How do you keep your tunes organized

wamcocoon · Post by **wamcocoon** » Sat Aug 04, 2007 5:43 pm

See if this makes sense

I'm a music devotee, I like new tracks downloaded every day, good organization..
What's the best way to keep all the files organized?

There reaches a point where it fills your entire hard drive, but you don't feel like deleting them all, so you throw them on an external HD.
Sometimes I don't even get to listen to all of them.
Can't sync the folder properly with iTunes because it resets to the default each time the hard drive ejects, as do all Finder bookmarks (Mac)
And all the clips I have open in Live become dimmed and the file browser bookmark dies.

I do a little DJing with Live. Seeking the ultimate best way to organize files... also one to save space. (to avoid having copies of each one on each HD)

How have the rest of you worked around this problem.

Also is iTunes really the best way to organize music files ??
Hmm..

sweetjesus · Post by **sweetjesus** » Sat Aug 04, 2007 6:08 pm

just keep them in a structure that seems logical at the time.

eventually u find something which works.

im waitin for ableton to get their act together with their library and file management then migrate to a centralized storage system where i have all elements in a library and build from there.

this last few months i keep a project folder for every music project

with a presets folder for saving presets...

a renders folder

sometimes a masters folder

mesaboogiewes · Post by **mesaboogiewes** » Sat Aug 04, 2007 6:13 pm

i didn't think ableton supports mp4's such as are in iTunes...

how to you DJ in live when all ur tunes are stored in iTunes?

wamcocoon · Post by **wamcocoon** » Sat Aug 04, 2007 6:24 pm

mesaboogiewes..

I only use iTunes to play music, just mp3's and wavs, occasionally aiff. All supported by Live.
After years of deliberation, I finally just had iTunes go through all my hand tagged music folders and organize them into more folders.
You can convert straight from iTunes, so what I would do was set my notebook's spin folder as the iTunes directory, so all I would do is right click a file in iTunes and hit convert and it would send it neatly into the Spins folder. But there are problems with that. Redundant files and the loss of quality associated with multiple conversions. Not to mention how Ableton then converts all non-wavs or aiffs into them in the decoding cache, thus adding ANOTHER copy of the file.

The Live Power guide has lots of good tips, and it mentions using a large external hard drive as your "virtual record crate" or something like that. I'm into that idea, but the aforementioned problems leave me searching for a better way..

The troubles of a music geek right

mesaboogiewes · Post by **mesaboogiewes** » Sat Aug 04, 2007 6:36 pm

wamcocoon wrote:mesaboogiewes..

I only use iTunes to play music, just mp3's and wavs, occasionally aiff. All supported by Live.
After years of deliberation, I finally just had iTunes go through all my hand tagged music folders and organize them into more folders.
You can convert straight from iTunes, so what I would do was set my notebook's spin folder as the iTunes directory, so all I would do is right click a file in iTunes and hit convert and it would send it neatly into the Spins folder. But there are problems with that. Redundant files and the loss of quality associated with multiple conversions. Not to mention how Ableton then converts all non-wavs or aiffs into them in the decoding cache, thus adding ANOTHER copy of the file.

The Live Power guide has lots of good tips, and it mentions using a large external hard drive as your "virtual record crate" or something like that. I'm into that idea, but the aforementioned problems leave me searching for a better way..

The troubles of a music geek right

cool. that's what i was thinking I would have to do: export each file as i wanted to use it in live into a folder i use specifically for live. traktor utilizes iTunes, why can't Live? They most def need to make that a new feature being that so many DJ's use Live so much. Would make it a lot less hassle - especially if you already have a mac, that converts EVERYTHING to mp4 when you put it in iTunes.

RhythmSickness · Post by **RhythmSickness** » Sat Aug 04, 2007 7:26 pm

mesaboogiewes wrote: cool. that's what i was thinking I would have to do: export each file as i wanted to use it in live into a folder i use specifically for live. traktor utilizes iTunes, why can't Live? They most def need to make that a new feature being that so many DJ's use Live so much. Would make it a lot less hassle - especially if you already have a mac, that converts EVERYTHING to mp4 when you put it in iTunes.

Itunes/preferences/advanced/importing

select import using mp3 encoder, then all your itunes imports will be in the format you need them in.

wamcocoon · Post by **wamcocoon** » Sat Aug 04, 2007 7:53 pm

Yeah, forgot to mention that. Very important!

Then you can convert to specified filetype by right clicking

mercyplease · Post by **mercyplease** » Sat Aug 04, 2007 8:54 pm

by releasing them