I will gladly admit that I am fairly anal when it comes to my music. I like it to be organized and complete. I switched machines a few times over the years and lost my entire library at least once. After that it was so disorganized I stopped tending to it out of frustration. Upon buying an iPod Touch a few months ago I decided it was time to trim and reorganize my library then restore 100% cover art status. It took some time but now that my Library is complete it looks and feels great.
If you are looking to organize and clean up your Library check out some of these great tools.
GimmieSomeTune
GimmieSomeTune will automagically fetch missing artwork and lyrics while you listen. It’s nice and unobtrusive with lots of preferences. GimmieSomeTune includes a slew of other features including hotkeys, last.fm scrobbling and a mini controller.
I Love Stars
Rating your library looks and feels good (it’s also useful). I Love Stars is a freebie from Potion Factory that shows a song’s star rating in your menu bar. You can rate directly in the menu bar or just use it as a visual reminder. I forget to rate songs without I Love Stars hanging out in my menu bar and the funky little in and out animation is fun.
Doug’s AppleScripts for iTunes
When it comes to organizing your Library using the script menu can yield some powerful results. Doug’s site is a great place to find AppleScripts for very specific tasks. My favourites are:
Tracks Without Artwork to Playlist
This one saved my life when trying to achieve 100% cover art status. It scours your Library and puts all tracks without coverart into one playlist which you can work through at your leisure.
Gather Up the One-Hits
If you have a single song by a single artist it is rounded up into a playlist.
Set Video Kind of Selected
Organizing video content can be a test in patience. Run this little script to quickly edit the video kind (Movie, TV Show or Music Video) and set the show name, season number and episode number for TV shows. Must have for handbrake users.
Quick Tag
Some people love to organize by tagging. Though it is somewhat non-standard you can wield smart playlists and advanced searches like a meta-ninja master. Quick Tag offers a simple interface with hotkey integration, autocomplete, multiple track tagging and more.
View Duplicates
No special tool needed here just up to the menu bar and click iTunes » view » show duplicates. I was amazed at the number of dupes I had floating around wasting space on my HD and screwing with my iPod syncing. Nothing is more satisfying than freeing up space!
Tah Dah
Well, these are some of the tools I have found helpful at one time or another. Once you get your Library back into shape you might want to show it off a little with the iTunes screensaver or CoverSutra.
Anyone else know of some other handy tools or techniques to make iTunes managing life easier? Let me know in the comments, I’d love to hear what you’re using
