How to Organize Music?

Framar

WOW Framer
Joined
Jul 24, 2001
Posts
26,420
Loc
Buffalo, New York, USA/Fort Erie, Ontario, Canada
I have over 800 tunes on my computer, and if I carefully enter the correct info in My Music I can see them arranged at least in alphabeticl order.

However, when I use the Windows Media Player they are all mixed up - and at least half of them are listed twice.

Plus, now that I am buying Itunes, Windows doesn't recognize their file extension and all I find of them is a file of folders which I have to open one at a time and they don't seem to want to be added as individual songs into even My Music.

Are there any shareware programs out there that anyone would recommend to make head or tails of this mess???

As a consequence, I listen to very little of this hard-won music, once in a while I burn a CD, but I look at any of those crazy lists and my eyes cross. I gather the music and then I can't locate anything! And it frosts me that even when I pay for it (for the second or third time, I might add - first LP, then cassette!) I lose it!

And I cannot listen to shuffled music - I like albums in their original order and I like playing DJ with tunes. I used to spend hours making mix cassettes and the computer has sucked away all of my joy.

Oh, HELP!!!
faintthud.gif
 
OK - I just found a way to sopmewhat organize the list in the Media Player - but it still places names in screwy order - for instance, in the middle of the D's - there are two Dory Previn songs. Then I have to go through about 400 songs to find more of Dory - and then a bit further there are some more!

And they are all spelled the same.

Arrrggghhh!
 
what I have learned to do is make folders for different bands/singers.

For example - say that I am putting a cd in and it's for ... Barenaked ladies - I make a folder and put them all in there.

and I do the same for each band who I have more than 3 or 4 of their songs. If it's there twice - delete one of them. If I've burned it to a cd I delete it (unless it's something that I will want to use on my mp3 player - then I leave it there)

It sounds like it will take you a while to actually clean them all up - but if you do it and keep up with it it shouldn't be so bad.

have fun with that!
 
I have tried a few different programs to organize my music and the one I like the best and now use exclusively is MusicMatch. I'm sure there are others that may be equally as good. You can burn, copy, organize a library in many different ways and it's keyword searchable. You can also organize playlists or random play the works.

http://www.musicmatch.com/
 
I also use MusicMatch. When not working my frame shop or my full time job I teach & DJ for country dancing. I use MM for DJing. They have a free version for organizing and playing and for a $20 one time registration you can burn and print play lists or libraries. The tracks have "Tags" which are easy to edit. MM alows you to sort your music several different ways, artist, genre, etc. Well worth looking into.
 
OK - months later and I have finally made this my default player - only it is now Yahoo! Music - they must have swallowed up MusicMatch.

Anyhow - a lot of my files seem to have multiplied. For instance, one artist - for whom I ripped one song off the CD, now is represented in 2 sets of files each with four copies of the same song listed.

Now what do I do? I suppose I could just try deleting 7 of them and if I loose the song at least I know I still have it on the artist's CD.

I am in one of those "I hate computers" moods today.

*sigh*
 
OK - just removed three out of four copies of the tune and the second file disappeared with it's 4 copies.

Curiouser and curiouser...
 
Well, I seem to be figuring this out for myself: here's what I think has happened - in some instances - duplicate copies seem to be coming from either playlists or CDs that I have burned.

I think once I take the time to go through all of the songs (almost 1000 listed and I figure the correct number is closed to 700...

Oy!
 
I love my MAC!! It's so easy to organize music . . . and files . . . and photos . . . and . . .

:D

Jerry S.
 
Well, I've deleted 105 duplicates so far - now I just have to untangle the sections entitled "Unknown Artist, Various and Various Artists - oh yeah, and all the ones with only track numbers.

Aaarrrggghhh!
 
Yeah, iTunes is what got me into all of this duplication business in the first place, guys! And I only got into that because I bought a few tunes.

Of course, now I can't find any of the ones I paid for on my new lists in the Yahoo program - grrrrr.....
 
All this is not giving me the urge to run out and buy any of this... I'll just wait until they make it easier for us technodummies.
 
I'm with Rick on Itunes. I set up my Ipod this summer with Itunes and I don't seem to have the same trouble Mar. I know I am nowhere using any of it to it's fullest extent because I just want to listen to music but the basics seem simple and I don't appear to have any duplications. If you delete a song from a playlist it should always remain in your main library. It is so easy to make playlists and burn CD's from Itunes.

The one thing I regret is not rating the songs as I added them to my Ipod. I guess rating them makes the higher rated ones play more frequently when you are in shuffle. Seems like a lot of work to do to 900+ songs now......

My Ipod went whacky last weekend and appeared to have frozen in place, I thought it was dead. It is working now but it made me realize I had better start backing up Itunes just in case my computer goes whacky, I would hate to lose all this. I've spent a couple hundred dollars the past few months buying music from Itunes and had not made one hard copy.....got em now.

I'm treating myself to a docking station for Christmas so I can listen to this stuff witout being hooked up to the earbuds.
 
I'm sure having an IPod makes it much easier...but I am not an earbud kinda gal - I like my music through the air.

I am still struggling - but the end is almost in sight.

Ellen - the whole thing would have been a lot easier if I had controlled it from the first. Kinda like buying 1000 books and just throwing them willy-nilly onto shelves -that would take some organizing too!

Right now I found the iTunes, imported them successfully into the new player - and now I cannot find them. They're in there somewheres, folks - I'll keep y'all posted.

I feel for every stupid problem I encounter maybe I am helping someone else with a similar problem...
 
Ditto

I can't believe no one has mentioned this yet. Get iTunes.
It's available for Windows as well as for Mac. It's great for organizing music by any criteria you wish, as well as creating playlists, burning CDs, converting to other file types, etc.

:thumbsup: Rick

http://www.apple.com/itunes/download/

Exactly what I was thinking, Rick. Framar, it is not a bad idea to have a separate phile for each artist so you'll always know for sure where one copy resides.

I also love IPhoto , especially the "do not import duplicates" feature.
 
Well, I've tried numerous ways to transfer, import, export or even find the iTunes (bought and paid for!) into the Yahoo program - and they are not to be found anywhere except in the original Windows My Music file.

I have been able to clean up all of the other files and I have deleted almost 200 dupes, but no way am I making folders for each artist because, at least according to Yahoo I have 318 artists and 279 albums. Plus the "lost" ones.

Could the fact that the paid-for tunes are .m4p files instead of .mp3 files have anything to do with it? It says they are "protected." They sure are! Protected from me!
 
Mar, i didn't mean to suggest that an Ipod would make it easier, I was just saying getting an Ipod led me to ITunes. I don't know that you can sort your music from the Ipod, I do all my downloading and sorting in ITunes and then I load it on the IPod.

There has to be a way to convert from one format to another. I know I converted a wav. file tog et it on my ITunes. Don't remember how though.

Good luck, I too find all this stuff very frustrating.........................
 
you might want to do rsearch on a couple of the music forums online--Ilounge or head-fi come to mind. On the Head-fi forum, there are several categories there where perhaps help can be found

O and other music sources will not recognize Itunes-bought music, unless you use an ap like Anapod, Copypod, etc. Itunes is very proprietary. You might have "bought" from them, but that "protection" means you're only renting the music. You never DO reallyown it; like try reconfiguring from AAC to lossless, FLAC or some other codec. Won't happen. Love using Itunes for organization, but buy my own CDs from discount houes--cheaper than Itunes anyway--and rip using lossless formats
 
Oh this is SO annoying. I just opened up the iTunes Program (which seems very miffed to no longer be my default player) and there are all the missing tunes plus all of the duplications that I just spent so long getting rid of!

And yet when I look in the Windoze My Music File - everything is neat and tidy.

Maybe I should just get rid of both Yahoo and i(diot)Tunes and go back to Windoze and say bye-bye to the tracks I bought.

Hmmm... I wonder what would happen if I burned them onto a CD and then ripped them back into the system...

Hmmm...
 
iTunes - it must be the Canadian version because they have a lot of indy Canadian stuff -

On the other hand - I could join Yahoo! Jukebox for $5 a month and get to keep indefinately all of the music I purchase for ever and ever and ever - even if I quit the service.

Where do you buy your music?

Anyone would have the old stuff - but I like the new indies like Kathleen Edwards and Danny Michele, Hawksley Workman, The Weakerthans, the Skydiggers, Elliot Brood, even Buck 65 (he is a sort of rapper) (!) - Danny Michele is really cool - he did a bunch of Bowie covers (and I usually don't like covers) but Young Americans is outstanding and I also bought one of his called "Would you buy a frame." Great song!
 
Hmmm... I wonder what would happen if I burned them onto a CD and then ripped them back into the system...

Hmmm...
You hit it on the head with the "protected" comment. When you purchase a trac from iTunes, Walmart.com, Napster, etc. a file is attached that only allows you to play it on the machine it was down loaded with. If you simply move or copy the file to another folder or computer or cd the new trac will not play becouse it searched for the copyright file. BUT, if you burn that trac to a CD then rip it back to a computer you can use it anyway you wish. This is exactly what I must do to get tracks from my PC to my notebook I use for DJing. It's a pain when I only have a couple tracs to waste an entire CD for a few MP3 files.
 
Hey Denny thanks for the encouraging information - so far I have been able to burn the downloaded paid-for tracks onto a disc (to play in my car) - and it seems to me that there was some law somewhere that each track could only be burned something like 15 times before - what - it evaporated?

I am going to have another go at figuring this all out after the Christmas thing is over (and after my fingers heal - hard to work on a keyboard with all the bandaids!).
 
Framer,
When dealing with tracs listed more than once in Music Match, there is an easy way to remove them from your library and hard drive at the same time. You can expand your library listing to list all tracks. Hold down the Ctrl key and click several duplicate tracs. When you've selected the tracs you want removed, right click on one of the tracs to open a pop-up menu. On the menu click "Remove tracs from library". A message box will pop up for you to confirm the removal. Within this box is a check box to remove the trac from your hard drive. If you are sure the multiple listing are from multiple copies of the trac on your HD, check this box and the trac will be removed from your library and your hard drive at the same time.
 
iTunes allows only one-way synchronization of musics from computer to iPod, so if for whatever reasons such as need to reload your library on local hard disk due to desktop hard disk failure or buying new computer, you can easily copy back the video, music and song library from iPod on a Windows PC by following steps:
 
1. Insert your iPod to a Windows PC USB or FireWire port. (PC should runs Windows XP or other Windows operating system).
2. If your Windows PC still doesn’t have iTunes installed, skip this step. If iTunes is already installed and prompt a message on whether if you’d like to associate this iPod with this computer and deleting its content, click No. Or else you will lose your only copy of library on iTunes. Beside, ensure that ‘Enable Disk Use’ is selected.
3. Open My Computer or Windows Explorer, the iPod should be automatically detected as a portable hard drive.
4. Click on the iPod icon or the iPod portable hard drive letter to open the contents of the drive.
5. If you don’t see a folder called “iPod Control”, it’s hidden and invisible. To unhidden it so that it’s visible, go to Tools -> Folder Options -> View, and then check (enable) the option “Show hidden files and folders.”
6. Open the “iPod Control” folder, and then the Music folder.
7. The Music folder contains the iPod’s music and videos, divided into folders. Copy the library to local computer hard drive’s My Music folder.
8. The files copied have unintelligible four-letter file names. To reveal the names of the songs and other data tags, add the files to the Windows Media Player or iTunes libraries or switch to “Tiles” view in Windows Explorer.
9. Rename the file if necessary.
 
Beside above manual ways to copy and transfer song library from iPod to computer, or import into iTunes, there are several third party program or more commonly called iPod Manager that has the iPod copying function such as Tansee iPod Transfer (freeware).
 
Wow - Greece, thanks for the detailed instructions - but this is a four year old thread and I have given up on iTunes that many years ago. LOL.

But welcome to the Grumble and as we say to all newcomers, fill out your profile so we know where you are and such.
 
Back
Top