Sorting music, Itunes the best way?

[deceased10]

Hey guys, so this is actually my first post, just got another s4 after selling my old one a long time ago. I never got the chance to fully learn and now that I am older (22) I'd like to get back into it. So I bought a used s4 with flight case for supper cheap 300$, and a pair of krk rokkit 5s for 250$.

Anyways before I jump into learning how to use this thing etc... I figure it would be more than helpful to first sort my music, organize it and stuff like that. So I did some googling and found some good information. It looks like everyone uses Itunes. I'm just wondering is that the best thing to use to sort music? I always hated itunes as it lagged my old pcs.

Any tips,tricks and links to more guides would be great! I appreciate all the information I can get!

[deevey]

Hey guys, so this is actually my first post, just got another s4 after selling my old one a long time ago. I never got the chance to fully learn and now that I am older (22) I'd like to get back into it. So I bought a used s4 with flight case for supper cheap 300$, and a pair of krk rokkit 5s for 250$.

Anyways before I jump into learning how to use this thing etc... I figure it would be more than helpful to first sort my music, organize it and stuff like that. So I did some googling and found some good information. It looks like everyone uses Itunes. I'm just wondering is that the best thing to use to sort music? I always hated itunes as it lagged my old pcs.

Any tips,tricks and links to more guides would be great! I appreciate all the information I can get!

Starting from scratch with existing audio files:

Tick "Keep organized"
Create a bundle of blank playlist by genre (whatever you feel is correct or makes sense)
Drag and drop your existing tracks into the playlists.
Run Keyfinder / MIK if Necessary
Use star ratings for energy levels or time of night if you think that helps.

Everyones method of organization is different, all that matters is that you can find what you need, when you need it.

[Patch]

Drag and drop is not a good way to do it.

Use Smart Playlists instead.

[Glitchwerks]

iTunes is the best "out of the box."

It doesn't require any setting up, it looks good. It's easy to use. They've really improved the performance on PC, although it will still slow down with large libraries.

Foobar2000 is a lot more powerful, but it requires learning how to use it, setting it up to display what you want (I use a theme called DarkOne v4.) Foobar without a theme looks very barebones and old.

Foobar2000 is also extremely fast and monitors your library for any changes. If you edit a track in Traktor, it will immediately update in Foobar. That's not the case with iTunes.

You could make a case for either player, but if you want to keep it simple, iTunes is probably the way to go.

[Bassline Brine]

I have used iTunes for my music management for years now - and I don't see most other options nearly equally as viable even though some are more powerful for micro-management.

The big thing is iTunes integration with Serato, Traktor, and Rekordbox. Any playlists you make get imported equally into those programs. I tend to play off Serato with time-code vinyl or Rekordbox via USB on CDJs. It keeps things simple so I can sort all of my music in one place and have access to all of my playlists easily.

Personally I use smart playlists for large groups of files (genres mainly) and then I have individual playlists per gig.

I'll download tracks. Run them through Mixed in Key, analyze in Serato, and then open up Rekordbox and let it analyze them.

Then I go into iTunes and make sure the ID3 tag is correct.

I also us other Apple equipment (airplay speakers, iPhone) and the integration with iTunes across those devices works really well too. I can toss a playlist I've been working on into my phone so I can listen to it driving to and from work. I also can stream from iTunes on my computer wirelessly to multiple speakers in the house with no audio delay.

It just works well and it's simple. I don't like things being complicated.

[ZxZDeViLZxZ]

For years I hated iTunes then I learned to love it and now making smart playlists saved me a lot of time

[ZxZDeViLZxZ]

If you use mik and such set the key to go into the comments or energy to go into comments and can really do some great smart playlists that way

[Nick V]

Same advice as above - smart playlists. If you play multiple genres, genre playlists are an obvious win. BPM playlists are great for putting together mixes with songs you wouldn't usually think of putting together. BPM + genre is great for stuff like hip-hop and soul where there is a wide range of BPM. Also if you are consistent in your comments, smart playlists by comment are helpful. I have "includes intro" and "includes banger". Some people label energy level by star rating and such. I could see using that too. And of course the "recently added" is always my goto. It gets even more interesting when you start combining the above especially if you have a very large library that has been tagged properly.

[ZxZDeViLZxZ]

100% I try once a week to split up manual playlists by genres and by "feeling" of track such as dirty bAssline tech/deep house tracks then more melodic and I will go through and combine especially when you are usuing it to show which playlists they belong to

[Ryan Ruel]

Hey guys, so this is actually my first post, just got another s4 after selling my old one a long time ago. I never got the chance to fully learn and now that I am older (22) I'd like to get back into it. So I bought a used s4 with flight case for supper cheap 300$, and a pair of krk rokkit 5s for 250$.

Anyways before I jump into learning how to use this thing etc... I figure it would be more than helpful to first sort my music, organize it and stuff like that. So I did some googling and found some good information. It looks like everyone uses Itunes. I'm just wondering is that the best thing to use to sort music? I always hated itunes as it lagged my old pcs.

Any tips,tricks and links to more guides would be great! I appreciate all the information I can get!

Are you still running with PC's? Or by chance have a Mac?

When I was working on a better way to sort my music I decided to write a little iTunes companion program to help with the sorting. It's called "Quicktag for iTunes", and is available on the Mac App store for free.

Check out the website I put together for the App. Even if you don't use the program the documentation gives some ideas for using smart playlists:

http://quicktagapp.com/

Review of the program:
http://mac.softpedia.com/get/Utiliti...QuickTag.shtml

P.S. Unfortunately this can't be ported to Windows (it uses an AppleScript interface into iTunes, which is Mac only).