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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 2 responses by herman

herman
2,220 posts
 
I agree that cover flow only makes sense for very small collections, but playlists for each album?

If you have the browser turned on (main menu bar - View - Show browser) it is already done for you. Also choose "as list" from the View menu. It is now arranged by artist and album.

Right click in the header bar above the song list and select what you want to see. I suggest name of song, track number, artist, album, and any others you want. You can drag the headers left or right to put them in the order you want. Then left click the album header. As you do it will cycle through album, album by year, and album by artist. I find album by artist to be the most useful.

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herman
2,220 posts
 
Using the browser doesn't work for me either because once I find the album I want to listen to the artwork won't be there. With playlists the artwork will automatically be there.

I don't follow. Anytime I select an album to play from the browser the art work is there.

If you have the browser sorted "album by artist" all of the artists are there in alphabetical order. I don't see where having all of that duplicated by playlists is any easier, or really different for that matter.

How does having playlists by album help if you can't remember the title?
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