iTunes Shuffle

Some people hoard animals, others cardboard. I hoard music. My iTunes library has close to 8000 songs at the moment and the phrase "out of control" frequently comes into conversation when my family refers to my music habit. I'm one of those people who goes online every Tuesday morning to snatch up the free iTunes downloads, and see which albums have been released in case there might be a new song I just NEEEEEEED. Yes, need. Don't you judge me.

I love a good playlist- mine are arranged not only by album (should I buy an entire album) but also by month and year. Scanning my iTunes library you'll find April, 2005, 2007, 2008, alongside playlists made for individuals, different seasons (Summer 2004, 2005, etc...), different moods (R&R, Party, Massive Mellow Mix, etc...). Yes, out of control.

So, my project for the month is to edit & organize my iTunes library. I like to organize my artist in my main library so starting with the A's (first up, 1 song by Aaron Nevill) I'm tackling one letter of the alphabet per day. At least in theory. I'm deleting those freebies that I've never listened to or enjoyed (yes, even the videos- GASP!) & I'm even going to purge some of the songs from albums that I've imported if I don't think I'll listen to them; you know the ones, the songs you would skip if you were listening to it on CD. Wish me luck.

I hit a bit of a stumbling block today in the B's though. I got hung up on my 153!!! Beatles songs. I had to decide whether or not to delete some of the duplicates even though they were from different albums (do I keep the alternate versions from the Anthology albums? or just the originals or both?). Then, even more issues when I came to Billy Joel & found more duplicates- do I keep the original albums intact or the Greatest Hits albums intact... OY! Particularly vexing as some of the songs were already sorted into playlists & I had to go back through & make sure everything was back in its list. Such silliness & fluff & yet, something to consider.

I've even found some surprises already. For instance, I had no idea I had more than a dozen Bon Jovi songs hiding on my iPod. I expected 2 or 3 that I had downloaded in recent years. My guess is that I burned an old CD of my husband's though because truthfully I was never a huge fan of their 80s hits. It's on there though & I couldn't quite bring myself to erase the history. After all, it's classic now, right? But I also found an excellent song by The Boxer Rebellion that I'd downloaded at some point & never put into a playlist so I haven't listened to it at all. So now it's like a shiny new gift for my ears. I hope to find more of those along the way.