Evan Mix

After years of struggling with iTunes artist labeling, I’ve had an epiphany. This system would make it easier to find what you want without having to remember as many details about your music.

For example, suppose I’m in the mood for a little John Coltrane. When I navigate to “John Coltrane” under artists in my iTunes tracks, why doesn’t iTunes show me tracks from the excellent 1957 album Thelonious Monk with John Coltrane?

Here’s what I want: a tagging system that allows me to easily look at any track associated with John Coltrane (or whoever) regardless of who else is on it. Right now, I need to navigate to tracks labeled “Thelonious Monk” or “Thelonious Monk with John Coltrane,” a system that strikes me as needlessly limited. In order to find that Monk album, one needs to remember that Coltrane is on it - not a big deal if you’re dealing with just a few albums, but the bigger the collection, the tougher it is to keep track.

The search function in iTunes takes care of this to some extent, but search seems like an inelegant way to handle a permanent labeling issue of this nature. Why not permanent labeling?

The fix is simple: let me tag tracks as I see fit, then sort them by tag. It would be easy to look at a list of tracks by Coltrane, ones by Monk, or only ones by both (and any other artists). The more I think about it, the more surprised I am that the current system exists. Why wasn’t this fixed around 2004, after Del.icio.us came into being and the power of tagging became obvious? Am I overlooking something totally obvious?

Tagged: delicious, itunes, john coltrane, Music, Science and Technology, search, tagging, thelonious monk