Organising iTunes Library: Mixing DJ Singles with Family Albums?

[scottrichardson]

Hi all,

I have a dilemma of sorts:

I am a DJ, and thus have over 1000 singles purchased from Beatport. OK so a few are EP's, but you get the picture. Additionally, I have a nice collection of 'other' albums spanning almost every genre imaginable.

I'm setting up our home network server which shares an iTunes library.

What's the best way to organise this library while combining both the DJ'ing singles, AND the other albums? I fear that if I just place everything into the library, I'll end up with the vast MAJORITY of album art in grid view and album lists being for trance/prog singles.

I know it seems fairly trivial - but think of it in setting:

Got a family dinner on and I want to use my Apple TV to play an album of some soft rock. I then scan around 1500 - 2000 'album's to find that one album. (I could always 'search' but that's not fun on an Apple TV remote).

Thoughts, ideas?

My other thought was to run TWO iTunes libraries on the server on separate logins, but this would be cumbersome IMHO.

Cheers in advance.

Scottie

[MaxOne]

You could use smart playlists. Tag songs in albums as "albums" and singles as "singles" in the grouping tab of a song (right click get info).

Then make sure your genre tags are all done

Then set up a smart playlist called "soft rock albums", and have it pull in genre soft rock and grouping albums.

These articles should get you started if you dont know about smart playlists http://www.djtechtools.com/2008/12/0...es-power-tips/

[scottrichardson]

You could use smart playlists. Tag songs in albums as "albums" and singles as "singles" in the grouping tab of a song (right click get info).

Then make sure your genre tags are all done

Then set up a smart playlist called "soft rock albums", and have it pull in genre soft rock and grouping albums.

Ah yes. Makes sense. I guess I just won't be browsing the album grid view of the master 'music' list as my main browsing method.

Definitely got some more tagging to do. I'm going to give this a shot. Cheers.

Scott.

[photojojo]

You can use multiple libraries in iTunes. You would have to quit itunes each time you want to open a different library, but you would be able to use the album grid view.

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1589

[scottrichardson]

You can use multiple libraries in iTunes. You would have to quit itunes each time you want to open a different library, but you would be able to use the album grid view.

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1589

Yeah that's what I currently already do - however my main reason for my original question is because I'm setting up a home server, that has no monitor attached to it. I don't want to have to screen share into it just to switch libraries etc.