iTunes Library/Playlists for all my music?

Ok, so I'm fairly new to Apple computing (previously Windows all teh way). I had a very specific folder arrangement for my music and I'm investigating the possible pros and cons of changing it. Basically, my music is seperating into folders by genre, artist, and then live albums, studio albums, mixtapes, etc (depending on the artist). I messed around with the possiblity of having itunes automatically manage my music but it basically renames every album and just categorizes it by album and then artist (no year in the folder name, no subdivision of genre, etc) so I wasn't a fan of that. I like to micro manage my music.

Is there a way to take in teh library as it's currently set up?

Truth is, I have so much music that I am thinking of creating playlists folders within itunes in the same format as I have my music folders set up. Is there an easy way to create playlists for each album? I was originally going to copy every .m3u file I have (most albums have one in them) into a new "playlists" folder on my computer and use each of those but that's gonna be time consuming and when I double click on the m3u in the new directory it doesn't load up any music (seems it has to be in the directory with the mp3's for it to work). What's the best route to go about doing this? The easiest way I can think is to import each album and then individually save every playlist file...which is going to be even more insanely time consuming. if that's how it has to be done then that's fine. It'll be my little project.

Also, once allt he playlists are in place, is there a way to save that entire playlist set up in itunes? Is that just contained in teh itunes library file within the itunes directory? I just want to ensure that if I do all that work that I won't accidentally lose all the playlists I created.

I am sitting on over 65k songs, so I have a very large library of music - so much that iTunes Match cannot take my entire library.

I used to have it all set up in folders and playlists like you do, however, after a certain version (forget which) of iTunes came out and I looked at the music selection and how it had my albums arranged, it worked out very nicely to let iTunes manage the whole thing. Also, it was nice when I did that because after switching to Mac from Windows, all I had to do was point iTunes to the new location I wanted my music and it took over from there and I havent had an issue since.

I also maintain my own playlist structure, based on Genre\Artist-Album. I like dealing with Playlists better than by artist or album only. For me, it is easier to find things. you can do this easy enough within iTunes. I use Smart Playlists, personally.

Now, what you can do is get a spare HD and make a COPY of your structure and point iTunes to it and see what happens, thus leaving your original untouched.

When you get everything set up the way you want, you can export and save a copy of the iTunes settings and playlists.

Also, if you use Time Machine, you will always be able to go back to a previous saved version. I have retrieved older playlists that I screwed up and brought them back from the dead this way.

ok so we're definitely in the same boat in terms of music. So, if you go into itunes and then go to Library, you're showing 65k songs in just that view?

That's my biggest issue. I really wanted to avoid having that view completely dominated by just a collection of 15k mp3 files.

I'm actually way ahead of you on both suggestions. I have it all backed up and I have Time machine back up my ssymstem once a week.

So do you let iTunes rename all your files? I guess I'm confused between pointing itunes to the directory I have my music and letting itunes manage my music.

Thanks for the response.

I am trying to get a couple screenshots up here. I just go ahead and let iTunes rename them. I don't go into the directory structure anymore anyway, I use the playlists I set up.

In SS1, you can see my default look for Music if I am just browsing artists. I don't usually.

In SS2, I have how my playlists are set up. I don't usually go in and view all songs - doesn't make sense for me, too many. I use the Genius feature a lot, and when people are over, I have a playlist set up with everything excluding a few genres that can be used.

For me, it works and I have never had issues finding what I want, and that is saying something for a music library that is 65,000 strong.

Sorry about the SS size - I was remoting into my Mini from work on my iPad.

hey i think you basically sold me on this. there's no need to have them split up within folders if i have them tagged properly by genre. it'll be a new project for that'll keep me entertained.

so every album is going to create it's own individual playlist right? I guess i'm just trying o think ahead of how I'm gonna work that.

So if you want to delete music from your hard drive completely you just delete it from iTunes and it'll get rid of that album/folder?

No, I created the playlists myself, and it took a while but was worth it. That way I could have them all set to my method. Look into the Smart Playlist style.

Cool thanks.

So how would you recommend going about this? I'm assuming you didn't just dump all 65000 songs in go from there as quite a few are going to need proper tagging.

I know there's an auto sync to itunes folder in the media library. Is that my best option and just go artist by artist?

Also, do you know of a way of removing all artwork that is currently attached to my music so I can retag it? (some of the stuff I have is low res and if I'm gonna do this, it's gonna be the right way).

Again, thanks so much for the help.

There is a way to tell iTunes to leave music where it lies and manage it yourself in the folder structure you want, instead of having iTunes manage your music. Then iTunes will just control the actual library within iTunes and it will leave the file structure alone.

Thanks guys. I actually decided to go ahead and let itunes manage my music. I realized that I had so many folders within folders that I never had a good scope of just how much music i had. It's nice to have it all within one program.

I started the process but this is gonna take a long time as I am redoing everything and fixing the tags, artworks, etc. If I'm gonna do this, it's gotta be right. The automatically add to itunes folder is a savior.

I love the look and feel of the itunes as source. Deckyon's screeshot above really sealed the deal for me as I really like that layout and never thought to switch to that.

Smart playlists are a god send. I originally started creating manual ones for each artists (which was stupid) as that would force me to manually manage each playlist too.

One thing though. Do you guys know of a applescript that will automatically add music to an "unknown genre". Basically the point is that when I bring in new music (after this whole process importingis finished) I'd like to be able to go into the unknown genre, find all this new music and start the tagging process from there. Otherwise the tags in albums sometimes end up throwing music all over the place.

Not sure about unknown genre, but I have a Newest playlist. It's a smart playlist that has the last week's worth of music I've added to iTunes in it. You could do that, but add another variable so that it disappears from that playlist after you fix/sort it.

It doesn't realy matter what genre it is. It could be new music genre. I'll look around and see if there's an applescript that would help.

otherwise your idea sounds pretty good. I could always try that.