Adopting iTunes for the uninitiated

Have you grown tired of Windows Media Player's clunkiness, MediaMonkey's interface or [insert your music software here]'s something or other? I was and decided to go and give iTunes a try. I was afraid of letting iTunes rule my collection (see my previous post on how I got there), but have been happily using it ever since I got over this.

In terms of how I went about adopting iTunes, here are the main steps I went through.

1. Read this iLounge article

This is all the research you need to do as it gives a great overview on how iTunes handles your files and where data is stored. I found it invaluable in getting my head round my personal transfer, even though it was adopting iTunes and not moving my library.

2. Back up your entire collection
Just go ahead and copy your current music folder somewhere safe. You never know, you might not like the change and rue the day you read this article. Always backup your music library so that you never have to weep into your pillow. Also, this is a good time to make sure all of your music files are in the same place as it means you won't miss importing any into iTunes when we get to that step.

3. Decide where your library is going to be (don't move any tracks yet!)
All your music is going to be in one folder, so decide where that's going to be. I chose to put everything on a portable external hard drive as I wanted to move about with it. I also chose this so as I wanted two identical collections (see my post on syncing two iTunes libraries). The important thing I learnt from the iLounge article was that wherever the library is, it need to have the same drive letter and path inside that drive (therefore, both my computers access the library in the X: drive). One other thing of note is that during the transition, you will need room for two versions of your entire collection, so you might need to use an external drive at some point if you are gigabyte-challenged. For this very reason, I would also suggest that you don't make the new library location the same as your previous one as you are eventually going to delete the old one. Having them in the same folder could get confusing.

4. Point iTunes at root folder
Open iTunes and navigate to Edit -> Preferences -> Advanced. Change the 'iTunes Music folder location' to your chosen drive and folder in step 3.

5. Set iTunes to manage your library
On the same tab, check the boxes near the top called 'Keep iTunes Music folder organized' and 'Copy files to iTunes Music folder when adding to library'.

6. Let iTunes help you sort your compilations
Whilst you're still in the Preferences window, check the box named 'Group compilations when browsing' if you have a lot of compilation and soundtrack albums as this will make navigating your library a lot easier. See this post for how to let iTunes know which tracks are part of a compilation.

7. Let iTunes move your music for you
When I say move, this is really a copy, so don't worry too much (in any case, you should have a backup from step 2 as well). This is also why I warned you in step 3 that you will need twice the space your collection takes up - don't ignore this or the process will stall on you. Navigate to File -> Add Folder to Library. Choose the root folder that has all your pre-iTunes tracks in it (the folder you backed up in step 2).

8. Leave iTunes to build your library
Press 'OK' and then leave iTunes to run. Depending on the size of your collection, this could take a while. Remember, iTunes is copying your entire collection into the new library location, creating a new folder taxonomy based on artist and renaming each track. If you have tens of tracks, check your email; if you have hundreds, make a cuppa char; if you have thousands, order a pizza and watch a movie; if you have tens or hundreds of thousands, go to bed.

9. Check it has all worked
Be a pedant and check everything. Have a browse through iTunes and have a look in the new folder to see the automated taxonomy. The best check is to compare the folder sizes of the old and new. They should be pretty much identical, unless you have given iTunes the go ahead to convert (not something I am covering here). My system has always been to convert to mp3 first (see this post on how I do this), so I never had a file format issue.

10. Delete your old folder
Providing everything was successful, you now have two versions of your music, plus a backup. Go ahead and delete the original version to free up the space, unless you want two backups.

10. Sort compilations tags
iTunes will now have organized your library the Apple way. You have to accept this from now on. Before you look at the iTunes folder and panic that there are squillions of artists, you need to do the next step of the compilation tagging process. It's a manual activity, but is well worth it in my opinion, and it doesn't take too long. I have already written a post detailing how it's done, so have a look here.

Congratulations! You're pretty much there now. You are now an iTunes user. The next steps (for me at least) were to add lyrics (see this post) and create some playlists (see this post for some ideas). I will post in the future about using the grouping tag and smart playlists, which I think are relevant here.

You may also be interested in how to deal with new music, how to perform everyday tagging on your new tracks, and making sure your tags are consistent.

Lyrics in iTunes and on your iPhone - the easy way

UPDATE 5th August 2009: it seems as though the music industry has thwarted us again for no particular reason. They have imposed a ban on the iTunes Lyrics Importer application detailed in this post. Now, when you run the plugin, you get the following returned in your lyrics tag in place of the actual lyrics:

Unfortunately, due to licensing restrictions from some of the major music publishers we can no longer return lyrics through the LyricWiki API (where this application gets some or all of its lyrics).

The lyrics for this song can be found at the following URL:
http://lyricwiki.org/xxxxxxx

(Please note: this is not the fault of the developer who created this application, but is a restriction imposed by the music publishers themselves.)

A real shame. Here is the original post, nonetheless:

I read somewhere that the iPhone can display song lyrics if they're included in your ID3 tag. I thought 'I gotta get me some of that' and went about finding out the simplest method.

One thing I had never done with my ID3 tagging was to add lyrics. I thought it would be a time consuming and manual process. I also thought the benefit was outweighed by the tedium of getting it done. Hence I never thought about it until I heard about the iPhone's function. Now I can take music with me and see lyrics whilst I'm mobile [cue images of the tippopotamus singing along to music in the middle of a mall, or not, as the case may be].

This is what it looks like on the iPhone when you tap the album art during music playback:

This process assumes you have no lyrics included at all to start off with. Once you have some lyrics, you then need to be able to find all the tracks which don't have lyrics included. This covers all that as well.

Firstly, you need to download yourself a copy of the simple, yet effective iTunes Lyrics Importer (or iLyrics as it is also known).

Here's the process for getting your library all lyric'ed up…

1. Ensure you have iTunes running

2. Fire up iTunes Lyrics Importer

3. Highlight the all the tracks you want to search for lyrics

4. Press 'Get Lyrics' on the iTunes Lyrics Importer window

I would strongly suggest ticking the box called 'Update Automatically', especially if you have a lot of files to go through - otherwise it will ask you to confirm every track. If you already have some lyrics in your library, leave 'Overwrite' unchecked. I checked it as I had none and wanted to start completely from scratch.

5. Wait while the program accesses LyricWiki and finds if your tracks have lyrics there. If they are included, the software adds them to the Lyrics area in your ID3 tag

For my 25,000 track collection, I left it going overnight and it ran perfectly. A lot of the obscure songs did not get populated, but that was a foregone conclusion. Just over 1000 tracks out of about 25,000 did not get lyrics tagged to them, which is, frankly, amazing. Especially when you realise a lot of them are instrumental tracks.

Now, if you add new music to your library, after following the new music protocol described here and correctly tagging your tracks as shown here, you can simply pick the 'Recently Added' automatic playlist in iTunes and run steps 3, 4 and 5 above.

If you want to re-check the LyricWiki database after some time has elapsed to see if you can get any more lyrics for those tracks it missed first time round, you need to create a playlist of all the tracks without lyrics. Thankfully, that is easy using this iTunes for Windows script from the 'Everything iTunes' website.

Simply download the *.js file and place it somewhere (I put it under my chosen iTunes music folder).

Double click on the file you downloaded and it creates a new playlist in itunes (i.e. it magically appears) called 'NoLyrics'.

This playlist contains every track without the lyrics section of the ID3 tag populated. Hence you can just run steps 3, 4 and 5 of the process above to run a LyricWiki database check again.

You may find that you don't need the lyrics that much, but to be honest, the process is so simple that you might as well give it a shot.