Guest Author: Matt McInerney

Hello, my name is Matt McInerney and I have a confession to make: I have more music than I know what to do with in my iTunes Library. My glass is not half full. It is completely full and spilling over the rim. Yes, I’m approaching 10,000 songs… Here’s the thing though: I’d have it no other way! I don’t think I could deal if one of my albums were missing. Even if one song were misplaced, I have to admit I’d be upset. So where am I going with this? I’ll tell you: with a song count in the thousands, how am I ever suppose to decided what to listen to? One’s first instinct may be to create playlists. Sure that will work for the a little bit, but that also is going to have some major flaws. First, in selecting certain songs, there are far too many being overlooked. Second, who has the time to make enough playlists to support every mood and time of day? With this in mind, I’d like to cover the all the bases of iTunes organization and potential. Let’s figure this one out.

Random
Alright, there’s a thoughts. Start from the top of your library, turn on shuffle, and just hit go. It may work for a little bit, but for anyone with differing tastes or a library populated not only with music but audiobooks and podcasts as well, you’ll find yourself spending more time skipping to next track than is worth. And if you’re trying to get work done with music in the background, you’ll never get anything done!

Party Shuffle
Okay,maybe iTunes can deal with your problem. They’ve got Party Shuffle right? Then you can bring ratings into the equation, and select your source. This used to be sufficient as my song count first peaked a thousand, but as the number rose, so did the time spent skipping to the next song.

Smart Playlists
For the longest time, Smart Playlists were my savior. I have to say, for the most part, they still are. If you’re unfamiliar, Smart Playlist will let you set rules about your library to create live updating playlists. So let’s say you want to have one playlist with your most recently played songs, one with your top rated songs, and one with your recent addition to the library. A smart playlist can handle each of these needs in just a few clicks, and will always stay up to date. Not to mention that you could make playlist that would take a random sampling of those three playlists, and shuffle through them. So far, I think this is the way to go when it comes to finding what you want to listen to.

Beats per Minute?
Potion Factory not too long ago came out with an application called Tangerine. The idea behind Tangerine was that it would go through you library, and sort it by beats per minutes, so that you could separate out your slow-tempo mellow songs from your upbeat fast paced ones. The problem is that it just doesn’t work too well. You’ll quickly realize that the BPMs do not really define mood too well. If only there were a way to tag by mood…

Mood Tagging
Oh wait, there is! This is a recent discovery of mine, called Moody. Moody gives one a colorful square scale. The vertical ranges from Calm to Intense, while the horizontal ranges from Sad to Happy. Think of those political tests you took in high school to determine whether you were a communist, a fascist, a libertarian, or a moderate… Similar scale, just for mood. I have to say, after some time spent with it, i love this idea. It will take some time spent tagging my songs, but the beautify is, once they’re tagged, the ease of generating playlists is amazing. While there are times that I hesitate to find a spot on the scale for a song, retagging at a later date is simple enough.

Conclusion
As it stands right now, I love the thought of tagging songs by mood. It’s what I’ve spent a long time trying to do with Smart Playlists. However, at the end of the day, I don’t think I’ll ever stray too far from Smart Playlists. A good mix up of recently played, new, and top rated songs is pretty hard to beat.