Can we talk about library/playlist management? Obsessive-compulsives welcome

...because I could use some help in that department. My heart belongs to MediaMonkey, but alas, I must use iTunes to manage my apps (--or do I?).

I have disabled Genius, but I use a lot of smart playlists. I add 'tags' to the 'grouping' parameter in the MP3 tags, delimited by commas, and then sort that way.

So the 'Lounge' playlist would include everything with the genre 'Bossa Nova', plus any other MP3 tagged 'Lounge'.

'Disco & Funk' includes everything in the 'disco' and 'funk' genres, plus songs in the 'Hip Hop' genre before 1982 (which have a disco/funk beat), and then anything tagged 'disco' (which can be 70s library music, or it can be an ELO record).

I have about 6,000 songs in my library. I struggle to categorize them in a useful way. There are some artists who made two distinct styles (Frank Zappa, New Order) and if you're in the mood for one style, you probably won't be in the mood for the other.

If the categorization is too granular, you end up with a ton of genres or playlists with only a few songs in them.

And, because music represents a spectrum of different styles, it can be hard to fit everything succinctly. For example, I have a 'dark wave' playlist that includes artists like Chris and Cosey, Fad Gadget, and similar artists, but a lot of songs are excluded, simply because they're in a major key (like C&C's 'October Love Song') and then I don't know where to put them.

Even with all this meticulous categorization, I realize my iPod isn't equipped to handle one of its most useful functions: putting some music on. For this reason, I've been trying to make playlist that serve the purpose of playing for a group of people. So I'll have a bunch of Hip Hop tagged 'clean', which means it doesn't have any homophobic or misogynistic content, so I don't have to worry about playing it in mixed company. Or, I'll have a 'relevant bands' list that only goes back a few years. In general, the point here is to cut out 'guilty pleasures' and only play stuff everyone will like, or not object to.

Anyway, I thought it would be interesting to know how you manage your music, for personal listening and for playing publicly.

I made a long, long shuffle playlist that I put on any time I just want to listen to "stuff". It's like 2000 songs long. Then a subset of those that I can play around mixed company. Like 1000 of them. Also I have a playlist of my favorite 100 They Might be Giants songs which I use a lot.

This is why I generally stick to CDs. MP3 taxonomy is way too much like high-functioning autism.

ideally mp3 tags would be more flexible, such that you could label a track's genre as 'rock' and 'shoegaze' and 'nedraggett' all at once. also perhaps room for stuff like 'quartets' or 'anglo-irish-american' or 'blurry cover photos'. more like web tags, in other words, where things can be in multiple groups.

i guess you could put all this in the comment field? but it would be awkward and difficult.

of course that would lead to even further tagging madness than is already demanded by ocd-ness, so just as well

I don't even bother with genre tags. I just make loose playlists for anything that seems to fit under a particular banner.

Mookieproof, adding tags in the Grouping section account
Accomplishes the task you're outlining.

Another tag I use a lot is Instrumental. I have tried to tag all the instrumental tracks because there are a lot of social situations where lyrics get in the way.

Like orgies.

i have something like 20,000 songs in itunes, way too many to reasonably manage no matter what i do. i don't use the genre field or tags of any sort. they're grouped only by artist and album. i make and delete playlists as i need them, usually artist-in-toto, some kind of "greatest hits" reduction, or recent stuff i'm trying to get a handle on. i do keep and regularly update a few large playlists of stuff i think other people might enjoy.

i am kind of geeky about file naming and id tagging conventions. i love going through new stuff to get it in order.

I am definitely bordering OCD in my search for the ultimate smart playlist, adding ever more criteria so that it would play exactly what I would like to hear.

I like organizing files, but I do that a lot at my day job so to me it doesn't feel anal retentive. I'm really sensitive about terminology, I can't stand opening up itunes and seeing the broad categories of "rock" or "pop". Also "hiphop / rap" drives me NUTS.

No, coming home from work and organising files some more doesn't seem anally retentive at all.

I don't bother with genre tags, I wouldn't even know where to start and besides listening to a lot of stuff from one genre on in one go isn't something I do very often. The playlists I do make tend to be themed by a single artist, producer or record label plus I've got an ongoing project of compiling some for my favourite singles from each year (these tend to be very long though).