TUAW Resolutions: Organize iTunes
I had been living near my iPod's 30GB threshold for many months. So I recently resolved to take a few days and get my iTunes library into better working order. Here are the steps I personally took to organize iTunes. Some of these are pretty extreme and may not be universally appealing but you might find an idea or two among them that you might want to apply to your own music collections.
Nothing lives in the iTunes music folder. I decided I didn't like living with iTunes' default library management. I switched off "Copy files to iTunes Music folder when adding to library" in Advanced preferences. Yes, new purchases go into that folder, but I treat it more like a sorting and holding area, not as a final destination. Now I sort all my media using my personal folder management. I'm far happier with the results.
Limit the iTunes Library. I completely emptied my iTunes library. Selected all songs, all TV shows, all movies and I just zapped 'em (from the library, that is, not from the computer). And then I rebuilt everything from scratch. My newly organized music folder really helped. I only reloaded items that I felt I had a good chance of listening to or watching. Now instead of living at 30GB, I'm more like at 15GB. I'm more likely to find something that I really want to enjoy than to settle for what I stumble across (I am not, as you might guess, much of a "shuffle" settings-type person). When I want to add items back into the library, I just drag in the proper folder from my secondary storage. And when I've had enough of an album? I zap it. Couldn't be easier.
Keep new artists in a try-out holding area. I now tag all new albums and artists to isolate them from my regular music library. They either get promoted to keepers after a while or they get deleted out of my library and my life. This really helps me give new music the attention it deserves and keeps me from cluttering my library with artists I dislike.
Freshen TV episodes. This was a really hard resolution to keep time-wise and effort-wise, but it was really worth it. I spent many hours recording fresh new episodes of my kids' TV shows, and getting rid of the stale ones. It made the kids a lot happier to find fresh content on the iPod, which helped distract them in any number of sitting-and-waiting or watch-while-driving situations. And since I recorded the episodes myself rather than paid for them at the store, I didn't feel as if I was throwing away important purchases. A win all 'round.
Create a playlist for disposable one-listen items. I download a lot of radio interviews and other "one-listen" items that I want to hear and then get rid of, as opposed to podcasts that I subscribe to. I set up a single folder for these on my hard drive and a corresponding playlist in iTunes. Once I've heard them, I delete them from iTunes, my iPod, and the hard drive. It's like having an e-mail in-box for iTunes and it works really well.
Prune podcast subscriptions. I looked honestly at my podcasts. Did I really listen to all of them? Sure, I had signed up for the Battlestar Galactica podcasts, and I even listened to many of them last year, but this year? Not a one. I let it go.
Backup everything. This just speaks for itself. All my new backups mirror my new folder organization. I backup all new items as I move them out of the iTunes Music folder. It a handy way to let me know what items are new, as they don't leave that folder without a backup.
