Post Your iTunes Configurations!

[Favenris]

I like the desktop threads in the picture gallery because it's interesting to see how other people have Mac configured, and now I'm curious about their iTunes libraries.

I'm a huge iTunes freak. Every single note in my metadata needs to be organized and filled out. My album artwork has been individually inserted, along with any additional "radio single" artwork for the additional songs. And consider that I have 6,703 songs, you pretty much have an idea of what I do on my time off.

Composers for me was pretty much a useless label because almost each song had an individual array, so I simplified it to the following list: Albums, Compilations, Music Videos, and Other. Other is anything that isn't an official album, like a CD single or something. It looks very pretty checking out the "albums" section and only seeing official releases instead of bootlegs, live albums, EP's, etc.

Genres is something else I have simplified, and I hope I get to see somebody's input on this because I really hope to change it. My list is as follows: Books & Spoken, Electronic, Experimental, Hip Hop/Rap, Pop, Rock. That's it. Has anybody else found themselves in a conflict where you don't know where an artist goes? Alternative can be such a confusing label because you don't know whether to put it under Alternative, Folk, Punk, or Rock. So I just simplified it and placed artists under those general genres. However, I don't like it, and I'm going to make a more diverse set of genres.

Also, do you use Groupings? How do you personally organize them?

So... share your stuff! I'm interested in seeing what people have their library configured like.

 

[hollerz]

Good thread, I'm also fairly obsessed with tagging and artwork

Mine are sorted into 5 genres and then use groupings as a kind of sub genre.

Anything that has a featured artist is put into the comments field (I think it looks so much cleaner than if it's "Song Name (Ft. Some Artist)")

All Bonus Tracks, B-Sides and Music Videos are set to Disc 2 and have no track number and are unchecked so they don't carry on playing once the album is finished. They also have comments saying which single the B-Side came from etc.

As much as I love iTunes I find it quite frustrating as it could be so much better. I'd love to be able to tag each song with multiple genres, as you said it can be hard to lump them into one category. And I wish you could "tag" a song with a music video, so instead of having two entries for "The Dead Dog", you'd just have the song within the album and have the little video icon on the right, which you'd click if you want to watch the video (if that makes sense!)

And while I'm at it... year, record label, and country of origin in the album artwork column please

 

[Favenris]

I like keeping singles as a separate album. But yeah, since my last post, I worked on some groupings and they look great. I just wish they were enabled in iPod and iPhone...

Larger version: http://i47.photobucket.com/albums/f156/favenris/original.png

 

[ideal.dreams]

OP, there's is a program I use called Tagalicious. You just open it, select songs that are missing information, and it attempts to dig up the information on that song. Once finds the information you're missing, you can choose what to send (e.g., send lyrics, but not artwork, etc) to your iTunes Library. It's been able to identify all but a few of the 400+ songs I have in my library...it was even able to get tags for songs with no name, album, or any information on them whatsoever.

 

[dlegend]

Holy crap, that program is amazing. I just tried it out on a song that was labeled ZHFR from when I transferred music back from my ipod to my hard drive (long story) and it figured out exactly what it was. Craziest part is there was no tagging besides the 4 letters and it was an a cappella version from my college.

Totally buying this tomorrow when I'm by my credit card.

 

[Rapmastac1]

I'm very detailed when it comes to taking care of my iTunes library. I have almost 6,000 songs and I average about 80 new songs a month (mostly cd compilations). I rarely every buy actual physical cds unless it's for an album I really love, so it gets the shelf treatment.

I use all the fields rather normally. I prefer to only have a few basic Genres which I then break down under the "Grouping" tag. I use various tags for various reasons. I use the grouping for the sub-genre, and naming the record label. The lyrics tab is used as a way to put track-lists in songs that are one continuous track. The comments section is used for tracks that are complete (aka they have all the track information and album art embedded into the file itself). And once every year I have a program that runs through and finds the BPM of each track.

Now don't even get me started on playlists and playlist folders.