Good stuff, man! I’ve been fighting with my playlists for months now trying to find one that works. I’m probably as meticulous (if not more than) as you when tagging my tracks.. proper genre, album art, all that jazz. Hopefully all that OCD perfectionist crap will pay off!

I love smart playlists. Even more, I love recursing smart playlists. I’ve created one “root” playlist that removes podcasts, videos and anything else you don’t like, and reference it in all further smart playlists. Makes playlist generation even easier!

I just have one question… what files do we backup for all the rating info? I would hate to spend all this time.. and then have a system crash. I don’t believe the metadata is attached to the file, so how would one know what song is rated as what (unless I”m mistaken here)?

I use grouping the same way you do except use brackets to seperate tags, only the tags I use are the different genres that the music fits into. I pull these genres from allmusic.com under a paricular artist’s styles. For example, Led Zepplin has these styles listed:

* Blues-Rock
* Hard Rock
* Heavy Metal
* Arena Rock
* British Metal
* British Blues
* Album Rock

So their grouping entry is [Blues-Rock] [Hard Rock] [Arena Rock] etc.

The reason I did this was because with the Genre label you can only label an artist with ONE genre. I find this so limiting in classifying artists and bands. But I do instead works fine and is great for smart playlists BUT i can’t use the Browse Genre feature the way it was intended.

I really don’t like this. I really wish iTunes allowed the user to label tracks as more than one genre so that I could Browse by Genre. What’s frustrating is that this just makes sense and is simple, yet iTunes doesn’t let you do it. If you have any work arounds or any input please share.

All in all though, i think your comments are spot on. I have heavily catagorized my music as well. I’m currently working on entering hometowns for bands and artists in the Composer Field, it’s pretty cool to browse iTunes by geography.

Here’s a trick I just discovered.

I don’t like the way iPod/iTunes handles podcasts, the ipod stops after each podcast and you have to fumble with it to start the next one. Not good if you’re driving.
I made a smart playlist called “Long” and set it to be just longer than my longest music track (about 14 minutes). Now it lists all of my podcasts, which are usually longer than 20 minutes, and will play them in sequence. If I’ve already listened to it, I just click the skip button.

Don’t forget that you can nest smart playlists as well for when you want to combine both “and” and “or” functionality. I have a ‘New podcasts for listening at work’ playlist which is “Title is X OR Y OR Z…” and “Playcount is 0″. So I create one playlist “ok for work” that contains the first clause, then a second playlist where playcount is 0 And playlist is “ok for work”. Done!

Don,

For those short podcasts, or when you get that whole concert in one track mp3, try this. Smart playlist: podcast==is true playcount==0

So now you’ll get all your podcasts, except those you’ve already listened to all the way through. I also add a size is less than 100Mb to eliminate the video podcasts.

Awesome tutorial, David!

And congrats on the dugg/del.icio.us-popular, it’s well deserved.

I’m a bass player and always want to know who lays down the low end on each track. I’ve made good use of the Comment field to include the bassist’s name(s). This way I can actually sort playlists (or my entire Library) by bass player. It’s taken some time to research my more than 7,000 tracks but it works for me.

Instead of groupings, I use the comments field, but I’m sure it works the same . . . just a little easier to see all of the information int the “Get Info” screen.

As far as the question regarding what file to back up so you don’t lose your ratings, I incorporate all of my ratings into the comment field with “four” or “five”, you get the idea. That way the comment attaches directly to the MP3 file itself. This is useful for a couple of reasons. 1. Backup. I use a 250 external hd to backup all of my music. Should the unthinkable happen, I don’t need to worry about another file . . . it’s all right there in the song information. Add folder to library, and I’m right back where I was 2. Network. I have a wireless network at home, all the mp3s are on my Desktop, but I run itunes on my laptop with the itunes library defined as over my network as the desktop harddrive. Change a comment upstairs, it’s changed downstairs and vice versa . . . can rate in two different places, however last played, play count, etc, are still separate b/c those are specific to each computer’s iTunes.

I almost completely ignore the genre field b/c it’s often so difficult to classify a song as one thing. Comments I keep include: jazz, classical, work, funk, reggae, christmas, irish (for st. paddy’s day), baby (light songs for when the baby’s napping); childrens (for when she’s a bit older), electronica, world, hard, four, five, alternative, country, bluegrass, punk, pop, etc . . . you get the idea.

Make sure to keep your comments for each individual song in alphabetical order . . . since you can’t just add a comment (if you’re adding a new comment to a bunch of songs, I usually put them all in a playlist, then sort by comment and modify large groups with the same comments at the same time. It can get a bit cumbersome to add the comment “four” to songs with “hard, rock” and then two minutes later add to songs with “rock, hard”. For uniformity’s sake, I keep them in alphabetical in the field.

I make a playlist where comment contains four, but not five (I always include four in five star songs, so that I can have the equivalent of a four and greater playlist, or a four only) and then rate the songs as 4 stars . . . I use this as my reference then when I’m on the ipod. Same with five star songs.

I use one star to note songs that need to be deleted or repaired (might have extracted improperly). Three stars for songs I don’t want to come up on playlists, but don’t want deleted (banter during a live show, silly little interludes that don’t sound good individually, but are essential to an album).

Two stars I reserve for the current pet project. When my wife was pregnant, it was “songs for the baby” Since my comments had the four or five rating, I knew how the song was rated, and could quickly return it there, after I added the baby comment.

Also, you don’t have to worry about a song leaving a current playlist b/c of changing your rating since your smart playlist is contingent on the comments.

Finally, I always comment my music BEFORE I listen to it . . . as soon as it’s added, actually. If it’s jazz, or classical, I add that comment, and usually “work” too. If it’s something more typically radio friendly, I always add the four star comment, and then adjust accordingly as the songs come up on my four star list (my equivalent of radio play . . . what I listen to 80% of the time I’m not at work) If it’s better than four, it gets bumped up to five, if it’s not, I either keep it at four, or drop it to three or one. Otherwise some music can get lost and never return to the playlist (i have around 160 GB of music, so organization is key).

There is a FREE gagdet that goes that uses the information on last.fm to create iTunes playlists for you (like smart playlists, but smarter) but does it based on the artist you are currently listening to. It ends up being a lot like pandora.com, but just for your library.

All that has to be tagged is the title and artist, but the picking algorithm looks at other tracks, if they are there…

http://www12.asphost4free.com/theflamingavocado/

Ok I have a question for all you iTunes people.

My girlfriend and I spent a number of years living in our campervan and of course the iPod came in very handy.
As all we had was my dad’s old laptop (It had Windows NT on it when he gave it to us…) with a 9GB harddrive and pentium II, and for some reason you couldn’t open iTunes with a disk in the CD drive, so we ripped cd’s using Media Player and then imported them to iTunes.

Now, to the question…..

All these “Track 1, Unknown artist, Unknown album” that we have – can iTunes find the info for them on the net ?
I haven’t spent THAT much time trying to figure it out, as we typed in the name of the album and artist in Media player and that obviously carried through to iTunes, but it would be nice if it was possible at the click of a button to get that info.

Also, I figured out how to load ALL the music from the iPod to the new PC without downloading any dodgy free software or anything.

Easy – just plug in the iPod – open it through “My computer” as an external device and go in to Data, then Music (I think) and copy and paste everything to a folder or desktop.
Then Add to Library.
Voila.
Took about 20 minutes all up to transfer 3000 MP3′s.

I searched high and low for a way of doing this on the net, and even the selfproclaimed “iPod experts” on websites such as iLounge didn’t seem to know of it.
I was very pleased with myself when I figured it out!

…MP3′s might be convenient, but vinyl is still the purest form of music media…

Great Article. For the slow songs, I would also write it under the comment fields instead of doing a static playlist, then use the smart playlist to exclude [slow] keyword.

In my smart playlists, I also exclude for few days or weeks (depending on my rating) songs that I skipped: I think if you skip it, it doesn’t change the [last played] field… not sure of that, though.

Tip for Kevin, Comment #24:
Under Windows, most info (song list, rating, etc) are under
%userprofile%\my documents\my music\iTunes

I personally backup this folder as well as [Application Data\Apple Computer] and [Local Settings\Application Data\Apple Computer] and put it on my external 80Gb 2.5″ HD where my music collection is. I can install iTunes on any computer and transfer these files, then access/update to my collection anywhere.

Note: Beware of iTunes changing the ID tags directly on your mp3 files (at least for standards tags).

Hope this can help.

Shinji.

Does anyone have an idea on how I can download one of my own audiobooks and put it into the audiobooks section. When I try to do this it puts it in my music list. If I download a book from iTunes store I can put it into audiobooks section. Thanks, any help is appreciated.

Hello! Now, I am also a freak with organizing my music. I am all about being creative. smart playlists just don’t do it for me. I have a few but I feel like a machine cant organize my music as personally and perfectly as I would like. I personally like to organize my music by moods. You would think this wouldn’t be too hard, but it is. have 5 playlists entitled softest, quiet, medium, loud, loudest. I place each song into one of these categories. The result is brilliant. Then I do styles. For instance Fun, Dance, Oldies, Instrumental, beautiful, ect. This really does consume your time, however once its done it is worth it. Also I like creative playlist titles. For instance I will go into my moods section and my titles will be as follows. ,

thanks for the information!!!!!!!