Apple’s renowned music software is widely used by those with and without Apple software. However, those who have thousands of songs on their computers might find their library becomes a messy and hectic place to search. Here are some tips on how to quickly clean up and organise your iTunes library.

Most people only listen to a handful of artists regularly, but either have to create separate playlists or manually search through the library to listen to their songs. iTunes doesn’t allow the user to just add favourites to a specified list, so we’ll use the playlist feature instead.

1. Create a new folder. iTunes folders are fantastic for storing different playlists. To do this, press the File menu, and hit New Folder. Give it some name like Artists or Favourites. This where we will store our most-listened to artists.
2. Once you’ve renamed the folder, open the File menu again and this time press New Smart Playlist. In the window that pops up, make sure “Artist contains” is selected. In the empty box, type the artists’s name and hit OK. Drag your newly created playlist into the “Artists” folder. Now you’ve just made a playlist for one of your favourite artists. Repeat this step until all your favourite artists are in the folder.
3. Next we’re going to follow the same process as step one, but instead of calling the folder “Artists” or “Favourites”, we’re going to call it “Genres”.
4. Open the File menu and hit New Smart Playlist again. Change “Artist” to “Genre” and “contains” to “is”. Then type the genre name into the empty box. Press OK and drag your newly created playlist into the “Genre” folder. Repeat until all your favourite genres are in the folder.
5. If you want to separate these playlists from the rest of your library, create a new folder and call it “Playlists” or something similar. Then drag the iTunes-made smart playlists into the folder.
6. Now you’ve organised your music into relevant playlists, it’s time to make browsing the library easier. In each of your artist’s playlists, switch the view from List View to Album View. To do this, simply go to the View menu and click on Album View. This transforms iTunes from a list to show you all of the artist’s albums categorised by album with the art and lists the songs. This is a far easier way to browse your music.

Now that you can easily find your favourite artists in iTunes, it’s time to sort the actual library. Here are some general tips to keep in mind when adding or sorting your music collection:

• Keep basic genres. Instead of “Punk Rock”, stick to “Alternative” or “Rock”. It will give you less genres to search through.
• Avoid the “Featuring” tag in the Artist metadata. If an album has songs that feature other artists, add that in the song name, not the artist. This will make it easier to manage your albums.
• Fix songs without the proper metadata. Your songs should be easy to find and identify. Spend a few minutes each day correcting your existing library and over time you will discover that your library is much simpler and easier to browse.