Help me organize my iTunes library!

cosmic osmo — Sun, 15 Jun 2008 13:53:40 -0800

What's the best way to organize and re-tag my enormous MP3 library? (iTunes, Mac 10.5, 20k+ songs) My goals for this project are to have every song in my library properly tagged (artist, album, year, track #, etc.) in a consistent format, with artwork where applicable. I'd also like to be able to distinguish sub-genres of music (i.e., neo-soul vs. new jack swing, or west coast g-funk vs. backpacker rap, or arena rock vs. shoegazer, or...), while still being able to browse by genre at large (r&b, hip hop, rock).

I've tried to do this manually using the allmusic database and infinite amounts of patience, but I have more than 20,000 songs and it's getting impractical. I have no idea what software I should use for a library this size--in the past I've used MPFreaker, but I doubt that's the best option any more.

So my questions:

1. What are some good software options to help me? I'm more than willing to pay a shareware fee to support the developers if it's a good program (again, I'm on Leopard, and I'm not willing to give up iTunes). For the most part the songs I have are already tagged, just not consistently. The songs are also a fair mix of MP3/AAC.

2. How have you tackled the subgenre issue in iTunes? Right now I have in the genre column "Main Genre: Subgenre," but I'm willing to hear other suggestions (I have no classical music to speak of, so the "category" and "grouping" info fields are up for grabs).

3. Practical suggestions about how to go about this? In the past when I've tried to organize my library, I've made one big playlist called "FIX," put the whole library in, and removed songs/albums when I was satisfied with their tags. Is there a better way?

Thanks!

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Help me organize my iTunes library!