What's wrong with your drummer? He looks a little crazed.

The debate will probably rage on as long as there is music in any format, but let the record show that TIBTP believes that vinyl is best...well at least most of the time. On occasion we do take the time to appreciate leather and lace...ahem, we mean digital formats.

Pretty much everyone these days under the age of 60 has a digital music collection of some kind. It might be in the tens of thousands, it might only be a single CD ripped to the hard drive. For most people, however, they have a good sized library that likely takes more than a few seconds to scroll through and is comprised largely, if not solely, of MP3s [we at TIBTP prefer FLAC, but you take what you can get].

Usually these sizable libraries are assembled from various sources, and depending on the generation you belong to, some may or may not be authorized. Over the course of time it has taken to collect this music it is likely that one does not have complete uniformity across each file. The naming format differs, the volume and quality are not consistent, there is likely not album art and if there is there is only a 50/50 chance it is even the right band, and the base level of information making up the file (metadata) is probably about as jumbled as...well the morning jumble in the newspaper.

At some point the task to organize and create uniformity across the collection crosses one's plate and usually the job is frighteningly big, and threatens to be even more tedious. However, there are some fantastic ways out there to make this experience easier, you just have to know what to do and how to do it.

Go ahead and thank our friends over at Lifehacker for breaking things down.

Whip your MP3 library into shape, Part I - Level the volume. [*]
Whip your MP3 library into shape, Part II - Album art. [*]
Whip your MP3 library into shape, Part III - Metadata. [Lifehacker]