5406 tracks, 29.18 GB on disk, 17 days

Only 2699 have something in the “play count” field.   I’ve noticed that for whatever reason, it doesn’t register a play count unless you finish the song. Also, many of these were in an iTunes library on a previous PC. This library actually goes back until about 2000, was first in iTunes on Windows in approximately 2003, and was first moved to an iBook in 2005, and was finally rebuilt on my second Mac, a MacBook Pro in 1996.  Since then, it’s been ported to two different iMacs.)

Most played tracks:

1. “Shankhill Butchers” by The Decemberists (104)
2. “Tennessee Jed” by The Grateful Dead (104)
3. “Leslie Anne Levine” by The Decemberists (101)
4. “Terrapin Station” by The Grateful Dead (100)
5. “Circle” by Portal (99)

Most tracks by the same artist:
1. Phish (442)
2. The Decemberists (112)
3. DMB (110)
4. The Beatles (71)
5. Pearl Jam (68)
6. The Pat McGee Band (61)
7. Guns N Roses (51)
8. The Grateful Dead (48)

Oldest track added in iTunes library: 3059 tracks added on 4/11/06
Newest track added: “Alaska” by Phish: 1/2/2010

Shortest track: “Wilkins Hyundai and Suburu” by Peter Griffin: 7 seconds
Longest track: “35 Minute Jam” by Phish: 35:33 minutes

Lowest Bitrate: “It’s Gary Shandling’s Show” 19 kbps (mp3)
Highest Bitrate: Several self-ripped WAV files at 1411 kbps (wav)

However, I’ve got a brilliant combination working now.  iSquint, the gorgeous free video editor, converts my files into high quality mp4/m4v files and adds them to iTunes.  iTunes then pushes them to my AppleTV.   It’s incredible to tell iSquint to covert several dozen videos and then the next morning they are waiting on my AppleTV. 

In the meantime, I just discovered something on iTunes that I hadn’t realized existed.  I went into the overcrowded “Movies” section of my iTunes library and found that you can convert “Movies” to “TV Shows.” Here’s the best part, by filling in the metadata – by adding the TV show title, the season, the episode, iTunes will properly group and organize them.  Whereas before, I had a huge section of movies, randomly plunked down in the same view, now I have a view of many logically grouped subsets, much the way iTunes handles artists and albums in grid view.  

 Furthermore, AppleTV obeys the organization as well! Instead of a silly, long list of movies, I go to TV Shows and then drill down by show, where they are sorted by season and episode.  

Using iTunes just got much better.  I had been thinking, lately, about how well music organization works in iTunes and how poorly video organization does.  I still think that’s the case – Videos are a mess.  But TV Shows and Music Videos work well.

Notice anything funny? Only three of the songs in the list are from the last decade. Needless to say, I’m feeling a little old today.