Who Has a Perfect iTunes Library?


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Jody shows off iTunes on Apple TV

Another happy customer: Jody Denberg & Apple TV

Someday by the end of the summer, I’m going to have a perfect iTunes libary.  When it’s done (again), it will have all the proper art for the albums and no punctuation errors.  I would also like to see all the duets consolidated into the main artist, especially on hip hop albums where there are numerous guest vocalists.  It’s not crazy to want accuracy, after all, album art and editorial copy without typos should be part of the basic expectations of the music consumer – based on the “physical model” of course.

I have a feeling this area is going to improve and maybe even jump into the 21st century one of these days.

In the meantime, however, the move into iTunes 9 cost me a lot of covers when I upgraded from 8, like the milk crates fell in the mud or something and the music is still playable.  I’m rebuilding it though, and am backing up my upgrade continuously as well.

As I go through the painstaking process of rebuilding the artwork in my iTunes music library, associating the proper cover with the proper album or single, I wonder, “who has a perfect iTunes library?”

“Does it matter if my library is accurate?” (beyond my own compulsion to have it accurate) I think so, since music provides endless hours of enjoyment and general enrichment.

“Who will be impressed?”

“Do I have time, even on the proverbial Desert Island, to listen to this disc that now includes 46,821 songs?”  What a nice problem to have!

The Consolidation of Ja Rule

Another step I have made part of the process, besides adding art, is the correction of Artist information.  For example, Ja Rule has three albums, which list almost a different artist on every cut.  Is that accurate?  That’s not an artist, it’s a guest/featuring/cameo-type appearance.  In my effort to move all that info over to songs from artists, I was thwarted a few times due to how the music is listed in Gracenote, or (to quote Steely Dan) due to “its own bizarre mentation.”

Wait’ll I get to the King of Duets (according to the Guiness Book of World Records no less), Willie Nelson.  I’m going to make him all one artist except for albums where there is equal billing like “Pancho and Lefty” by Willie and Merle Haggard.  Willie and the Offenders definitely deserve their own listing… this could be complicated.  Maybe I will just make “willie” the search term for all of the albums (manipulate the meta-data).

Gracenote and iTunes future in the Cloud

“Is this what everyone does?”  Not really.  “Everyone” goes to Gracenote and flips a coin whether the art will be accurate or not.

What and who, is behind the nomenclature of iTunes/Gracenote?  Who decides if something is hip-hop, hip hop or hip-hop/rap?  Shouldn’t there be a more accurate system in place so I don’t have to do this?  With iTunes’ growing cloud presence, perhaps this is an area of the service that will become more reliable.

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