iTunes

Review it and change the genre associated with a specific album or song by following these steps. In this example, I'm changing the genre of the Bob Dylan album, "Christmas In the Heart" from "Holiday" to "Folk" (Fig. 4).

Fig. 4: Use the "Genre" drop-down to change genres for multiple albums.

Following the above steps, if you get to step 4 and don't see the genre you want in the drop-down list, simply delete the genre in the edit box and type in the new genre name. Click "OK" and you're finished.

Is the Artist column in your iTunes Library cluttered with hundreds of artists you never heard of? You may be the victim of "compilations." A compilation album contains tracks by multiple artists. Examples include tribute albums, benefit concerts, and soundtracks. For example, the (mythical) album "One Hit Wonders of the 80's" might contain 25 tracks each by a different artist (that's why they were one hit wonders). If you downloaded this album, each artist would be listed in your Artist list, with one associated track.

I rarely used the Shuffle feature in iTunes or on my iOS devices because I didn't think there was a way to exclude the songs I didn't want to hear. Then I discovered the "Skip When Shuffling" tag. Here's how you exclude songs from Shuffle:

1. Select the tracks you want to exclude in the list view.
2. Open the Items Information dialog box (Command-I on the Mac; Control-I on the PC).
3. Click on the "Skip when Shuffling" checkbox and hit "OK." (No more "Clair De Lune" sandwiched between "Smells Like Teen Spirit" and "Sunday, Bloody Sunday.")