Despite the fact that iTunes is, probably, one of the most feature-filled music management apps, we always wanted just a little bit more from it, right? It might be not too pleasing to work with sometimes, and with this whole iOS 6 coming out soon thing this may be the time for you to get the most out of iTunes before it is too late. Here is a list of 5 tips that will teach you to squish the most out of iTunes.
1. Find missing artwork
Sometimes, when you import CDs into iTunes or add music that you already had stored as digital files, you might be missing artwork for some of albums. In such situations you’ll end up with just blank parts of your library when you view it as a grid, or in Cover Flow mode. To fix this issue, head to Advanced > Get Album Artwork. This will search through your library, updating any songs or albums that are missing the artwork.
2. Browse your way
There are a few different ways to view your iTunes library and it might be a good idea to play around with each one of them to figure out what works best for you. The first option is a song list that lets you see all of your songs, with their information in columns, which you can sort any way you like. The album view arranges music by albums and shows you the CD’s artwork as well. the grid view arranges your music by artist and offers a grid of artwork instead of a list. Cover Flow looks the fanciest – it allows you browse your music like a CD collection
3. Control CD importing
CD’s carry much better quality audio than you generally get out of an MP3 or AAC file. Majority of people don’t even notice the difference, while other only care about the high-quality stuff. There is an option of choosing how iTunes imports audion from CDs, to give yourself higher quality files, including using Apple Lossless. Head to “iTunes Preferences” menu and click “Import Settings” near the bottom. Click the drop-down menu for “Import Using” to choose which encoding to use (AAC or MP3 are the most common).
4. Sharing your music library
In case you have more than one machine in your house running iTunes, or if you have multiple accounts on one Mac, you can actually share your libraries with each other. This option allows you to listen to the music you don’t usually get access to unless you add it to your library permanently. To turn this option on go to “iTunes” preferences, then select the Sharing tab. Click in the checkbox at the top to enable sharing – another useful aspect here is that you can password protect access. You can not only share music, but, also other media types.
5. Control playback
There are a few options using which you can change the way iTunes plays songs. Head to the Preferences menu, then the Playback tab. There you go, now you can choose to have songs crossfade into each other (which could be good if you have your music on shuffle), you can use the built-in Sound Enhancer (or turn it off) and use Sound Check to make sure all of your songs play the same volume level.
