[Eurisko]

Ah, so this has nothing to do with the iPod part. Ok, makes sense now.

I used to manage things myself, but I found that when I moved things around or reformatted or stores music on a separate drive, iTunes would keep losing track of it. Better just to have it all in one place. If you want to access the file itself, all you need to do is select "Locate in Finder"

[Kaloyan]

Yeh im glad i was finally able to explain it haha. And I get what you mean but since I have all my music on one hardrive its easier for me to let iTunes keep track of it since that's all I use to listen to music anyways.

[Imahottguy]

Too many folders; I like to organize it myself. One folder for music, one for video. It's easier that way. I use MM, due to it's ID3 management, and auto playlists. The setup works well. When I first started to manage my own music, I let iTunes do it. I then found out about all of the folders, and switched to self management. :-)

[Happy Noodle Boy]

Yeah, I manage my own folder (based on albums) and keep track of the ID3 tags using Tag&Rename. But then again, before the iPhone I used Foobar2000 for music so I kept really good care of all the tags I had, then switched to iTunes rather than to have 2 media players.

[thetoothfairy]

Originally Posted by Happy Noodle Boy

Yeah, I manage my own folder (based on albums) and keep track of the ID3 tags using Tag&Rename. But then again, before the iPhone I used Foobar2000 for music so I kept really good care of all the tags I had, then switched to iTunes rather than to have 2 media players.

When you manage your own folder... do you have subdirectories within your main folder?

Also when you manage your own.. do you delete the playlists? 90's Music, Music Videos, My Top Rated,Recently Added, Recently Played and the Top 25?

When I manage my own I delete all of the playlists.. and I do have one folder with subdirectories within it...

[Happy Noodle Boy]

I sort things by albums, so I only have subdirectories if the album has more than 1 CD. Here's a diagram of how I have things organized:
[My Music]
-[Albums]
--[Album Title]
---[CD#]

My mp3s are all named "Album Title - ## - Artist - Song.mp3". Single I mostly have full albums, all my singles and unsorted songs end up in an album called "Single Songs" for the sake of organization.

As far as playlists goes, I generally don't use them. I have one playlist called iPhone which is the one that get synced to the phone.

[thetoothfairy]

Originally Posted by Happy Noodle Boy

I sort things by albums, so I only have subdirectories if the album has more than 1 CD. Here's a diagram of how I have things organized:
[My Music]
-[Albums]
--[Album Title]
---[CD#]

My mp3s are all named "Album Title - ## - Artist - Song.mp3". Single I mostly have full albums, all my singles and unsorted songs end up in an album called "Single Songs" for the sake of organization.

As far as playlists goes, I generally don't use them. I have one playlist called iPhone which is the one that get synced to the phone.

Since you don't use the playlist either do you delete them or just leave them there? I have left them there and deleted them as well.... and made new ones such as...

Easy Listening
Pop
Holiday

And then on the hard drive I made a directory called iPhone and then put subdirectories, easy listening, pop, holiday within the iPhone directory.... so all I have to do is go the my iPhone directory and everything is in there...

I delete all the playlists so when I sync my phone I just see the playlists I created... easy listening, pop, holiday

Most of my songs are singles as I hate it when you buy a music cd and there is only one or two songs on it I like....

[Imahottguy]

I deleted the playlists just about as soon as I installed iTunes. Instead, I created a bunch of auto-playlists, based on the genre of the music. I also have a 'party' playlist, that contains a few genres ('Pop', 'Dance' and 'Techno').

[Delphiki]

i do everything myself

[harryding]

usually I manage my own stuff just for the simple fact that I never purchase music from iTunes. If you do have iTunes manage your music, then try to add in stuff later how does that work?

[xwinger]

iTunes does it all for me.

[tattoojack]

i keep all my music in a music folder on my external 1 terrabyte. itunes makes tooooo many folders. i like keeping my main hard drive slim as can be.

[461am]

iTunes only sorts it as good as your tags let it. So either way, you end up doing a lot of work.