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.