I think one of the biggest problems with iTunes organization is the Album tags and some of the Artists tags. Take a look at your current Unknown Album and Various Artist folders from the Finder.

Maybe complete those fields as you go - may make it easier for what you mentioned above,

I have been thinking of doing a library trim and reconstruct playlists AND use some type of code system for parts to use Auto updating of smart playlists etc,,,

My digital library is about 10 years old now - too late to cut down the tree and start over from scratch - just have to trim and prop up dying branches - lol

-tracking.

This is a winter goal of mine.

I’d love to see what you are thinking as far as organing within iTunes. Everyone is so different just wondering if others have approaches that I haven’t even considered.

Very roughly I’m thinking some thing like

MAJOR CATEGORY (weddings, underground, mainstream club, samples, Latin...)

Then sub groupings for each category:
- under each major section would be a folder “to be organized” so I can add stuff quickly but find it.
- Breakout genre, parties with a certain sound, past playlists, decades, vibe...

The real point of this is to make exploring my collection easier.

Question.

You come across File X which happens to be 192. You purchase a new copy of said track at 32 and audibly there is zero difference and even signs that said track is of identical source. What do you do? With low bandwith (56k dial up etc.) connections of the past the standard was not 320 so a lot of the source material was never 320 to begin with especially older house and hip hop. How do you go approach this?

Reason I ask my library is 90% 320 or higher but the last 10% is comprised of lower bitrate but high quality audio which was encoded rather well. While I have never cared too much of the opinions of the peanut gallery the thought are obviously high bit rate or bust. I have even seen people consider re-encoding their 320 files to FLAC or WAV thinking it would actually improve the file LMAO.

This is something I have also tried to do with my audio collection. My initial collection was done in iTunes years ago so I had plenty folders and subfolders by artists etc I was using using iTunes for organising things

When I got into digital djing I stopped using iTunes for library management and just dropped tunes into one of 10 major folders based on broad genre classification.

It's the old files organised by iTunes that I need to redo at some point ie sort them into the 10 major folders I described. Not an easy task as I have albums etc.

My video collection is much better...10 major genre folders and all the MP4 are in them. No subfolders or stuff.

In terms of lower bitrate files , I'm only concerned much about my regular tracks and new additions. I still have 128kbps rips from years ago, but they rarely get played if ever at all.

I've also mulled over doing over my djing collection in iTunes (without the manage music files option) so my collection can be cross platform (for engine, Rekordbox, Serato etc)

Thinking of doing the same thing, like really re doing everything i have one to manyHDD with music everywhere been looking for a post like this for a while now, what would you guys think is the best way of merging and organizing multi HDD most of them are copies of previous just with more music add...etc. any help is appreciated

My own start point will be to try and weed out my non dj music. Maybe just stash them in a separate hard drive.

Its all dj music, thats what the HDD is for only music, were talking over 10 years of stuff, albums, discographies, singles, vinyl conversions, imports, promos with a mix of genres

You need to separate your overall music library from your GIG library.

Regarding tracks encoded at low bit rates. ....have you considered "laundering" them to 256kbps AAC's using iTunes Match?

Basically.... subscribe to itunes match / upload all your low quality rips / let iTunes do its thing & match the ones it has on the iTunes servers / download higher quality AAC versions of the ones it matches.

iTunes match is a totally separate thing to Apple music. Make sure you subscribe to the right one!

I’ll be honest I personally won’t use iTunes for anything but items I absolutely HAVE to such as serato remote handshake and tracks not available elsewhere (exculsives) etc.

I used iTunes Match for two years, and they have kinda let it languish now that Apple Music is the flagship product now.

The whole "have iTunes Match ID your old 128Kbit mp3s and then download the 256Kbit AAC from the cloud" thing was tricky. Some of the oddball tracks I had came back down at 256 but the spectrum analyzer I have showed it was the same encoding. So if it's something they HAVE in their catalog it's great, if not you're going to get your same file back.

I'd rather have better control over the quality and just repurchase it lossless elsewhere (Apple has yet to have any permanent exclusives for stuff I wanted).

I don't really use iTunes for anything had a bad experience, almost lost my whole library plus I heard iTunes and serato don't really mix well

It used to work pretty tight, but people complain about changes that Apple makes every other version it seems. Playlists break and the it takes a while for SDJ to get around to figuring out what they did.

I've only used iTunes for tagging, before it got too bloated. Now I just use SDJ for that.

Ya feel the same way iTunes was great for tagging and organizing but without the proper integration of software it kind of makes it useless

I just recreated and purged my entire library pretty much from scratch!

I officially hopped on Serato in 2007 however I began using mp3 and stuff way before that.
My first digital DJ system was a 1U custom computer running Alcatech BPM Studio with the controller ( we are talking the days before final scratch and when PCDJ was in it's infancy)

SO what made me finally decide to start over - I just wanted to clean things up - ALOT.

yes, I use iTunes for library organization, just makes it easier not to worry where files are stored. Even with their file hierarchy - tracks are still about 100-120 characters deep - far enough from the 265 limit of most DJ software.

What I did to start again.

1. purchased several new HD's ( I have my main HD and backup HD as well )
we will call the drives as follows
Original music drive - HD-A
Temp music Drive and future backup HD-B
New music library HD-C

- I deleted ALL my itunes playlists in HD-A
- I'm with idj pool - so I downloaded their back catalogue from 1950-1999
- for 2000-2010 I had a good MP3 collection but I went through IDJ folders and got the album versions, remixes and stuff selectively.
- 2010 - 2018 - I'm well stocked for MP3 !

My original library contained the entire ERG knockout hits ( these I did at 256k - I wish I did at 320k but whatever )
If you don't know what the knockout hits are - it was a DJ compilation of 200 CD's ( basically promo only hits ) this set has tons of tracks I use regularly.
I also had about 2000 purchased itunes and lots of other good stuff at 320.

for HD-A I made smart playlists
- knockout hits ( these are all labeled with year and genre)
- 320k tracks ( however not all were tagged well)
- I weeded out about 1000 purchased tracks.
- I also selected all my tracks I was moving over and added 'original' to grouping label

then the transfer begins

HD-C I made a NEW itunes library - it had NOTHING

I added the IDJ pool stuff, it was already organized into year and folders from IDJpool.

the folders by year were basic , Rock - Pop / Dance / Urban / Country
this made tagging genres a breeze - and I kept my genres simple -
50's - all labeled oldies
60's - labeled Rock and Roll / Slow ( for those old slow james )
70's - Rock / Country / Dance
80's - Rock-Pop / Alternative / Dance / House .......
90's - Rock-pop- / Old Skool / .......
As the decades went on I added the required genres but kept it simple - I know that any 70's dance is disco , 90's old skool can be hip hop, r&B but it's easier to keep it simple.

for 2000's+ any rap / hip hop / r&b will just be tagged urban
top 40, rock , pop commercial dance will just be "Rock-Pop"

after I had all those labeled I began the transfer of HD-A
I copied the smart playlists to a folder ( named the same ) on HD-B
then opened new Itunes and copied the folders from HD-B to matching playlists

Library now has about 15000 MP3 all 256k, 256AAc, 320k ( oh ya , I also have over 7000 videos that I'm not moving over as I'm no longer video DJing )

I turned off icloud downloads and show icloud tracks
then did a search for duplicates.

since I downloaded lots from IDJ - I had lots - but my NEW files were tagged correctly and my original not so much, so when I viewed show dupes, it was easy, I just highlighted the duplicate file that had the 'original' grouping tag. after highlighting a bunch I would change the album name to DELETE.

it took a little over 1 hour to go through - I then searched for DELETE and removed

I currently have 14669 tracks - almost all my duplicates are GONE! there's a few stragglers and as I find them I'll get rid of them.

My files are labeled much better now! It was a big project , but not as bad as I though it would be.

getting the tracks labeled by year ( and in folders by year ) makes it much easier to add the genre labels. But I found keeping the genres simple made it easier.
As the decades went on I added the genres needed.

I did find some tracks that didn't make it to the new library ( a bunch of my older reggae ) so I just went shopping on Itunes and got the tracks I know I'm gonna use .

If I missed any tracks - not a big deal, 99% of gigs I have internet( or can tether my phone ) and if it's a request I want - I'll just download it. at least I'll know it's high quality.

Any new additions ( I've already added about 30 tracks this week ) go into a folder of new adds and I make sure I have them 100% tagged


Cheers

I use match on the steady to launder my tracks.

Obviously it has some limitations e.g. if the length of your copy is very different from the iTunes version it might not match and your own version will end up being uploaded.

I create a playlist in iTunes...called tracks to match.

I drag the tracks into that playlist and check them after a bit. I try to help the matching process by tagging the tracks properly basically copying over how it's tagged in iTunes store prior

In the columns you can enable
ICloud status
Media type

If it matches it will tell you matched AAC file

I delete the ones that are uploaded ie not matched.

The ones that match, click the three dots, remove download, then download using the cloud icon voila...you have a 256AAC file

Wow Lofty - some good tips in there.

The main thing I NEED TO REMEMBER in my clean up and purge is to try and CORRECTLY TAG YEAR...

As I get older seems that more and more specialty gigs I get (Class Reunions, Adult Birthday Parties. even Weddings) seem to be based on "old school periods".

A lot of my videos are tagged correctly by year but a lot of my audio is missing.

Wow amazing how long did the whole process take. After thinking about it I’m going to kind of go the route you did buy a few ext HD and just start copying stuff over one by one or folder to weed out the dupes and the in necessary stuff using genre folder and year as sub folders

took less time than I thought.
probably 20 hours so far. ( most of it just waiting for stuff to download or transfer or tags to update )

The big thing that got me started was getting a few HD's and just deleting all my playlists from itunes and rekordbox

- yes I switched to rekordbox - I was using serato w/ ME for video - but I haven't done a video gig since last summer and ended up using Rekordbox w/ video - worked quite well.

If RB video ever gets sidefill... I am back on it. I play too many older 4:3 videos in sets that just leave too much black space otherwise.