iPod: The Missing Manual, 8th Edition

Chapter 5. iTunes Power Moves

Now that you’ve seen how easy iTunes makes converting your favorite CD tracks into small, great-sounding files, it’s time to get down to some serious listening and tune-tweaking. With iTunes, you can do things like assign star ratings to songs and albums, share music and videos with other folks on your network, and even add album artwork to your tracks.

You’ll also learn how to use iTunes as an editor: the program gives you the tools to change song formats, edit out boring on-stage banter on live recordings, and apply preset or customized equalizer settings to tracks. once you get everything tuned to your liking, you’ll learn how to add, delete, and manually manage the music on your iPod.

Finally, you’ll learn how iTunes can help with a vital—but often ignored—part of music management: backing up your catalog for safe-keeping in case your hard drive croaks and takes all your songs with it.

You’re the Critic: Rate Your Music

Although there’s no way to give a song two thumbs up in iTunes, you can assign an album or each song in your collection a rating of from one to five stars. Then you can use the ratings to produce nothing but playlists of the greatest hits on your hard drive.

If you assign an album a single rating, all the songs on the album get the same number of stars. If you rate just a few tracks on an album but not all of them, the album rating reflects the average of the rated songs—so an album with two five-star songs and a bunch of unrated tracks ...