# How obsessive are you about your iTunes (or equivalent) library? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [September 2, 2004, 11:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-obsessive-are-you-about-your-itunes-or-equivalent-library/262864 "2004-09-02T23:43:47Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![DougC](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/7feea3/32.png) [@DougC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DougC)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2004, 5:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-obsessive-are-you-about-your-itunes-or-equivalent-library/262864/21 "2004-09-04T17:09:10Z")
- - - I will say this however: I don’t have a home stereo now and don’t want one. The last one was a little bookshelf stereo that died some years back, but even then I rarely used it. I would buy a portable unit if I suddenly needed one, but I will probably never buy another home-stereo unit again. ~ ---
**Author:** ![bouv](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/bc8723/32.png) [@bouv](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bouv)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2004, 5:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-obsessive-are-you-about-your-itunes-or-equivalent-library/262864/22 "2004-09-04T17:54:43Z")
Well, i don’t use iTunes, or any other music orginizing software. I play my music with Winamp 2.91. Winamp 3 was a piece of crap (no jump to file feature? What the Hell were they thinking?!) and I have had no desire to upgrade to 4.0 or 5.0 or whatever they’re up to now, cause I don’t have a lot of songs and don’t need a huge orginizational structure. I have less than 2 GB worth of music, and it’s in a folder called ‘Music.’ Within that folder, are folders for genres, I have classic rock, alternative, 80’s, humor, etc…And within each of those is a folder for the artist, and in the artist’s folder are the songs, not in any way orginized by year or album. If I have only one song by an artist, it doesn’t get it’s own folder, the file is just loose in the genre folder. I don’t have a single complete album by any artist, cause I’m not a huge music buff. I really know mostly the radio hits from artists. As for the MP3’s themselves, if I rip a new one or otherwise obtain it, I always make it’s filename C:\Music\Genre\Artist\Artist - Songname.mp3 There has to be a space before and after the dash, it’s one of the few things I’m anal about with my music. I also edit the ID tag, since a lot are labeled improperly. I usually only have the artist and song name filled in, the rest deleted. Of course, when ripping .i my software usses the CDDB database and fills in a bunch of stuff for me, since, 99% of the time it’s correct, I’ll leave it. Oh, and to change the tags of existing songs, I would just scroll to the file in Winamp and hit ALT+3. If I get behind in updating songs, I then have to go through a LOT of songs this way and it’s very tedious, so I’m better at doing it when I first get a song. My old way of orginization would make some people cry. I had a folder called ‘music.’ Every song was in there with no structure, wrong filenames, and wrong ID tags, and I didn’t care. ---
**Author:** ![Unintentionally\_Blank](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/unintentionally_blank/32/5418_2.png) [@Unintentionally\_Blank](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Unintentionally_Blank)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2004, 6:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-obsessive-are-you-about-your-itunes-or-equivalent-library/262864/23 "2004-09-04T18:58:12Z")
Since jumping over to Itunes and a 10Gb Ipod, I’ve amassed a good 90 to 100 Gb of music. (Me and the officemates perform ‘offsite data redundancy’ for purely backup purposes. 😃 ) Of that music, perhaps 40 gb of it is on my harddisk at any point in time, the rest have been backed up to DVD+R as it’s Cra^h^h^h^h stuff I don’t particularly care for. A lifesaver has been [www.allofmp3.com](http://www.allofmp3.com), sure hope it stays around (based on its quasi-legality) as they have a TON of cheap, high-quality, well tagged music. ---
**Author:** ![cheddarsnax](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a587f6/32.png) [@cheddarsnax](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cheddarsnax)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2004, 7:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-obsessive-are-you-about-your-itunes-or-equivalent-library/262864/24 "2004-09-04T19:37:58Z")
All of my MP3s (I only have MP3s; almost all are from eMusic or ripped from my CDs, maybe 90%; the rest are old Kazaa downloads and I’m trying to buy the CDs) are organized into folders by artist and then album, with filenames in the Artist - Track Title format. Each file is tagged with artist, track title, artist name, and track number. That’s all the information I need. I use WinAmp 5 to listen to my songs. I don’t like the ‘Media Library’, so I just dump everything into one huge playlist and use the file jump feature to move around. FWIW, I have 6659 tracks from 285 artists. My music takes up 33GB, more than half of my hard drive. Tracks ripped from my CDs are 192kbps MP3s; eMusic tracks are high-quality VBR MP3s. I own 143 store-bought CDs; the rest of my songs are from eMusic. Right now, my portable player (Rio Karma) has 3750 tracks loaded on it, with room for maybe 70 more. ---
**Author:** ![Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e19adc/32.png) [@Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Barbarian)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2004, 2:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-obsessive-are-you-about-your-itunes-or-equivalent-library/262864/25 "2004-09-05T14:35:48Z")
All my physical media is organized alphabetically by artist and year. Everything on my hard drive is obsessively categorized pretty much like Podkayne’s. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-obsessive-are-you-about-your-itunes-or-equivalent-library/262864.md?page=1)