktop and drag the version that’s now on the hard drive to the library. iTunes won’t automatically recognize that those files have been moved and next time it comes up on shuffle, I’ll get the exclamation point of doom. It’s easier to just remove the old info in the app and update with the new location of the files.
Above you see a small portion of the external hard drive and its library. As you can see, every record has its own folder with the artist, album title and year of release. Now, I know that I could just throw files on to a drive and let the meta-data do the organizing, but I like having everything organized this way. I prefer being able to see the files collected together by artist, nice and neat. I’ll admit, part of the reason I do it this way is a holdover pattern from the Winamp days, but so be it. Another good reason to do it this way is because of mix organizing.
But what about all the stray songs, mixtapes and other odds and ends that don’t fit into the nice artist / album organization technique? Well, there’s a way to do that, too.
Yep, I put every mix in its own folder too. This goes for collections that are actual mixtapes made by me or others, and it’s also including mixes I make myself that others might just include in a playlist. For example, I have a folder that is just my collection of ’80s and ’90s R&B. I have a folder that is a mixtape of just my ’80s singles. I have collections of vintage country music, Christmas songs and Motown, on and on. This section also includes compilations — like Old Glory’s All the President’s Men compilation from 1994. These mixes are organized together in iTunes as one album with a Various Artists ‘Album Artist’ field in the meta-data fields so they’ll play and display together as one album.
As you can see above, the album title will start with “VA – … ” for each collection I’ve made a folder for and transferred. Part of the reason I do this is to keep the mixes grouped together, but a more practical reason is so that if I do a search for “VA – ” in iTunes, I’ll get a complete list of all my mixes.
There is also a VA – Odds & Ends folder, which keeps all the stray singles and one-offs I enjoy but don’t need the entire album for. Those files are not grouped together by “VA”, they just appear on their own in the iTunes library. Every song that I end up liking but not caring much for the album (or older tracks that just don’t fit anywhere else, like a weird remix or novelty track). Once I toyed with the idea of keeping all these tracks grouped like a mix, but ultimately it just doesn’t make sense, they are all so diverse.
Basically my theory for keeping iTunes neat and organized is all based on albums, because typically that is how I prefer to listen to things. For people who aren’t as concerned with having a digital album collection, my way might not make sense. There are some bits about my method that can be arduous, but it’s the easiest way I’m aware of to keep things clean and save my digital library from becoming an unmanageable mess. Naturally I miss things, which means that every couple of months I’ll scroll through iTunes and do some pruning or organizing. Call me a weirdo, but I enjoy it. If you have any questions about how I do this or some tips for me, I’m all ears!
I, too, use Grouping for record labels and always wondered why there was no proper Record Label field.