Tips for Organizing and Managing Your iPod and iTunes 9

The biggest advantage of an iPod is that you can probably put just about every song you know on it. The downside to having an iPod is that you can probably put just about every song you know on it. The newest generations of iPod can hold tens of thousands of songs! This makes organizing a daunting task, especially for those that like to micro manage their music, and those with eclectic musical tastes. Those of you who, like me, change what you listen to based on your mood and/or activities can face quite a challenge finding music. Is there a better way than just turning the iPod on and hitting "next" dozens, or even hundreds of times before you find a song you want to hear? Sure there is!

The first step is to make sure that iTunes is properly organized. There are programs out there designed to do this for you, but I personally don't like having to use several programs to do one task. iTunes gives you all the features you need to organize your library, you just need to utilize them. Now if you have purchased all of your music from the iTunes store, or used iTunes to rip digital copies of your favorite cds, you can likely skip all of this. Since you used iTunes to get the music in the first place, the program does a great job of properly tagging things to make organization easy. If you're new to digital music altogether, read the next steps, and follow them as you add music, it will make life much easier in the long run!

However, if, like most people, you've used other programs to rip your music, or purchased your music from somewhere other than the iTunes store, you may have a challenge ahead! When I first got my iPod, and started using iTunes, I already had a large music collection on my computer. It was all organized in a "Music" folder in Windows. Within that folder everything was sorted out by artist, album, etc. Simple right? When I imported that music into iTunes I found quite a motley music library! So I faced the time consuming task of organizing it all.

Open up iTunes and get to work! Please note, I am using iTunes 9 to do this, other versions may have different options. I generally choose to view my library in the list view first, to make things easier. To do this, click on "Music" under Library on the left hand side, and then, on the right hand side, next to the search box, you will see three buttons. The one on the far left, which looks like a bunch of lines, will give you a list view with no Cover Flow.

**Before you get started, save the following website to your favorites: www.gracenote.com. This website is immensely helpful for finding album information. You can search by Artist, Album, or Track (song name).

Apply the Sort Fields

iTunes gives you tons of options for sorting your music library. To change them, right-click on the bar at the top of the list that has "Artist" "Name" "Genre" etc. You will be presented with an enormous list of options to sort your library. All of these fields can help you organize your library, and these are largely a matter of personal preference. My library displays the following sort fields:

-Name (this is a default, and is not an option - why would you NOT want to see it?)
-Artist
-Album
-Genre (If you listen to many types of music)
-Year
-Time
-Date Added
-Grouping (leave this one off for now, we'll discuss it later)

Turn on the sort fields you want to use, and turn all of the others off. You can click and drag the sort fields into the order you want them by using that bar at the top of the list and dragging the columns to the left or right. In my library, the "Date Added" field, and the "Grouping" are the last two fields on the right, as they are used less frequently for me.

Correct the File Tags

The next step is very time consuming when you first take on this task. If you have a large music library, this could take you several hours over time, depending on how the tags already look for your music. I worked left to right. Click on "Name" at the top to sort songs alphabetically by song title. Then go down the list, scanning for incorrect titles, or titles that had all the information crammed into one tag (for example "Michael Buble - The Best is Yet To Come - Call me Irresponsible - 2007" is NOT how I want songs to come up on my iPod when I play them, or in my Library!). Change the song titles as needed. To do this, right click on the song, choose "Get Info" and in the "Info" tab, you will see the information to be entered. Now, WHILE you are already in that box, correct the other fields, if necessary. This saves time later.

Once you have gotten to the bottom of the list, go back to the top. Click on the next sort field (mine is "Artist") and do the same thing, all over again! Scan down the list looking for weird "Artist" tags, or blank ones. Keep doing this for all of your sort fields until you've moved through the entire list. You will notice that, if you corrected any blank or incorrect fields in the first step, there will be fewer and fewer corrections to be made as you move through the sort fields. Note that you can edit multiple files' info at once by clicking on the first one you want to sort, to highlight it in the list, then holding the CTRL key and clicking on the others that you want to edit. Then right-click on the last one and edit as usual. Anything you change using this method will be changed for ALL of the files you chose (this is especially helpful when editing the Artist, Album, Year, and Genre columns). Once you have done this, you should have no empty spots in your list under any column that specifically gives you information about the music, like artist, name, year, album, etc. I know it took you forever, but it will pay off quickly!

Adding Album Artwork

This is in its own category because not everyone wants their iPod or iTunes to display album artwork, nor does everyone use the Cover Flow feature. When you have "Display Album Artwork" enabled on your iPod, or you use the Cover Flow feature though, you'll see a nice picture of what the album cover looks like for whatever you're listening to. You can, of course, change this image to nearly anything you WANT to have displayed! Once you're a pro at organizing your library, this is an area where you can get creative and use it to your advantage if you want. For this editing and organizing step, I change the library view to the right-hand button next to the search box, so that the Cover Flow displays above my list of files.

Since you now have all of your music tags correct, you can sort by Artist. Those artists' songs in your library should be sorted within themselves by album. This should go more quickly if you use the method of editing multiple tags at once. Do things the easiest way possible. If you are sure you have the album and artist names entered correctly, right-click and choose "Get Album Artwork." If you're lucky, it will automatically add the album cover from the iTunes store. If you get a "not found" error however, you have a little more work to do. Find the album cover online (or whatever image it is you want to use for that album). Save it somewhere (I have a folder for "iTunes Artwork" on my computer where I save these tiny files. I use Gracenote and Amazon to find these most of the time, and the files are very small because they are just thumbnail images I am saving. Go back to your "Get Info" box in iTunes, and in the "Info" tab, you can double click the box labeled "Artwork" on the right, and choose the file you want to use. This will then be the artwork displayed for all songs on that album. If you're adding artwork to a single song file, you will need to use the "Artwork" tab in the "Get Info" box.

Whew. Now with that all done, you just have to stay on top of that library as you add new files to iTunes. That is why I have the "Date Added" sort field displayed. I can click that, see what I most recently added, and edit those tags quickly.

Organizing Music to Suit YOUR Needs

You may be wondering why you bothered with the "Genre" sort field, or why I have the "Grouping" field enabled. Organizing my music to cater to my mood swings and activities is why! Turn your "Grouping" field back on so it's visible now.

iTunes has a feature, of course, to create playlists. You just go to File>Create New Playlist, name the playlist whatever you want, then drag and drop from your library. This is great for quick playlists of songs that have no apparent relationship to each other. Of course you can "Create New Playlist Folder" to micro manage your playlists too. You may want to do that later! If you have 10 different "Workout" playlists, one for running, one for weight lifting, etc, this feature can be helpful. For now though, let's just stick to the basics.

A feature that I find a lot of users do NOT use to their full advantage is the "Smart Playlist" feature. You will find this under the "File" menu as well. When you choose this option, a window pops up with many options within it. THIS is why it was so important to edit ALL those sort fields before! Let's say I want to create a playlist with songs by The Beatles. I just create a smart playlist, and choose "Artist", "Contains" and I type "Beatles" in the last box. You can choose with the other options in that window to limit the number of songs in the playlist (I don't do this...I just make new playlists if I want more specific, smaller playlists). I nearly always leave the "Live Updating" box checked. This way, as I add or remove files from my library, iTunes will fix my smart playlists accordingly.

Notice that when you click on that first box, which by default says "Artist", all of those sort fields are displayed again. This is why I use the "Genre" and the "Grouping" sort fields. I can create a smart playlist of all songs with a "Jazz" Genre. If I like certain songs for a cardio workout at the gym, I can change the tags so that the "Grouping" field reads "Gym - Cardio." I use that method so that I can have a song turn up in several different groupings, for example "Gym - Party - Cardio" If I want to create a "Party" Smart Playlist and a "Cardio" playlist, and a more generic "Gym" playlist, that song will turn up in all three. By having live updating on, if I find a new song that's great for a cardio workout, I just add the "Cardio" tag in the "Grouping" field, and iTunes will automatically add the new song to that playlist!

If you wanted to create a "90's" Playlist, simply choose "Year" in the first box in the Smart Playlist window, and choose "is in the range" in the second box. You can also choose just one year, before a certain year, after a certain year, etc. It's pretty self explanatory.

You're Done!

Now, when you sync your iPod, these playlists will be added to it, and you can just scroll to Music>Playlists on your iPod and choose what you want to listen to, instead of scrolling through thousands of songs or artists! Add and remove playlists as needed. One final tip, if you're not at home, and you want to throw together a quick playlist, don't forget to use the "On-the-Go Playlist feature on your iPod! The method for doing this changes slightly for different iPod models, so check with Apple to find out how to do this on your iPod!

Stay on top of the tags for any new music you add, and your iTunes library will stay neat and organized, allowing you to quickly find and listen to your music.