Author Topic: Organising i-Tunes? (Read 3030 times)

willo · « **on:** December 13, 2006, 02:26:29 PM »

Hey, so I'm new to this i-Tunes malarkey, and its pissing me off.

I just uploaded the contents of my Windows Media Player, about 75gigs, onto i-Tunes.

Now its starting to bug me. Basically, on collaborative tracks it is listing it as a seperate artist rather than the main artist:

e.g. 'The Chronic' by Dr Dre is split between about 5 different 'artists', e.g.:

Dr Dre
Dr Dre/Snoop Dogg
Dr Dre/Snoop Dogg/Lady Of Rage
Dr Dre/Snoop Dogg/Kurupt

and so on.

I'd much rather they just came up all as 'Dr Dre' because it is a pain in the arse having the album split between so many 'artists'. This has also meant that the 'My Music' folder on my hard drive now lists hundreds more artists, mostly with only one song. And it pisses me off, it clutters things up.

So how do I change this? I changed all the artist names manually on a Gang Starr compilation and changed the song titles to include (featuring. Jeru The Damaja etc), and it took ages. When I closed i-Tunes for the night and opened it up the next day, all the names were reset to the original way i-Tunes had configured it.

Also, for some reason, it's taken about 10 albums I have and uploaded them only as 'artist' with no track names, artist names or any other info.

Any help? :wave:

gingataff · « **Reply #1 on:** December 13, 2006, 03:29:44 PM »

OK, the easy bit first.: what kind of files are the ones that say "artist"? are they WAVs by any chance? iTunes has trouble copying track info for some file types and I know WAVs are one of those types (I lost the info on 2000 of my songs bar the song title!). You really just have to retype everything (but you can use the shortcut below), it takes ages :(

For the renaming I'd try this:

Go to preference/advanced and select Keep iTunes Folder Organized.

In the little search window type "Dr Dre" or whatever album or artist you want.

Click on the song/s you want to change using shift+click or ctrl+click or use ctrl+A to select all the tracks.

Press ctrl+I to bring up the info box and you can change the artist name/album name etc in one go rather than doing it one by one. Theoretically it should also change the info on your harddisk as well.

You can then delete the playlist and it wont affect the info in your library.

FELINEGUITARS · « **Reply #2 on:** December 13, 2006, 04:02:48 PM »

If you tend to think of any Dr Dre songs as being by Dr Dre rather than "Dr Dre and guest" and would search for them that way why not change who they are listed as on your itunes.

So do a search for Dr Dre in your search window to bring up all Dre tunes
Select all (Apple A on a mac)
Get info- On a Mac do a Apple I (not sure what that is on a PC)
Change artist name to Dr Dre when the dialog box comes up

blue · « **Reply #3 on:** December 13, 2006, 04:50:40 PM »

my recommendation? delete all tracks by dr. dre. delete all tracks by his collaborators. delete all tracks by anyone with any vague connection to him. if you have any cd's with any of these artists on them, destroy them.

(only joking, don't take offence, but DO delete them!)

actually, i-tunes was installed on our computer, and after a while trying to come to terms with it i uninstalled the goddamn thing. i hate this modern software that thinks it knows better than you. microsoft office? AAAAAAGGHHH!!!

Muttley · « **Reply #4 on:** December 13, 2006, 04:59:02 PM »

I specifically don't use (and will never try again) iTunes due to the horrible mess it made of my mp3 archive when I tried it originally. Damn ugly interface too.

Muttley

headtheball · « **Reply #5 on:** December 13, 2006, 06:21:44 PM »

The artists' names aren't just in the filenames. You need to edit the ID3 tags. You should be able to get a wee utility to do this off the net handy enough.

gingataff · « **Reply #6 on:** December 13, 2006, 11:58:29 PM »

Slight edit to my original reply, DON'T make the new playlist, just follow the rest of the steps. I think the beer I bought from IKEA addled my brain :)

carlaz · « **Reply #7 on:** December 15, 2006, 02:18:51 PM »

If I have a significant number of tracks that could all be "Artist 1 & Artist 2" or whatever, then enter the Artist info like that (i.e. "Artist 1 & Artist 2"). Otherwise, if it's just a bit of guesting or jamming along with, I keep it as "Artist 1" in the Artist field, and stick some info about any other artists in the Comments field. Comments are searchable for Smart Playlists, so it all works out with a bit of fiddling.

What really gets me is the "Genre" field, since I usually want to list things under multiple genres. Something more neatly stackable or nestable would be handy there .....