Or buying CDs for 20+ years and ripping all of them to the computer. I own over 1000 CDs, and nearly all of them are represented in my digital music collection.

brenhow

@ cipotefello: Y'see, I have over your count of music in free, remixed videogame music (OCRemix), all downloaded conveniently in a torrent.

That, and most of my friends are audiophiles who make my 60 gigs of music look like nothing. Audiophiles are always going on about new music they've found, and thus I acquire new stuff.

Sensai

@cipotefello: one word: torrents

friedgold

You can also right click your selection and select (un)check selection if you don't want to go to your keyboard.

cam11

@Temoto: Agreed!

gpzbc

How do people get so much music? I think I have a huge library with 1300 tracks, but when I see people with 10+ gigs of music I wonder how they got that collection. Hi quality or something?

cipotefello

I don't see this working if you have more then just a little bit of music. I'm working with 12.5 thousand songs...so going through and simply unchecking options to make a playlist is not an option.

Given, I like all of that music, so I can just leave it on a play-all type thing.

Side note:

Is anyone else dissapointed with Death Cab's (the songs in the picture are by them) new album? I know I'm going to sound lame as hell when I say this, but it really seems like they've been losing steam from Transatlantacism (spelling) on.

Plans all sounded the same and was narrowing down in variety, but it still had the poetry aspect I'd come to know and love from Death Cab. Narrow Stairs more or less gets rid of that, with the only exceptions being the wonderful Bixby Canyon Bridge and Cath...

Sensai

I use the checkbox as a quick and easy way to disable songs that are broken or missing, but that I want to restore or fix later. It's a lot less frustrating than dealing with the "File Not Found" errors or a clipped song when synching to my iPod.

m3rkvry

Ah, but I have a 60 gig iPod and 90 gigs of music. I use the checkbox feature to choose what is and isn't synced automatically when I connect my iPod to my computer.

Paul D

I like to use this to control what does and doesn't make its way onto my iPhone, but it doesn't seem to help me much with playlists. If I want certain songs to not be in a playlist, I either make additional rules for it to match, or I just create a static playlist. Smart playlists are only as smart as you make them.

The Amazing Ant

I use it mainly just for the 'Sync checked songs' thing..
Don't really use it extensively.

Sanjo

Yeah, that didn't work for me when i tried it. You can't uncheck a song for one playlist while leaving it checked for another.

Instead I made a bunch of source playlists (starting with "X" for the name, so they are at the bottom of the list when selecting). I refer to those playlists when I want to make a new smart playlist.

limbodog

@Temoto:
I definitely agree with you there.
I could never get the hang of it.

I'm more of a "ctrl-click/shift click" kinda guy.
Much faster, to achieve the same purpose.

tehdahl

If i'm in a playlist, I'll uncheck them then go to the library and sort by checked and delete them.

It's the easiest way to mark songs for, well, something.

Justin

You know, the check boxes are nice... but for someone that has a 12,000 song colletion, I'm NOT going to go through and do this.

Temoto

Switched from iTunes to foobar2000 y'day =]

Had enough of it deleting my library and playlists, not to mention all the other bugs.

LifesSweetDrug

oh, and I limit that 4GB playlist (with rules above) to 600 songs. I feel like this lets me hear songs I haven't listened to that much, and that hearing them 3 times is enough to be familiar with them

lindsayt

I consider myself fairly obsessive when it comes to creating playlists for my ipods. I have a 30 GB that I load all my checked items to, and a 4GB that I have a special smart playlist for. Basically the rules are:

- only checked songs
- songs that have been played less than 4 times (so all songs with playcount 0 - 3, inclusive)
- songs that dont have a 2 star rating

I use my star ratings more to organize:

1 Star - for songs that need the title, artist or album fixed
2 Star - for songs I don't want on my ipods (I uncheck them)
3 Star - 5 Star - preferential rating

lindsayt

I've got about 25 GB of music for a 16 GB touch. I just drop music that I want on the touch into a playlist and sync only that playlist. It's the only way to go if you've got more than 10 songs.

@Sensai: Good to see I'm not the only one to notice the poetry fade away. I still enjoy the album, however.

dtreichler

Oh, I use the checks all the time. My only listening is podcasts, which I do in a "river of news" style format. When there are a bunch of episodes of a podcast that I've fallen behind on, I simply uncheck the ones that are not interesting enough to catch up on (sorry IT conversations), and they fall off the list.

It's important when doing this, though, that you periodically go in and delete the unchecked files, because now they're just sitting there and will never get played (unless you retrieve them for some reason).

[www.commutesmarter.com]

Duane

@cipotefello: Try putting some of those songs into pandora.com, and you'll find out. I tried it out as the new iPhone/iTouch app when it came out, and by the end of the weekend I had spent about $50 on new music...

The Amazing Ant

>>Macworld points out that you can check or uncheck a list of songs (from a search, or in a playlist, or in your entire library) by Cmd+clicking on any song checkbox in the collection (Ctrl+Click for Windows users).<<

Why don't they just have a check box at the top of the list that checks/unchecks everything? Most UIs have this.

matthewjw

@cipotefello: Ripping all my CDs (last count the physical CD collection weighs in at about 400, over about a decade of purchases) and a subscription to eMusic for the past 3 years. Easily pushes the song count and storage requirements. I have no doubt that if it were feasible to stream music into work, I would have much more than I do now... while in college, I would average at least one new album a week bought or borrowed, and exposure to new music only increased after discovering Pandora and Last.fm circa 2005.

okmnji

I don't uncheck my stuff at all. Way too many songs to bother xD

Eruanno

Hey guys! I have an excruciatingly annoying problem. Every time I plug my iPod (5.5 Generation iPod video) and I go to see my music, it's sorted by Time rather than by artist. It always used to be sorted by Artist, and now I can't seem to figure out how to change it back. I already have 'Remember view setting for each source' ticked in my preferences, and have toggled it to no effect. This is REALLY annoying because sorting my music collection takes a while (Not too long but the lag is noticeable). I would appreciate it if anyone could point me into the right direction on how to fix this. Thanks!

Blaenk Denum

@Blaenk Denum:
The right direction would not be here.
Go away.

But I will help you.
First, place your hand on your forehead, and shape your mouth so it will form the word "Doh" with a proper breath.

Now place your other hand on your mouse, click on the "sort by Artist" horizontal row heading. Click till satisfied.

Utter "DOH"!
And smack your head accordingly with your hand.

tehdahl

i'd have to agree that the checkbox option really isn't going to work for those of us with significant music collections. a technique many use is smart playlists. they may end up as a complex alogorithm but it does allow me to listen to music the way i want to.

i've found this site particularly helpful

[www.smartplaylists.com]

ffolliet

@tehdahl:

and this is why we love lifehacker; an answer and humour, all in one neat little package.

(where is the button to format text as sarcastic?)

ffolliet

@Sensai: I thought the album was remarkable...then again, I'm easily impressed musically.

...and the thing I hate the most that you doooooo, you make me love you...

See?

Wormfather is Wormfather

I check and uncheck for iPod syncing purposes as well. I make playlists based on albums (better than using the actual album sorting method because I frequently add b-sides or other extra tracks to the playlist which actually have different album tags) but sometimes don't really care for one or two songs, so I want them in the iTunes playlist but not necessarily on the iPod.

@cipotefello: I have 7300 songs with 31.88 GB. Combination of ripped CDs and downloads. Maybe just a wider variety of musical styles?

CelesteM

@cipotefello:"How do people get so much music? I think I have a huge library with 1300 tracks, but when I see people with 10+ gigs of music I wonder how they got that collection. Hi quality or something?"

I started by importing all my CDs into iTunes, and then visiting local libraries and checking out CDs there. I also sold or traded my old CDs for new ones. Now, I mostly get my music from iTunes store and emusic.com. I have 5000+ songs.

Bakari

I've done very little with the checkboxes. These days I've had less time than I'd like to make playlists. I'm pretty much a random "favorites" or "all but", which is my play list of the whole library minus stuff like Christmas music and my 8 year old daughter's music.

HamiltonG

I use checkmarks to reduce displayed duplicates. Since virtually every song in my iTunes database is a track on a complete album, I get lots of duplicates that I don't want to delete (i.e. Waiting for the Man is on Velvet Underground & Nico, Velvet Underground boxed set, and Lou Reed's Greatest Hits). So I'll filter for duplicates and uncheck all of them except one. Then I can make a smart playlist where Artist=Velvet Underground and "only include checked songs" is selected to ensure that I don't end up with 4 identical versions of the same song in the playlist.

Probably only a useful methodology for those of us who obsessively collect only full albums though.

/dev/nall