Organize your iTunes library perfectly

Sort out your track tagging and change the way iTunes sounds

Listening to digital music is easy. Organizing a digital music library and making sure it stays that way, not so much. The same artists often get tagged differently — REM and R.E.M. for example, or Matchbox 20 and Matchbox Twenty — especially if you get music from multiple sources, and some tracks get tagged with totally 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 eventually 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 equalizer, which can be easily downloaded from 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.

There are several ways to do that. USB hard disks are no longer pricey with more than enough room for even the largest of 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 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 keep an online backup.