Tyler's Blog Death of Destiny

Organizing iTunes

It's obvious from the title, but I am an iTunes user and have been for several years since I got an iPod Nano (for the Nike+ application XD). Anyhow, this post (inspired by David Gagne who I discovered while researching Hemingway for my ENGL 110 class) will be going over how I personally organize my iTunes.

Some of this may be useful to you, some of it may not. Usually when I'm listening to music for enjoyment, I turn on one song on repeat and I leave it for extended periods of time; that being said, my musical methods may need to be altered a bit to better fit your own music collection.

To start, I find that ratings are the most important part of organizing my iTunes library. I use the following rating system:

• 5 Stars = Love it
• 4 Stars = Really like it
• 3 Stars = Like it
• 2 Stars = It's okay
• 1 Star = Hate it

However, there are two important things to note with ratings:

1. Opinions are relative (thus you'll need to decide what you're rating as 5 stars and what you're rating as 1 star)
2. Opinions can change (thus you'll probably change your song ratings as time progresses)

When I go on a "rating rampage" (that is, when I've set aside time to rate unrated songs in my library), I usually have songs picked out that I would set as 5 stars (that being I can listen to it on repeat for days), 3 stars (the song is good, but I can't listen to it repeatedly for very long), and 1 star (I can't listen to the song even once). I use these three songs to relate to the rest of the unrated songs in my library; that is I use them to create relative ratings for each of my unrated songs.

To more efficiently prepare for a "rating rampage", I have a smart playlist set up called "To Be Rated" which stores 25 unrated songs ordered by most recently played. This allows me to listen to songs that I've likely heard before so I can quickly rate them (of course, the process slows down when I run out of pre-listened songs and start listening to songs that I've never heard before).

To Set Up A "To Be Rated" Smart Playlist:

1. Click "File"
2. Click "New Smart Playlist"
3. Click the "Artist" drop-down menu and select "Rating"
4. Ensure the drop-down menu to the immediate right of "Rating" is set to "is"
5. Select "0 Stars" in the box of stars (you know you've done this properly when 5 dots show up instead of stars)
6. Click the check box next to "Limit to 25 items selected by random" so that the box is checked
7. Click the "random" drop-down menu and switch it to "most recently played"
8. Click "OK"

Another important aspect to sorting music is the Genre of the music. I only buy CDs to get my music, so virtually all my music comes with the Genres preset, but in the case your Genres aren't preset, I advise that you select the Genre of each of your songs in order to make future playlist making easier (This can be done by right-clicking a song, clicking "Get Info", clicking the "Info" tab, changing the "Genre" from the drop-down menu, and clicking "OK").

Another "hidden" method of sorting music is by tagging songs. I personally haven't done this, but I found it online on several websites and I thought some people might find it useful:

To Tag Songs:

1. Right-click the song(s)
2. Select "Get Info"
3. Select the "Info" tab
4. In the "Grouping" box, you can enter a tag or multiple tags (separated by periods [eg. .happy.sad.hyper.running.homework.])
5. Click "OK"

Now, onto playlists. I have several playlists that I use to organize music for separate situations. Some of these including "Homework", "Running", etc. (these lists can also be used to help design more effective Smart Playlists). Thus, whenever I listen to a song that I think would be nice to listen to while homeworking, I add it to the "Homework" playlist. Likewise, any fast-paced songs I think would go well with running I add to the "Running" playlist. This can be done by right-clicking the song(s), clicking "Add to Playlist", and selecting the playlist you wish to add the song to.

And as a final note, my personal favorite playlist is the "Top 25 Most Played" which came pre-programmed with iTunes. It lets me see quickly my favorite song(s) of the present and past so I can quickly play them if I want to listen to something I really like.

Oh, I lied. One more final note. If you're looking into exploring additional music similar to your music taste, I've found that Last.FM is a pretty good program to use. It also lets you share your music tastes (and compare them :P) with friends. If you're interested in seeing my (often highly repetitive) scrobbles, my profile is Tysune.

Anyhow, I hope that this post will be helpful in the organization of your iTunes. :)