Mac Format

Make the media library and player work better

Sort out your track tagging and change the way iTunes sounds

- Carrie Marshall

Listening to digital music is easy. Organising a digital music library and making sure it stays organised, not

so much. The same artists often get tagged differentl­y – REM and R.E.M. for example, or Chvrches and CHVRCH S – especially if you get music from multiple sources, and some tracks get tagged with completely wrong informatio­n. Album tracks get separated, guest stars are tagged as the main event. And the longer you leave the tidying up process, the more time it takes to fix.

Thank goodness, then, for iTunes add-ons such as Doug’s AppleScrip­ts. AppleScrip­ts are little computer programs that can bring new features to an app, and there are nearly 500 of them at dougscript­s.com. They’re free to try and you’re encouraged to make a little donation if you find them useful.

That isn’t the only source of useful iTunes add-ons. In this tutorial, you’ll discover how to sort the tags in even the biggest iTunes library with MusicBrain­z Picard (musicbrain­z.org), and we’ll explore the sonic possibilit­ies of the Boom3D equaliser (globaldeli­ght.com).

Once you’ve perfected your library, the next step is to protect it: replacing even a relatively small iTunes library in the event of loss or damage can be a big job, and it’s much better to ensure you have a backup.

Backup options

There are several ways to do that. USB hard disks have plummeted in price and have more than enough room for even enormous iTunes libraries. To move all tracks in your library to one, go to iTunes > Preference­s > Advanced. Where it says ‘iTunes Media folder location’, click Change and pick your external drive. Next, go to File > Library > Consolidat­e files. Many libraries will even fit on a USB stick, although sticks are easily lost or damaged.

You might be tempted to treat iCloud Music Library as an online backup, but don’t; Apple explicitly warns that’s not its purpose (bit.ly/helpicm). If your library is too large and valuable to easily recover from extensive damage (bit.ly/iclback), it’s better to pair a tool like Retrospect Solo (retrospect.com) with a service like Backblaze (backblaze.com) to maintain an online backup.

it will take 10 minutes

you will lear n How add-ons can improve iTunes

Yo u’ll nee d Doug’s AppleScrip­ts, Musicbrain­z Picard and Boom3D

 ??  ??
 ??  ??

Newspapers in English

Newspapers from Australia