Organizing iTunes Library?

[Schupo]

I'm not sure if this is where this should go, but it seemed to be the most appropriate forum - if this is the wrong place, please move it.

I've got an enormous iTunes library, and a lot of the stuff is mislabeled. Album titles missing, duplicate artists, artwork missing, track numbers before song titles, etc. I've seen a few programs out there which will automatically fix things like this, but I'm not sure which are good and which aren't. I'm running OS X 10.5, if that makes a difference.

And no, before anyone says anything, I won't switch media players. Using my iPod as a remote to control the playlist is a must have, and the integration between iTunes and the rest of my computer is too seamless to give up.

 

[Adam]

Have you tried the options within iTunes? There is an option on the main "Advanced" menu for "Get Album Artwork." There is also an option under "Edit - Preferences - Advanced" for "Keep iTunes Music folder organized."

I don't know if those would work, but they might be worth a try.

 

[Hi Ho]

I recently completed a similar task. My library was mostly WAV files which do not have tags and those that did have tags were incomplete. I despise Itunes. Maybe it's a Windows thing but I only use Itunes when I have to (to update my Ipod). Otherwise it's Windows Media Player which serves my Xbox as a media center and plays music throughout the house.

I used MediaMonkey to convert all of the WAV files to WMA Lossless and then tag and get album art for every song in my library. I then converted all of my compressed files from various formats (WMA, AAC) to MP3 and made an MP3 version of my uncompressed library for portable devices. MediaMonkey also renamed all of the files in the format of my choosing (track, title, artist) and put them in folders by artist and album.

So now I have two libraries; one uncompressed from my ripped CDs, and one 320k MP3 for my phone and Ipod. Hard drive space is cheap these days.

The problem with MediaMonkey in your case is that it is Windows only. I have heard of programs on the Mac that will do the same thing but I don't know the names off the top of my head.