October 25: iTunes Dribble

I don't know why, but iTunes isn't very consistent. The idea is that a consumer can load his or her music to the computer and iTunes will organize it automatically. It will label each track with the appropriate title, artist, album, genre, and album artwork. Unfortunately, there are quite a few inconsistencies with this feature. Because of it, my parents have assigned the project of correctly organizing their music to me.

When my plane touched down in San Diego a month ago, they had just over 2,000 tracks that needed my expertise. These were songs from their personal CD collection as well as a few titles that my sister and I had left at the house since leaving for college. For the most part, iTunes correctly labeled the tracks and albums, but it was way off with the artwork. I had to then Google-search all of the albums that it got incorrectly and then copy and paste each image on to each track. For the albums I couldn't find, I had to take the sleeve out of the jewel box and scan it into the computer.

Once the album artwork was correct, I went through and made the genres match. Then, I made the minor adjustments that only an obsessive compulsive iTunes organizer would think to make. For example, on Josh Groban's eponymous album, he has a duet with Charlotte Church. iTunes labels that particular track's artist as "Josh Groban Feat. Charlotte Church." The problem with this thinking is that when you're browsing artists on your iPod, you'll see "Josh Groban" and then "Josh Groban Feat. Charlotte Church." If you select "Josh Groban" and listen to all of the tracks, you won't hear his duet. If you select the other, you'll only hear one song. This bothers me and I fixed all of the tracks with this issue.

I have finally cleaned up the 2,000 plus songs, but now I have a completely different project. As stated in an earlier post, my parents recently purchased a USB turntable to convert all of their vinyl records to mp3s so they could add them to their iPod library. The idea seems simple enough, but I have to sit at the computer throughout each album so I can click the "Next Track" button and separate the recordings. Once the album is recorded, flipped to the other side and recorded, I have to manually insert all of the information. Then I have to Google-search the album art and apply it as well. Again, because I'm so anal retentive about getting everything right, I manually insert the start time and stop time of each track to shave off the dead space around the song. Finally, the album is complete.

I have now been sitting at this computer for over six hours and I've had iTunes open the entire time. My parents' library is finally starting to shape up and look very professional, but I'm pretty sick of sitting here. Because it was nine o'clock when I started writing my daily blog and I had already been sitting here for four hours, you my devout reader, have the pleasure of reading this dribble. Good night!