Random iTunes tip

[undesign]

I'm spending some long overdue time on organising and general upkeep of my music collection.

Much of my listening is built around iTunes' Smart playlists - and the rating of songs. The thought of having my library go corrupt (or other mishap) and losing song ratings caused a mild panic attack. Found this gem as a "backup" solution of sorts -

http://forums.ilounge.com/itunes-store/31073-how-save-your-ratings-permanently.html

Song ratings are stored in the iTunes database, and not on the tags of each file. So that means, if somehow your database gets corrupted or if you want to move your songs from one computer to another, the ratings are lost.

What I do to "backup" the ratings is to copy the ratings to the grouping tag -- which IS written to the file.

Basically, I click on the ratings column to sort by ratings.
Then for all songs with a 5 star rating, I write 5 to the grouping.
Similarly, for all songs with a 4 star rating, I write a grouping of 4, etc.

/random tip off