Thank you for reading this. For better or for worse, I obsess over having a well-organized iTunes music library. My question concerns whether/how other people (who likewise obsess over this) force iTunes to reorganize their music catalogue the way they want it. I will do my best to explain with an example.
Back in the CD days, I had all of an artist's "proper" albums in chronological order, followed by live albums, greatest hits, singles, and so on, each group in its respective chronological order. I would like to do the same thing with iTunes. Take David Bowie for example. I ripped (from my CDs) his 22 albums, as well as a couple of greatest hits, live albums, etc. I have ensured that all of the albums are properly tagged regarding the "Year." Therefore, when I organize my catalogue by "Album by Year," iTunes comes very close to the chronological structure that I desire. However, the live albums, greatest hits albums and such become spliced into the proper albums. What I want, however, is for the non-proper albums (i.e. the live albums, greatest hits albums, etc.) to be in chronological order, BUT for them to follow the proper catalogue.
So, here's what I've done so far. Using Bowie as an example, I retag all of the non-proper albums by changing the "Album Artist" to "David Bowie1", and all of the greatest hits albums to "David Bowie2". That forces iTunes to push those non-proper albums to the back of the proper albums by "fooling" iTunes into thinking David Bowie1 is a different artist.
There's a downside to that approach. It creates superfluous file/folder entries in the iTunes library folders, and therein lies my concern with this approach; although everything looks good in the iTunes library UI, I think I am causing damage (so to speak) in the background architecture by introducing "David Bowie1" and "David Bowie2" and so forth into the file folders.
If any of you like to organize your libraries like I've described or otherwise like to force iTunes hand in some weird way, I am very interested in how you accomplished it. (I'm well-aware that I am splitting hairs, so please spare me any sarcasm regarding my nerosis.)
Thank you for your time.
Back in the CD days, I had all of an artist's "proper" albums in chronological order, followed by live albums, greatest hits, singles, and so on, each group in its respective chronological order. I would like to do the same thing with iTunes. Take David Bowie for example. I ripped (from my CDs) his 22 albums, as well as a couple of greatest hits, live albums, etc. I have ensured that all of the albums are properly tagged regarding the "Year." Therefore, when I organize my catalogue by "Album by Year," iTunes comes very close to the chronological structure that I desire. However, the live albums, greatest hits albums and such become spliced into the proper albums. What I want, however, is for the non-proper albums (i.e. the live albums, greatest hits albums, etc.) to be in chronological order, BUT for them to follow the proper catalogue.
So, here's what I've done so far. Using Bowie as an example, I retag all of the non-proper albums by changing the "Album Artist" to "David Bowie1", and all of the greatest hits albums to "David Bowie2". That forces iTunes to push those non-proper albums to the back of the proper albums by "fooling" iTunes into thinking David Bowie1 is a different artist.
There's a downside to that approach. It creates superfluous file/folder entries in the iTunes library folders, and therein lies my concern with this approach; although everything looks good in the iTunes library UI, I think I am causing damage (so to speak) in the background architecture by introducing "David Bowie1" and "David Bowie2" and so forth into the file folders.
If any of you like to organize your libraries like I've described or otherwise like to force iTunes hand in some weird way, I am very interested in how you accomplished it. (I'm well-aware that I am splitting hairs, so please spare me any sarcasm regarding my nerosis.)
Thank you for your time.
