I use iTunes to manage playlists and such.
Unfortunately, I don’t really want iTunes to manage the actual files. iTunes wants to put songs in a particular organizational structure that I’m not fond of and that makes things hard to track and move around (all based on artists and albums). I prefer a simple playlist structure where songs, even if duplicated, are placed in a directory named after the playlist. Simple – easy to understand – not hard to manage.
I also have to coordinate with an external MP3 player. No it’s not an Apple TV. I prefer to have a device that you don’t need to have a TV on to play songs. I use a discontinued device called an Audiotron made by TurtleBeach. It has a simple front panel so no TV. This does take some file coordination.
I’ve found some minor issues though. Text files like the playlists (M3U) need to be in non-apple format (ie. Windows format) – this has an easy solution in OS X TextEdit in the Save As. I’ve found that certain ID3 tags need to exist (track, title, artist seems to be the big ones) for the Audiotron to be happy. After that it’s a matter of coordinating the files on my Mac Pro with my fileserver which my Audiotron sync’s with.
Sometimes hiccups happen but I think I’ve got this down. I’ll know the next time Kathy buys music so wish me luck!
P.S. I’ve gotten into some AppleScript’s for iTunes too. They have proven very useful (Doug’s site – do a google search) for all kinds of things from rename, move, export, synch. Good stuff!