Organize Your MP3s
By: Preston
(Erin’s Son-in-Law)

Organize Your MP3s!

Music. What a beautiful gift we have been given. We are in the age today where people are influenced by various forms of mediums, but none like that of Music. With so much music being made and marketed everyday and consumers purchasing/downloading it at unprecedented speeds, organizing your music and knowing what is what and what is where can be a task in it of itself. There are simple tips and techniques to take part in cutting down on the dissonance and crazy cacophony of the disorganization of your music (musical terms there ;)) Let’s figure these out and make beautiful music while organizing our tunes.

iTunes, Spotify, Rdio, Amazon Cloud Player, Grooveshark, Windows Media, are just some of the digital music providers that we have to choose from today. ITunes, being the most popular and well known, is what I use as my main source. Now, this isn’t a teaching on how to download your music per se, or how to use iTunes, but more so on how to organize your music.

As a musician, music is very important to me. Also as a musician, I might be the stereotypical “all over the place” and “not organized one.” Suprisingly enough, I get very Type A/OCD when it comes to my music and how it’s organized.

There are a few specific ways we can organize our music that will make it harmonious to our eyes, ears and minds. I will guide you through each way on how to organize your digital music. There a just a few simple categories that we will touch on that will change the whole way you listen to music. It will change your mood from that of a minor key to a major key. There are 2 major categories that I will take you through. They are simply Playlists and Genre Organizing. I will be speaking as if I am in iTunes and helping you there.

Time to Organize

Playlists

For Organizing Your MP3s, this is a very simple and fun way to get your music into ship shape. First, click on iTunes and go to the bar at the top of your computer. Click the word FILE. Then select “New Playlist.” On your iTunes screen, on the left hand bar you will see that it is ready for you to type in the title of your playlist.

Now this is where the organizing happens.

Say you are at cleaning and you really get in the cleaning mood with certain songs. Type in the word “Clean” and you have got your first playlist ready. All you do now is click, hold down and drag what song you want into the “clean” playlist. Now if you want to select an entire album, hold down the shift button, click the first song on that particular album and then click the last song, all while holding down the shift button. Once that has occurred than drag those songs over to your playlist.

Playlists can be used for so many different situations/occasions. i.e. make a party playlist, a car playlist (if you have an mp3 player in your car), a school playlist if you homeschool your kids (with easy listening, or learning songs on it). You can also do work out playlist, morning playlist, and the list can go on and on for whatever you would like to make a playlist for.

Genre Organizing

Now, this is an area where you might see where I get OCD and type A. I am very particular when it comes to how my music is ordered. This section is how to organize all of your music according to the genre that it is in. Now, not everybody knows what genre some of their music is in, but there is a simple way to put songs in order. Genres can be as simple as “Rock” “Country” “Jazz”, or as complicated as “Alternative Indie”, “Jazz Fusion” “Ambient Shoegazing”. You know, stuff like that.

This is how I Organize My MP3s.

I listen to a lot of worship music and not a whole lot of Contemporary Christian Music (CCM), so every time I get a worship album, it will usually come up as CCM and that annoys me (again that’s just me and my quirks). So, I just right click the song, or entire album and go to “get info” and change the genre to worship. This helps me if I want to make a “worship” playlist, or if it’s for smooth jazz, I just will get all of my songs under the genre of “smooth Jazz and make a “smooth Jazz” playlist. This really does help me with finding my music and ultimately gives me a better listening experience.

For the Finale:

Go and be the Conductor of your Music

So there you have it, a few really easy tips to get you started with organizing your mp3’s. Now everybody is different, but if you love music as much as I do, than these simple steps will really help with finding, listening and enjoying your music. Go and conduct the symphony in your computer and put them into place so that you can serenade your mind, ears and body into a peaceful rest that you are organized and ready to go with your mp3’s. Encore! Bravo!