iTunes

I'm quite particular about my iTunes/iPod setup. I want it organized. I choose the setting to have iTunes organize the drive.

For example, I do not like to search an iPod and find an artist I like and discover there is only 1 or 2 songs. This also makes the artist list quite long and hard to traverse. I created an artist called 'Singles' and put all of my one-offs into a single artist. To do this, click on 'Get Info' and change the song title to Artist-Song_Title. Then change the artist to 'Singles'. Then you can sort by artists and you have a collection of singles in one place. This is also an excellent place to hide songs people might poke fun of. We all have those songs and it's nice to not have them exposed so easily.

Another iTunes organization tip is to be mindful of the iTunes organization and the phsyical folder/file structure. I discovered I had artists in multiple physical folders. I had folders for The Smashing Pumpkins and Smashing Pumpkins. The band is officially called The Smashing Pumpkins but often MP3 rips or naming conventions are not properly filed. iTunes does a good job of keeping things organized and will put it all together on a device, but this was not enough for me. If I want to share The Smashing Pumpkins with a friend or do a backup of the physical files, I want them all in a single folder. To fix this, select 'Get Info' and change the Artist name. iTunes will then move the albums/songs to the proper file. iTunes will typically leave empty folders that need to be manually deleted.

The artist naming problem can also occur with the field 'Album Artist'. Make sure sure to edit the album titles to keep them properly named.