Do you let itunes manage your music collection?

[BoDEAN]

I have about 20 gig of music/mp3 on my computer
Right now, I am not having itunes manage any of it (ie. tags, art, file names, etc)

I drag my files to my itunes library, it sends it to cloud/itunes match, and thats it.

Do most of you allow itunes to have access and manage your personal music collection? I thought about doing this,but afraid if I commit to it, it may make a mess of my stuff

[kornchild2002]

iTunes doesn't make a mess of things. In fact, the organization setup that iTunes implements is often the same as what people do when they manually manage their libraries. iTunes creates a single folder for an artist/band and then puts all of the albums for them in that folder. Each album is stored in its own folder and each album folder contains all the songs for that album. Soundtracks and other compilations are stored in their own folders since they are not from a single band/artist but rather a bunch of different ones.

My library is huge and I gave up the ghost when it came to manually managing it a long time ago. It's just a whole lot easier to let iTunes manage your content with larger libraries. I didn't initially let iTunes do this (back in 2003) but my library quickly grew to 40GB. After that, I let iTunes manage it all for me.

[Cold Irons]

Ditto for me; 100+ Gb of songs are way too much to do the 1970's thing of manually maintaining folders & file names...ugh.

Really, the only thing that iTunes "manages" is the folder structure & file names. I embed coverart in the song files (iTunes doesn't do anything for me here). Normally, I have the tags set up before import to iTunes, but I often edit tags via iTunes - and iTunes uses these tag changes to nicely update the folder & file names.

[BoDEAN]

So what is the best way to approach this?
Right now, all my music is under E:\MP3\{Artist}\{Album}

Do I drag the E:\Mp3 into itunes as a new library?
Also, if I do this, how do I go about selecting certain songs for the itunes match / cloud? I do not want all my music on the cloud, only songs that I listen to the most which in turn can be retrieved on my mac,ipad,iphone from the cloud/match service.

[kornchild2002]

That is the same structure iTunes uses for organizing content. You are going to run into issues if some of that content is already in your iTunes library. Adding the entire folder again could cause duplicates to show up. You can easily find and delete duplicates so it shouldn't be that big of a issue. What you would want to do, if you don't want iTunes messing around int hat MP3 folder, is create a new folder just for your iTunes library wherever you want. Change the iTunes library directory to that in the iTunes Preferences (Edit, Preferences, Advanced, change the directory). While you are there put a checkmark in the two boxes next to "Keep iTunes Media folder organized" and "Copy files to iTunes Media folder when adding to library." Click OK when all three of those options have been changed.

Then click on File, go down to Library, and click on Organize Library. Choose the consolidate option. iTunes will then copy all of the media from its current location to the new directory where you told it to store your library. After that you will want to click on File and Add to Library. Select your MP3 folder. iTunes is going to copy everything in that folder over to the location where it is storing your files. You can delete the old folder and MP3 folder if you want as all of your content has now been copied over to your new iTunes directory. From there you can click on File and Display Duplicates to see if iTunes has duplicated any files during the copying process (i.e. added the same track twice since it was being stored in multiple locations).

As for iTunes Match, you have no control over what songs can and can't be added to your account. It is either everything in your iTunes library or nothing.

[tronZ]

I use iTunes on a daily basis only for updating my podcast list and syncing podcasts to my iPhone. I generally tend not to use iTunes for anything else. I keep a very large library (some 100 000 tracks) of downloaded music (mainly torrents) which I keep organized according to Genre > Albums on my 1 TB external WD.

I use Windows Media Center for organized access of the songs. I also use Windows Media player when for random one-time plays.

I have been also using spotify for the past four months - no need for organization there :P

[Preston33154]

New member of the iLounge... but I'm now officially "over" the mess that is my library! As some of the music was ripped to WMA by mistake; and since I only used Windows Media Player, I didn't realize what this person that ripped my music for me had done.

Then I bought my iPhone. Ever since I've been integrating iTunes into my life. And the latest WMP is not 'friendly'... I'm going iTunes 100%. However, my "Library" of 43.69GB is a total mess. From the converted m4a files to mp3 to wma.

My current structure:

• iTunes "Library" is on my D:\
• Music on on my NAS T:\

Originally Posted by kornchild2002

...iTunes will then copy all of the media from its current location to the new directory where you told it to store your library. After that you will want to click on File and Add to Library. Select your MP3 folder. iTunes is going to copy everything in that folder over to the location where it is storing your files. You can delete the old folder and MP3 folder if you want as all of your content has now been copied over to your new iTunes directory. From there you can click on File and Display Duplicates to see if iTunes has duplicated any files during the copying process (i.e. added the same track twice since it was being stored in multiple locations).

I don't want my music 'moved' to my D:\, but remain on the T:\

If I move the iTunes Media Folder from D:\My Documents\My Music\iTunes to T:\FamilyMusic\iTunes -- what happens to my sync and backup of my iPhone and iPad?

I have also been 'cleaning' the albums so that all of the albums are noted as "compliations" so those with multiple artists are not spread all over the place. Will iTunes fix the music that is in 100's of folders into the "album" folder rather than the "artist" folder? (also I've been unifying the "Album Artist" nomenclature so that things "might" be moved together in iTunes.

So--there are two questions buried in that long set of paragraphs...

1. Should I move the iTunes Media Folder to the NAS T:\?
2. What will happen to my iTunes sync with my iOS devices?

Thank you very much! Preston

[cjmnews]

I am assuming that your music in T is the same music that is in your iTunes library.

1. That is up to you. Technically if you move the library to T then anything that can access the NAS can access your library, albeit one system at a time. And only if they all use T for the drive letter.
2. I would think that the sync would be a little slower, but if your content is already on the NAS you have seen the performance hit already.