Do you have an iTunes library that is growing by the day and is now so large it is out of control? Staying on top of your song collection is the key to an enjoyable experience and the best way to manage and maintain a large itunes library is with tags. Here are some practical tips to using tags on your iTunes songs
You should organize your music according to tags as a general rule, and another rule is to always use Smart Playlists. Manual playlists should be reserved for your own compliations and the smart playlists are to help you organize your large iTunes library. This is because these playlists update along with the entire music collection.
Here’s some more tips around tagging and why it is the key to managing and maintaining those ridiculously large itunes libraries of yours, because regardless of whether you paid for your iTunes music or you were savvy enough to get yourself a free iTunes gift cards to get songs for your iPod – there is nothing worse than an unorganized music library.
Use downtime to tag and rate ancient stuff that gets lost. For example, rate music on your iPod. Also, get Quicksilver or Butler and set up shortcut keys for assigning ratings to your music while it’s playing. You can do this without interrupting the current app you’re using, and it’s a excellent way of rating stuff honestly transparently.
Bring your music into line and finally sort out that mess with tags, but more importantly – make sure you are consistent with what tags you are using and how you are categorizing and ‘filing’ your iTunes songs.
Make sure your music does not creep up on you by tagging everything as it arrives. The best way to do this is to use Smart Playlists (again a fantastic way to help you stay organised) and call it ‘recently added’ and set it to include anything well, recently added. Set the playlist to only include unrated songs and once you rate and tag them they will no longer be on that playlist.
Prune duplicate or too-similar genres so that the genre is a usable criterion in a smart playlist. I find that although I dislike categorising by genre, it is a really useful way of finding music you want. If you’re into electronic music you might have dozens of genres. This is really a matter of taste but I like the thought of inclusive genres, so soul includes stuff that purists would argue is doo-wop, for example.
Basically, regardless of whether you choose to use tags, playlists, genres, or a mix of all three to organize your huge iTunes library the vital element is that you impose a system on your iTunes library and you stay consistent and trust that system.
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Tags: Apps, iPhone, Itunes, portable mp3, organization, download music, iPad