iPod: The Missing Manual, 7th 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. Here, you can do things like assign star ratings to songs and albums, share music with other folks on your network, and even add album artwork to your tracks.

You'll also learn how to use iTunes as editor: the program gives you the tools to even out wildly jarring song volumes, edit out boring on-stage banter on live recordings, and apply preset or custom equalizer settings to tracks. And once you get everything tuned up 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 it all up 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 within iTunes, you can assign an album or each song in your collection a star rating (one to five). Then you can use your personal ratings to easily produce nothing but playlists of the greatest hits on your hard drive.

If you assign an entire album a single rating, all songs on that album get the same number of stars. If you decide to rate individual tracks but not the whole album, the album rating shows the average number of stars per song—so those albums with two good songs and a bunch ...