I’ve been using an iPod for nearly 4 years, and iTunes every since it became available for Windows about 3 years ago. Don’t get me wrong, I like my iPod/iTunes combination but over the last year or so because of changes in the way I listen to music, this partnership has created a lot of problems for me.

I still use my iPod on the move and but at home I no longer use iTunes, and instead use Windows XP Media Center/WMP11 on my Xbox 360, or XBMC on my Xboxs. Because of this, I’m ending up with 2 sets of ratings, playlists and playcounts. This is getting really annoying, so as soon as a larger Zune comes out, I’m ditching the iPod. I’m also making the move completely away from iTunes.

So in preparation of getting my Zune, I thought I’d share the steps I went through to tidy up my mp3 files so I could switch to WMP11, and how I tidied up the raw mp3 files so that my Xbox could see all the details. The steps should be applicable to any other music player you may want to switch to, or if you’ve purchased a new shiny version of Vista and have discovered the joys of the Media Center.

In the past, I would listen to music at home on my PC which has a pair of Altec Lansing ACS495 speakers, that despite being nine years old still sound good enough for a small room. But now at home, I listen to music via my Xbox 360 Extender or for better quality, more control and a sexier look & feel I use my modded Xbox running XBMC (XBMC does a MUCH better job of reproducing mp3s - the 360 makes music sound awful and flat in my view).

The problems this creates are that my iTunes ratings and playlists aren’t available in WMP11 and hence on my Xbox 360 extender, and although I used to be able to access my iTunes playlists via DAAP via XBMC, ever since iTunes launched iTunes 7 this doesn’t work anymore and it doesn’t look like it ever will.
Switching to Windows Media Player

If you’re switching to Windows Media Player from iTunes, then this is easy as there’s a great app called Music Bridge. Music Bridge makes it easy to export your iTunes information to WMP. just install the app and then run through the various ‘Sync From iTunes’ options (Ratings, Covers and Playlists) to add iTunes information to WMP.

If you are planning on switching to another mp3 player, then you’ll need to follow the steps below to tidy up your mp3 tags.

Switching To Another Media Player

Stage I - Get All Of Your Files In One Place

If you haven’t already done so, get all of your music into one master ‘Music’ folder so that it is easier to manage. To do this do the following:

1. Go to ‘Edit/Preferences’ in iTunes.
2. Click on ‘Advanced’ and go to the ‘General’ Tab,
3. Choose a folder where you want all of your music stored e.g. ‘D\Music’
4. tick ‘Keep iTunes Music folder organized’ and ‘Copy files to iTunes Music folder when adding to library’
5. Click ‘Ok’

iTunes will now whirr away and move all of your mp3 files to one folder for easier management.
Stage II - Make Sure All MP3 Files Have ID3 Tags

One of the most annoying characteristics of iTunes is its tag management. In many instances although you might have album art displayed for your tracks, or even if you’ve spent a lot of time manually tidying up your artist, track numbers, titles, genres etc iTunes doesn’t add this information to the actual mp3’s tags, which are part of the mp3 file. Instead, what iTunes does is save this information to the iTunes Music Library, which other players can’t read.

What this means is that if you imported your music library into another music player you will suddenly have lots of ‘Unknown Albums’ and ‘Unknown Artists’ and no cover art. To fix this do the following:
Part I - Add ID3 v2.3 Tags

1. Open iTunes
2. Select all of your tracks. The quickest way to do this is to click on one track and then press ‘CTRL-A’
3. Right click on a track and select ‘Convert ID3 Tags’
4. Select version ‘v2.3′ and click ‘ok’

iTunes will now add ID3 tags to all of your files which will ensure all of your track information is accessible by other players.

Part II - Make Sure Your ID3 Tags Contains The Correct Album Art

Unfortunately iTunes ID3 Tag conversion tool doesn’t export the cover art. I think this is to stop users using art obtained from iTunes Music Store elsewhere. The method below may seem a bit convoluted, but it is to ensure that you don’t end up with multiple images in your tags (e.g. some of your tracks may already have an image in the tag and you don’t want to add a duplicate, which can cause problems).

1. Download iArt. iArt is probably the best tool for managing iTunes Artwork. It costs $10 to purchase, but we don’t need the premium features so we can just use the free features.
2. Once you’ve installed iArt open it and click on ‘options/extras’ at the bottom. Then click on the ‘folder.jpg Wizard’ at the top. Select ‘Overwrite existing folder.jpg files’ and then run the wizard. iArt will now extract your iTunes artwork and add a folder.jpg file of the artwork to each album folder on your PC.
3. When this has finished download and install mp3tag which is the ultimate music tag editor.
4. Once mp3tag is running click on ‘View’ and then ‘customise columns’. Click on the New column icon and for the new column add the following information: Name: ‘Art’, Value: ‘%_covers%’, Field: ‘%_covers%’ and click ‘ok’
5. Now click on the ‘change directory’ icon in the toolbar (circled in the screenshot) and select the folder you chose in Part I to store your music and click ‘ok’
6. mp3tag will now load your music library and show you all the tag information that is contained in your mp3s. Once it has finished click on the new ‘Art’ column we created in stage 4 to sort your mp3s by the number of covers that are stored in the ID3 v2.3 tags, to see how many files are missing artwork because iTunes won’t export artwork.

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