Mason Sklut

Ever wanted to organize your iTunes library, but just didn’t have the time? Well, when I wanted to organize my iTunes library I had no real idea where to start. Completing this task alone can be done and with these instructions, I’m going to show how:

Checking For Duplicate Songs

1. First, open up iTunes from the dock or your Applications folder.
2. Once your in iTunes, go to View > Show Duplicates.
3. Then all of the duplicate songs that were in your library should appear.
4. Remove the ones that are duplicates.

screenshots: 1 2 3-4

Make Smart Playlists

1. Ever since Smart Playlists came out, I stopped using the regular playlists because they just weren’t that great.
2. With Smart Playlists, you can better organize your music based on artists, year, time, and it automatically updates every time you import music into iTunes.
3. To create a Smart Playlist, go to File > New Smart Playlist.
4. In the Smart playlist window, you will have several options to choose from.
5. Let’s say you want an all 80’s music playlist:
   1. Choose Year under the first drop-down menu and in the second drop-down menu choose is in the range and then put 1980 to 1990.
   2. Don’t check off Limit to, only check off Match only checked items and Live updating.
   3. The checked items in your iTunes library will be affected by this Smart Playlist, so be sure you have checked off the songs you prefer.
   4. Now you successfully setup your first Smart Playlist.

screenshots: 3 4 5_1 – 5_3

Checking For Duplicate Album Covers

1. Last but not least, double check and make sure your songs don’t have multiple album covers, which take up lots of disk space.
2. Some of my iTunes songs had multiple covers because before iTunes 7, there was no album cover finder, so I used a widget, which sometimes added more than one album cover.
3. Go to your main library which should be called Music if you are using iTunes 7 and highlight all of your songs by holding down ⌘ (Command) and the “A” key which selects all.
4. Once you have done that, right-click on the songs and select Clear Downloaded Artwork.
5. Then you should have no artwork with the songs that had downloaded artwork.
6. To remove all existing artwork, select all of your songs and right-click and select Get Info.
7. Check the Artwork box in the right side of the Get Info window.
8. This will remove all Artwork, not just the downloaded artwork.
9. To add album covers to your songs, simply hold down ⌘ (Command) and the “A” key to select all of your songs and click on Get Album Artwork.

screenshots: 3-4 6 7 9