iTunes & Live Music Organization

[Capt Rosebuddy]

I'm in the middle of moving my iTunes library from one computer to another and I'm having a tough time figuring out what the best way to label live shows so they are easy to browse in iTunes and on an iPod.

Back in the analog days of Maxell Tapes I like a lot of other folks had a way of labeling shows so it was easy to locate the tape you where looking for and in my case, and really satisfied my OCD . For example an old school tape back might look like this (disregard the ______ it was the only way I could get it to hold the place of Set I):

Grateful Dead_____________________Set I
9/10/91 Madison Square Garden, New York

The iTunes format that I have been seeing more and more of tends to look like this:

1991/9/10 Madison Square Garden, New York

I find this format really irritating because of the obvious irregularity of having the year first. I understand there needs to be some way to group shows together and by year seems a logical choice but for me it's just to many numbers and slashes to quickly find what you want to listen to .


So I'm just wondering what you guys favor for the iTunes formant. Thanks.

[Tennessee Jedi]

Yeah man itunes !
what a pain.
Here at work I have a maybe a hundred + shows.
it took me awhile to figure the beast out as i dont think its really geared towards the " Live " music collector.
One thing about itunes and organizing it is you have to do the same thing every time or it will really mess with the OCD !
Like if you list a show like this 4/20/2000 then you cant label the next show 4-21-2000 or it gets whacked.
So ......
I think you can pick which headers you can use for organization.
I use Artist and Album by artist as the headers
I do each show like this
Grateful Dead 1973 10/30/1973 St. Louis
I use the same amount of empty spaces between the words and concert dates ....

ps I dont use an ipod much ...

[strumminsix]

Down with OCD? Yeah you know me!

Seriously, to me there is only 1 logical way to name files:
GratefulDead-19770508-01-Minglewood_Blues

From there I create the MP3 tag using Tag & Rename to interrogate the file name:
Artist - Album - Track - Song

This has solved 100% of my GD file naming/itunes shitty issues.

(This also solves TJ's issue above with needing to put a year first)

[Tennessee Jedi]

Down with OCD? Yeah you know me!

Seriously, to me there is only 1 logical way to name files:
GratefulDead-19770508-01-Minglewood_Blues

From there I create the MP3 tag using Tag & Rename to interrogate the file name:
Artist - Album - Track - Song

This has solved 100% of my GD file naming/itunes shitty issues.

(This also solves TJ's issue above with needing to put a year first)

Funny thing is I would like to re organize the whole deal but now that all those concerts are in the way I put them , I dont think I would get work done refiling it all !

[Emoto]

I have a bunch of Dead and other bands' concerts in iTunes. My convention is to use date and venue only for GD shows and some abbreviation that I can understand in between the date and the venue for bands other than dead. If the show had a name, I might include that, too. I like it this way because I can browse chronologically. For example:

1993-09-28 Boston Garden, Boston, MA
1993-09-29 Boston Garden, Boston, MA
1993-09-30 Boston Garden, Boston, MA
1994-07-30 Grisman Ziggy’s, Winston-Salem, NC
1994-12-08 JCash Frank Erwin Center, University Of Texas, Austin, TX
1995-04-30 Rice MerleFest, Watson Stage, Wilkes Community College, Wilkesboro, NC
1995-08-27 JBeck Riverport Amhiphitheater, Maryland Heights, MO
1996-06-10 Mark Knopfler The Forum, Copenhagen, Denmark
1997-09-11 Kottke Black Mountain, NC
1998-01-27 JiD Ariel Theater, Houston, TX

Using the zero in the date keeps it in chrono order.

[Tennessee Jedi]

Using the zero in the date keeps it in chrono order.

Little things like that are key to getting it all to work smooth .....

[Rusty the Scoob]

For raw filenames I use a format that I learned from the Archive or the Phish downloads... band abbreviation, then date in Y/M/D order, then disc and track numbers if it's something I'll ever burn onto CD, then song title.

Fen2009-05-16_D101_The_Music_Never_Stopped_vbr.mp3
Fen2009-05-16_D102_Sugaree_vbr.mp3
Fen2009-05-16_D103_The_Music_Never_Stopped_vbr.mp3
etc.

But in iTunes it lets you set the track name to the song title, the artist to the artist, you can set it as track No X of X, and then for the album title I use the show's date and venue or the DP# if applicable. When you rip a CD or add raw tracks you can highlight all the songs, right click, and set all the artist/album info at once so it's really pretty easy.

And then every field is sortable so it's easy to see all your Dead at once and pick out a show you want to hear, or say you want to learn something specific about Tennesse Jed - you can sort by song title and find all 20 versions you have and throw them into playlist, then hear them in chronological order if you want.

[mijknahs]

Yeah. Do what ANDREA said...

No really, I make every show a "playlist" and label in iTunes like this:

gd84-07-13 - Greek Theater - UC Berekeley
gd84-07-21 - Ventura Co. Fairgrounds

This puts all the GD shows under "g" (alphabetically) and sorts them chronologically by year and date.

Jim