Photo courtesy of phil dokas
May 11th, 2009 – I have a decent amount of digital music. Not as much as some people, but I’m sitting around 50 gigs even though I cull the catalog quite often. Currently I use iTunes to organize and categorize my music. It’s not that I particularly like iTunes but it, in the UI anyways, has a logical way of organizing things. But as for the file management part, I’m not so sure.
One thing I don’t like about iTunes is that it’s bloated with features I don’t use. However, since I use it to organize, I’m reticent to get rid of it. I’ve tried Songbird before, but I didn’t have a great experience with it. The idea that it’s extensible (meaning, conversely, that I can keep it trimmed down and fit) is attractive to me, but its poor tagging and categorization kept me away. I’m sure it’s better now but until I find something vastly better than iTunes, I won’t be wooed away by something only slightly better.
As my library grows and my needs change (ie. adding BPM and tags to make DJing easier), I need to be able to have a powerful way to categorize my music. How, dear readers, do you categorize and organize your music?
Whew…I managed to write a whole post without mentioning Propellerhead’s Record. Oh wait, I just did. Damnit…
I’m doing the same, and well, I’m not sure I’m happy it – but as you, I’ve not seen any other viable solution.
@Sebastien Orban : I have a feeling that a lot of people use iTunes begrudgingly. Ean Golden from DJTechTools has a tutorial on how to expand the possibilities of iTunes, but I wish there were something more lightweight that had as good organization.
@Sean : the main is the weight of iTunes, and it’s close architecture. I would like to read Flac with it for example, or having more library easily – one for my library of sample, one for my mp3, one for my attempts …