This week we’re gonna delve deeply into the MacMaineiac mailbag and answer a question (actually a couple) gleaned from the voluminous “stack of stuff” that’s been backing up while I’ve been covering MacWorlds and iLifes and iWorks and MMOOSes. As an added bonus, we’re covering “cross-platform” stuff this week, so you “95-percenters” won’t feel too left out. It’s a “big tent” here in the Mac world. So, without further ado…

“Dear MM. My iTunes music collection is a mess. All the songs I import from CDs have names like “Track 01, Track 02, etc.” My songs are spread out all over the place. I have some songs that won’t play unless I have an active internet connection. What gives? Yours, iFuddled”.

Dear “iFuddled”. iTunes organizes your music based on data encoded into each song called an “ID3 tag”. The ID3 tag is similar to the metadata encoded into every photo taken with your digital camera, which can tell you the date/time the photo was taken, the shutter speed/f-stop used, etc. In the case of digital music, the ID3 tag contains information about the song like Name, Artist, Year, Album, Track Number, and Genre. The ID3 tag also “remembers” the format (MP3, AAC, WMA, etc.) the song was digitally encoded with, and what Bit Rate was used. Without getting too geeky, higher Bit Rates yield higher quality sound and higher file sizes.

ID3 tag information is not included within the files on commercial music CDs. You could fill in the ID3 tags yourself, but where’s the fun in that? Instead, if you have an active internet connection, and you have “Connect to Internet when needed” selected at iTunes > Preferences > General, you can tell iTunes to check an internet database (called Gracenotes CDDB) that will “fill in” the ID3 tag information and display it in iTunes. If you don’t have a connection at that moment, you can always go back later, connect, and have iTunes access the CDDB and “fill in the blanks”. When you import the songs onto your computer, the ID3 tag information is forever affixed to the AAC or MP3 files you created.

You can access and edit the ID3 tag information for a given song by selecting the song in the iTunes window and choosing “Get Info” from either the File menu or a right-click contextual menu.

Now on to your second question. iTunes is perfectly happy to display and play your music no matter where it is on your computer. However, it’s a good idea to keep it all in one place – the “iTunes Music” folder inside your “Home” folder. This way you can easily find all your music to back it up, or move it to a new computer, etc. You can keep your music library in order easily by selecting “Keep iTunes Music Folder organized” and “Copy files to iTunes Music folder when adding to library” in the Preferences > Advanced pane. If you have music “all over the place”, you can simply select “Consolidate Library” from the “Advanced” menu, and iTunes will copy all the “rogue” music from where it is into your “iTunes Music” folder. It will, however, leave the original in its location, and you would need to send it to the Trash yourself.

Question Three. Some web sites have links to music that people click and think they are getting a song. The “song” even shows up in the iTunes library. In reality, this “song” is really a hyperlink that, when selected, streams the music from the internet, which of course, requires an internet connection. No connection. No song.

© 2005 Peter F. Zimowski