How the hell do you organize your classical music in your iTunes?

It's less that I don't care and more that I'm too lazy

so you just keep whatever titles it gives you?

half of my mahler/bertini box was in japanese **

Man up and buy some regular records.

I put mine under the conductor all the time. And the composer under the composer. Of course, I don't really have any recordings that are (I don't think) famous for the players. Like, I have Bernstein's Mahler stuff. I couldn't tell you who is playing though.

yea, but if you have multiple recordings of the same work, then you have note the player.

i do have regular records! i'm burning my fall peel sessions right now. no probz.

gear will save me

I just abandon performer names (life's too short/money's too tight for lots of recordings of the same piece) and stick composer name in the artist slot. Until iTunes comes up with a half decent customisable interface, that'll have to do.

Poortheatre, you have multiple recordings of the same piece by the same conductor with just different players?

Holy shit.

... actually, no.

but i might sometime!

wait, i have some strauss orchestral music under karajan with different folks. but no soloists..

RECYCLE BIN

you're never going to reach audiophile-levels of anal retention with itunes.

is there a superior alternative?

i used winamp for years. i'm thinking of getting an iPod, though, so I decided to go for iTunes on my new computer. i didn't know it was all stored in m4a. hmm..

vinyl, sucka.

I usually just put it under the composer's name unless it's an album of the same player(s) performing works by various composers, or an album I bought specifically because of the player(s).

i'm thinking of getting an iPod, though, so I decided to go for iTunes on my new computer. i didn't know it was all stored in m4a. hmm..

iTunes can rip in mp3, too. Edit->Preferences->Advanced tab->Importing subtab. You can do AAC/m4a format, AIFF (ha), MP3, uncompressed WAV, and Apple Lossless (the latter two only if you have a hugantic hard drive and WILL NOT TOLERATE COMPRESSION DAMMIT).

is there any reason not to keep m4a? space-wise, i mean..

Not if space is your primary concern- m4a is a slightly more efficient compression scheme than mp3 at the same bitrate. I rip to mp3 just to have stuff in a more widely used format- I use an ipod myself, but this way I can trade music with friends who use different portable players.

This shit drives me crazy. I put the composer's name in the artist field, overall works in the album field, movements etc. in the song field. Then I curse my sorry fate.

It's definitely a pain. Hopefully iTunes will put out software for the iPod that organizes classical music differently. Musicmatch already has complex tag fields for classical.