ORGANIZE PLAYLISTS? / create folders for playlists??

so we'd have to petition apple to do something about it in the next release of the software, huh...

here is the problem. I have 95GB of music. That's about two months. Thats 1400 albums, 3500 artists and 18,000 songs.

Because there are at least a couple hundred songs in my library that I DON'T own the whole album for, these "albums," that in fact only contain one or two songs, render the Browser unusable. Only about two-thirds of the albums that appear in Browse: Albums are really full albums.

I want to see my music library at a glance, I don't want to have to wade through the cumbersome broswer to "find" what I want. I want the experience to replicate staring at my shelves full of CDs, where what I "want" seems to find me more than I find it. I don't know about you, but when I make a music choice, I often am not exactly sure what I want to listen to, and it takes looking over my options before something jumps out at me. And, needless to say, I definitely have not memorized the entire contents of my music library! The broswer is useful to *find* something you are *looking* for, but it is quite useless for actually "browsing."

Just like your CDs on your shelf, visual cues help you locate what you want, and so I want to see, at a glance, every CD in my collection. I feel like that is sort of a no-brainer.

This is why I make a separate playlist for every album. I want to see: "Dave Matthews Band - Crash" followed by "Dave Matthews Band - Remeber Two Things." I don't want to have to chose between: "Dave Matthews Band," "Dave Matthews," or "Dave Matthews Band, The" in the browser. And when you have 3500 artists and 18,000 songs, this is often the case.

So I make a playlist for every album, and then of course some other mixes ets, -- so then I am left with a list of 1500 playlists. And I feel it would be an incredibly simple operation to write folders into the itunes code. I want to be able to organize my playlists any way I want them, not just "Browse" (if you want to call it that) by preset "genres."

I want a folder called, "Newest Aquisitions." and one called "old favorites." And I want to be able to see all the albums in the folder at a glance, not as a list of tracks.

Basically, I just want my itunes experience to closer replicate what my music browsing experience used to be--easy and intuitive. Apple is usually good at this, but I find that in this arena they have let me down.

It really is infuriating--an incredible amount of wasted time and organizational agony for what seems like such a simple fuction; one that is included in almost every software product with a finder-type function.

Apple! Get it done! Please!

keegan

ps. I have attached an example (squished a bit to fit the size requirements for this site). You tell me which is more clear. Look at "Chemical Brothers." On the left, I see that I have 6 albums by the Chemical Brothers in my library. Great! Clear! Concise! Perfect! In the Broswer, there is a list of 14. I don't want to know every place the Chemical Brothers were "featured" in another artists song, or one of their songs were remixed by who-knows-whom--I just want to see what CD's I have by the Chemical Brothers. The Browser hinders this.

Now, in the case of the Chemical Brothers, I can tell you which are the full albums. But what about an artist that I have hardly heard of, don't listen to very frequently, or am new to? Am I supposed to memorize the title of every album in my library (remember, 1500 albums)? This broswer function is good for finding out *every* place a Chemical Brothers song is located--as you can see, they have a number of songs in soundtracks and compilations. But for getting a picture of your music library at a glance, it is horrible. I don't want to see "Vanilla Sky" under chemical brothers, I want to see it under "Vanilla Sky - Soundtrack." Or maybe even in my own *custom* folder on the left, entitled, "My Favorite Soundtracks." Is that too much to ask??

pps. My new ipod mini is the beaver's ####! My only problem with that is that it doesnt scroll the playlist title--ever. so if your playlists are more than like 10 characters, you can't read them. And again, I want to see *exactly* what CDs are on my ipod, and how many, so I bring in whole CDs as individual playlists, instead of using the crappy broswer.

You make good points...my music is paltry at 16 days (I think I have forgotten to add some of the folders I have it stored in). There are a few tricks I use to keep the browse mode usable.
- When listening to music, I will occasionally browse and change artists that don't match the others. (This is nice when you just have to select the artists in the browse window, Hit command-I, and have iTunes auto complete the info.)
- I have recently written a script which will scrub the album and track info from a file and put it in the comments. This has cut down on the unattached albums that I have allowing browsing by album to be very useful.

Would it be useful to toggle the showing of albums containing this artist and albums by this artist? Yes. I don't have a good answer there.

I was thinking about that just today...it'd be so useful...I don't know why Apple hasn't implemented this already.

BTW, how the heck did you collect 18,000 songs? (Not that I wouldn't like that type of collection...I've imported everything I have, downloaded my mind out, and still haven't gotten past 3500.) If they're CD's, you should have invested in some FW HD's and copied the original files or imported 'em as lossless...a shame to have so much music at a low bit-rate...

I have submitted an analogous request suggesting that the playlist bar should work like the bookmarks in a web browser. I also make extensive use of playlists for organisation, and would make even more extensive use of them if the current implementation didn't make it too cumbersome beyond a certain number.