The Technical Aspects of a Music Collection

What does your collection look like? Are you very particular when it comes to track titles, or do you just care about what the music tags are? If you use iTunes for either your iPod or iPhone then I would expect no less for you to expect your collection to look nice and organized, but not everyone has the time to go through it all. Some of us have more than we can fit onto our mobile devices. 

Regardless, if you spend an amount of time everyday with your collection, I encourage you to organize it so that it doesn't cause more harm to your well being. I have a love/hate relationship with iTunes. Since I have an iPod, it is necessary for me to use it (I'm not particularly interested in dabbling around in third party options, though I know they exist). Regardless, I have come to enjoy and take advantage of the simplicity and powerful tools that it has to offer. 

While it may cause some headaches, others might never experience my issues. Some including sorting issues like Brian Tyler in the artist pane being at the very bottom as if it were a number, even the same composer in the composer pane appearing anywhere between 5-20 times in a row. One fix for the composer issue is to directly edit the files in iTunes, changing the composer. I feel iTunes has difficulty reading tags that it hasn't created itself. Now, a suggestion for the artist sorting, try to convert the file to another codec, OR turn on iTunes sorting which copies everything you drag-and-drop in the iTunes Media folder so that iTunes can automatically organize it all. 

Anyway, there are some tips. If you are having issues with iTunes, send me a message and I might just be able to help, or you could hit the Apple Support forums. 

Recently I started a thread that asked users how they managed their collection. Many use third party players, others said they are very interested in editing everything from tags down to the file names. Some were set on perfectly square album art (which is not at all unreasonable), others didn't really care too much about all that. Audiophiles I feel are more concerned with the quality of their collection, but then again some are but are not so obsessed with having everything in FLAC. 

Is it time for some spring cleaning in your collection? Even if it is 5 albums a day, or 10 each Saturday, I would say that this is progress. I do suggest allowing iTunes to manage the files automatically if you use it the most, but the sorting and tags are all on you.