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How do YOU organize your iTunes library?

My buddy just outgrew his iMac's hard drive so he bought a really nice Lacie external drive and asked me to come over and migrate iTunes, etc.

I literally laughed when I started poking around his music. He wasn't using a single playlist for about 100GB of music. I just always taken it as a given that people with large libraries(and especially "album listeners" like I'm sure most of us are) create a playlist that is the name of the artist and album i.e. Television-Marquee Moon.

He says he just uses cover-flow to navigate through everything. Watching him take like 45 seconds to find a specific album using that method I just had to show him the light.

After a little tutorial he told me that this was like a revelation and he never even thought about doing this where as I never thought about doing it any other way. He freaked out at first because we started making a few hundred playlists but I think I have him on the right track. I mean...pick an album from the playlists listed and listen...right?

Does this make sense? Do ya'll not do this? What do YOU do?
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Showing 1 response by ckorody

ckorody
643 posts
 
I'm at about 2,000CDs

I'm with VegasE and ThomasE - making all those playlists is like reinventing what's already there - plus then you still have to find the dosh gone playlist...

One wrinkle I have added is I use grouping to create another kind of category - instruments. So if I type Jazz sax I will get everything that features a sax player (so I would use this for a Ben Webster album)

I have also created a couple of new genres - especially Alt Country which has all the EmmyLou but also the Byrds and Gram Parsons etc

Having made an initial sort, I can either alpha the artist or album and pick one; or create a playlist for my iPod and Airport, or just hit shuffle and play that feel until I want something else.

BTW my Playlists are pretty much "feels" or "grooves" -"All Over Blues", "Island Music", "Morning Music", "Duke and Frenz", "Taj and KebMo". I guess you could say I am creating radio stations...

There is some fun mix software out there, plus of course the Apple Genius feature but I find that my library is too big and tends to crash them. I've had the best luck with MusicIP mixer.

Pandora is also a pretty fun way to play with some new music.
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