#1 · Sep 26, 2009 02:24 UTC
Just for the geeks out there... Here's how I've set up my collection of music using iTunes.
I have over 14,500 songs (all having at least 192KB resolution) with many of them being an entire CD mixed as one song and many others that are complete live sets (one "song" is over 4.5 hours long!). This comes out to over 85 days worth of music that takes up over 165GB of space. I have about 1,000 songs that are over 15 minutes long and about 500 over an hour.
Since genres are very subjective, I separated all of my music into genres that made sense to me then divided each of those into groupings (two letters for the genre plus a number for each subdivision). Some of the genres only exist to hold a relatively small amount of tracks (like the 40+ songs I have that I consider "Country" ;) ). Many of these extra genres exist because someone gave me some weird CD that I kept anyway. ::)
I then put the genres themselves into four larger groups like this:
"Extra" genres that you'd only play by themselves:
BS - Books and Spoken
CO - Country
HO - Holiday
SO - Soundtrack
TE - Techno
TR - Trance (actually about half of my collection)
UC - Unclassifiable
One large group that I've set up about 250 playlists for to combine everyway possible:
AL - Alternative
BL - Blues
CR - Classic Rock (my second largest collection of songs)
IN - Industrial
ME - Metal
NW - New Wave
PR - Progressive
SR - Soft Rock (also included below)
Another large group with about 60 playlists combinations:
AM - Ambient
BM - Brain/Mind (These are classical/new age-ish and some have subliminals, etc.)
CL - Classical
JA - Jazz
NA - New Age
SR - Soft Rock (the only genre that's repeated)
One final tiny group with, obviously, only one playlist:
DA - Dance
UN - Underground
How I use these depends on my mood or who's over. Usually, I/we simply pick the playlist that combines the genres we'd like to hear music from and the songs are randomly played. The entire approach evolved over time, but wouldn't be possible without iTunes. They've even added Groupings to their view browser at the top (these are the user-created subdivisions). For each iPod I simply copy the music from each genre I want and then copy the appropriate (and already created) playlists. Oh yeah, I can also send the tunes wirelessly anywhere I've hooked up an Airport Express unit (I have one), but right now I no longer have a stereo to do that with! Instead I have powered speakers in four rooms each with its own iPod (when I get a new car, it will HAVE to have an .mp3 player connection).
You guys can do what you want, but this really works for me! :)
I have over 14,500 songs (all having at least 192KB resolution) with many of them being an entire CD mixed as one song and many others that are complete live sets (one "song" is over 4.5 hours long!). This comes out to over 85 days worth of music that takes up over 165GB of space. I have about 1,000 songs that are over 15 minutes long and about 500 over an hour.
Since genres are very subjective, I separated all of my music into genres that made sense to me then divided each of those into groupings (two letters for the genre plus a number for each subdivision). Some of the genres only exist to hold a relatively small amount of tracks (like the 40+ songs I have that I consider "Country" ;) ). Many of these extra genres exist because someone gave me some weird CD that I kept anyway. ::)
I then put the genres themselves into four larger groups like this:
"Extra" genres that you'd only play by themselves:
BS - Books and Spoken
CO - Country
HO - Holiday
SO - Soundtrack
TE - Techno
TR - Trance (actually about half of my collection)
UC - Unclassifiable
One large group that I've set up about 250 playlists for to combine everyway possible:
AL - Alternative
BL - Blues
CR - Classic Rock (my second largest collection of songs)
IN - Industrial
ME - Metal
NW - New Wave
PR - Progressive
SR - Soft Rock (also included below)
Another large group with about 60 playlists combinations:
AM - Ambient
BM - Brain/Mind (These are classical/new age-ish and some have subliminals, etc.)
CL - Classical
JA - Jazz
NA - New Age
SR - Soft Rock (the only genre that's repeated)
One final tiny group with, obviously, only one playlist:
DA - Dance
UN - Underground
How I use these depends on my mood or who's over. Usually, I/we simply pick the playlist that combines the genres we'd like to hear music from and the songs are randomly played. The entire approach evolved over time, but wouldn't be possible without iTunes. They've even added Groupings to their view browser at the top (these are the user-created subdivisions). For each iPod I simply copy the music from each genre I want and then copy the appropriate (and already created) playlists. Oh yeah, I can also send the tunes wirelessly anywhere I've hooked up an Airport Express unit (I have one), but right now I no longer have a stereo to do that with! Instead I have powered speakers in four rooms each with its own iPod (when I get a new car, it will HAVE to have an .mp3 player connection).
You guys can do what you want, but this really works for me! :)