This Is Not A Blog

Help me organize my music.

nostrich:

cleversimon:

I have 45 GB of music in my iTunes library. You may consider that massive or miniscule, but you have to agree it poses a bit of an organizational problem.

I don’t really use the Genre tag; maybe the solution lies there. Maybe I should spend a weekend constructing playlists (but what kind of playlists?). Or maybe you have a better idea.

How do you keep your music library organized?

My advice regarding library organization is always unpopular and always ignored, but hear me out here: delete most of your music.

This works for me, because I have a specific way of listening to music, and may not work so well for other people, but at least give it a chance. If you’re like me, you don’t listen to most of your music very regularly. In fact, you tend to have ~5-8 albums on constant rotation, switching one in and another out every week or so. Thus, if you’re like me, you don’t need that much music in your iTunes library. Anything that isn’t a regular listen? Delete it. Don’t back it up, don’t archive it somewhere, don’t give it any funny smart playlist-referenced tags, just fucking delete it.

iTunes isn’t suited to huge libraries of music. After a certain point, depending on your computer’s specifications, it will start taking longer and longer to launch, you’ll see more of that “Loading iTunes library” bar, and iTunes will become hell to use. iTunes is for music you listen to, not for music you own. Archive that somewhere else. (At the very least, remove it from your library and archive the files to an external HD or something.)

Sounds wasteful, you say? If you deleted something you ripped from a CD, rip it again next time you want it. If you downloaded it from some illicit file-sharing site, you’ll be able to again, probably in less than 10 minutes if you look in the right places (hell, less than a minute is possible). And if you own it on vinyl, I’m pretty sure you’re breaking some law by listening to an MP3 instead (but I don’t know how fucked up the law is over there in Canada).

Once you pare your library down to just music you listen to, you’ll find it infinitely more manageable. I understand the urge to hoard all the music you own in one place and never delete anything, as long as disk space allows. I did that too — around 220GB was my peak, I think — but since getting it down to a far more manageable 20GB or so (if it all fits on your iPod, ur doin it rite), my life is much easier, I spend less time deciding what I want to listen to, and it’s easier to find once I do.

MP3s are a fantastic way to archive your music (but FLAC and OGG are better), and I sympathise when people would rather not delete their music collections, which is why backing it up to an external HD is just as good an option as simply deleting it. If you have over a certain amount — if your gigabytes are in triple digits, you’re pushing it — you’re not a music listener, you’re a music collector, and that shit doesn’t belong in your everyday library, because you don’t listen to it all (impossible), it belongs backed up somewhere where nothing will ever happen to your precious digital files.

Endnote: I always think it’s funny when these kind of posts come up (on Tumblr, on a forum, on Yahoo! Answers, or whatever), and there’s always one dude who’s like, “my library’s 500GB! I have all the music in the WORLD! Here’s how I organise it…” First question: Really dude, that’s nice, how long did you spend organising that? Days, you say? Oh, weeks! Good grief. And how much of it has a play count above zero? Oh, almost none of it? Well, that seems like time well spent. “ALL THE MUSIC IN THE WORLD!!!”