My chromebook was on its last legs, so I just got a new laptop. Moving and organizing my music on the new computer has been a top priority and a huge task. Currently, I have a subscription to Apple Music, and I’ve used i-tunes to play music–music files I ripped from CDs prior to subscribing to Apple Music. While Apple Music’s library is very large and meets most of my needs, Apple Music doesn’t have all the music/musicians I like, and I have some of those on CDs. Because of this, I still utilized my laptop (and an older ipod) to listen to this music.
Here are some questions that I have and would be interested in some feedback:
- Some artists are listed in different ways. For example, on Miles Davis albums, the artist can be “Miles Davis,” “the Miles Davis Quintet,” or even something like “Miles Davis with the Gil Evans Orchestra.” A part of likes creating separate files for each of these, but that can make the file storage busier. Do you guys using these different artist names or just having one? (I’m leaning towards one myself. Generally, this is the way music stores organize their music, and it seems to work fine.)
- When you rip a CD onto a computer and play those music files on i-tunes, if you also have an Apple Music subscription, will i-tunes play your musical file or the Apple Music version? I also because I like the sound on some of the imported CDs I own, and I’d prefer to listen to those versions. (It’s possible that the Apple Music could be better, though.)
- For compilation CDs, what do you use for the artists? “Various Artists” or even “VA?” Or do you list the individual artists for each song. I don’t really care for the latter, at least when viewing the library list of songs, which is the most common screen I use.
- How do you handle labeling classical music artists? Do you go by composer or the performer? Also, normally, when organizing my music by artists, I go by their first name, not last. But I don’t think this works so well with classical composers. I’m thinking of organizing by last name of the composer (e.g., “Bach, J.S.”). Thoughts on this?
More later.
I list them by whatever it says on the album. Your approach doesn’t surprise me, as we’ve had similar discussions before.
Absolutely “Various Artists” as the artist’s name for the album. I don’t remember (since I haven’t installed iTunes on my latest computer yet), but can’t you set different artists for album and song? Various artists for the album artist, and Cyndi Lauper for the song artist?
Tough call. There are albums I like because of who the performers are, and there are some I can’t even tell you who the performers are. A Sarah Chang album lists Sarah Chang as the performer, and Sarah Chang is the reason I listen, so I’ll put that under Chang as the artist. Other albums I own, I own because of who the composer is. Seems like a case-by-case basis.
So, “The Thelonious Monk Quartert,” “The Thelonious Monk Trio,” “Thelonious Monk?” (I guess, this might not be a problem outside of jazz and maybe some other genres.) I think the big problem occurred because I had to move files from one computer to the next. Outside of something like this, it may not matter (e.g., when I actually use itunes to play music).
By the way, how do you deal with deal with “the” in the name? I hate the fact that the Brothers Cazimero is listed under “t.” (But again, this is when I’m manipulating computer files.)
You can, but if you look at your catalogue of music by songs, “various artists” won’t appear in the artist column. (Or I’m pretty sure it won’t.)
With regard to organizing classical music, there doesn’t seem to be a real good answer.
iTunes looks at an initial The and ignores it. If the artist is The Monkees, you find them under M. Right?
Your Thelonious situation is probably much more a problem with jazz, but The 77s have released albums as The Seventy Sevens, and when I was young I thought the band name was The Seventy Sevens and The 77s was just a stylized alternate. It seems to be the other way around, or maybe it was one way before and it’s the other now. Matchbox 20 released one album as Matchbox Twenty. T Bone Burnett dropped the hyphen in his name a few decades ago, but his earliest stuff is T-Bone. Sandi Patti changed the spelling of her name to Sandy Patty. There are lots of non-jazz examples that drive me insane.
I still favor listing the artist by what it says on the album. I’ll correct spelling in song titles if it’s become obvious since the time of the album’s release that they meant the title to be something they just misspelled. Like “Breath Deep” by the Lost Dogs. The song lyrics are clearly “Breathe deep the breath of God,” but the tracklisting has it misspelled. I hate careless work like that.
I need to check, but my music files on my computer did not ignore the “the.”
Oh, this would be annoying. I think on itunes “The 77s” would be way at the top above the “a” section.
On side note, I’m completely shocked by the lack of information for albums and songs–especially, the personnel on the recording. The number of people who care about this must be incredibly small. That’s the only way I can explain why they don’t include this information. Seriously, I regularly spend time looking up the personnel on a recording. When it’s on wikipedia, it’s not that bad, but the info is not always on there. It’s kinda ridiculous that I have to go to wikipedia in the first place. (I don’t know why itunes doesn’t let people add that information. I would do it–indeed, I have put this in itunes.)