It’s time for another glimpse into the crazy methods I use to organize my music library in iTunes. This time, I’m going to talk about how I alphabetize my international songs and artist names, as well as the logistics of group albums-solo songs and adjusting to a new music app.
Basic Song Sorting Rules
One aspect of organizing J-Pop and K-Pop songs is deciding the best way to alphabetize song titles that are written in their native alphabets, Japanese kana (Hiragana, Katakana, and kanji) and Korean Hangul respectively. Without intervention, iTunes will chuck those songs to the bottom of the song list and arrange them according to that language’s alphabetical order. It’s difficult to search for those items without using an alternative keyboard.
The Sort As field, which is available on the Sorting tab when you right-click a song and select the Song Info option, lets you tell iTunes how you want to alphabetize those songs in relation to the others. Naturally, I’ve developed my own systems for J-Pop and K-Pop.
Sorting J-Pop Songs
My rule for alphabetizing J-Pop songs is straightforward. If the song title is written in kana, I put its Romanized title—that is, the version of the title where the Japanese characters have been converted into our ABCs—into the Sort As field beneath the song’s Name field.
So for the Anna Tsuchiya song “黒い涙” from the Nana anime soundtrack, I sort it as “Kuroi Namida,” which is how the characters read. If I want to find that song in my library, I can look under “K” in the full song list or type “Kuroi Namida” into the Search bar. Alphabetizing it by its translated title, “Black Tears,” was also an option, but given how many times Anna says “Kuroi Namida” in the chorus, I knew I wouldn’t remember the song that way.
Notice that I didn’t change the actual title. It’s not necessary for me. Having previously studied Japanese, I can read enough of the characters to recognize the kana song titles when they pop up in the shuffle.
In the past, I did make a point to copy/paste the kana title from YesAsia or CDJapan if I got a song with a Romanized title. Then I would put the Romanized title as the Sort name. Nowadays, I’m lazy and I leave the title however it comes.
Sorting K-Pop Songs
When it comes to alphabetizing K-Pop songs, I take the opposite approach from J-Pop. Many K-Pop songs come with both a Hangul and an English song title. Since I couldn’t read Hangul until last year, alphabetizing them by the provided English title felt like the safest bet. In the rare case that a song comes with only a Hangul title, I have no choice but to alphabetize it by its literal reading.
Therefore, I sort F.T. Island’s song “사랑 사랑 사랑 Love Love Love” as “Love Love Love” (the provided English title) instead of “Sarang Sarang Sarang” (the Romanized title), whereas MONSTA X’s “사랑한다” is sorted as “Saranghanda.”
After I learned how to read Korean, I began to wonder if I should start sorting all of my K-Pop songs by their Romanized Hangul titles like the J-Pop ones. I’m all about consistency in my library. That led to an unexpected discovery: the provided English titles aren’t necessarily one-to-one translations of the provided Korean ones. In fact, they often mean something totally different.
For example, the Hangul title of the Girls’ Generation’s song “Lost in Love” is “유리아이,” which reads as “Yuriai” and according to Wikipedia and Google Translate means “Glass Child(ren).” What?! Unless I’m missing something, those two titles have nothing to do with each other. Going by my J-Pop sorting rules, though, I would have alphabetized the song as “Yuriai.”
Yeah…that idea went out the window pretty quick. While I can deal with a few Hangul-only titles here and there, I’m not ready to go all-in with it. My Korean skills aren’t that good. I probably wouldn’t remember most other Hangul-Romanized songs during a search any more than I would remember “Black Tears” for “Kuroi Namida.”
I’ll continue to sort the songs by their provided English titles by default.
Sorting Artist Names
Sometimes I have to do the sorting trick with international artist names too. This is frankly more of an issue with J-Pop artists because I’m overwhelmingly into K-Pop bands that don’t write their names in Hangul and artists that go by a single name.
There are two reasons for the sorting problems here. First, I tend to stick with how the artist’s name was written when I first discovered them, regardless of whether it follows the Asian tradition of putting the last name first. Second, I get songs from different sources, so the same artist’s name may show up in kanji or Romanized in the American-style (first name, last first).
Let’s look at some examples of how I’ve handled this situation thus far:
• Koda Kumi appears exclusively as “倖田來未” in my library. I ripped most of her music from import CDs, so I (correctly) alphabetize her as “Koda Kumi.” The two or three songs that I bought from the iTunes Store listed her name as “Kumi Koda.” I changed them to the kanji version to match the other songs.
• Amuro Namie is (incorrectly) alphabetized as “Namie Amuro.” I have one import CD from her, which gave her name as “安室奈美恵” (“Amuro Namie”) and tons of iTunes Store downloads, which call her “Namie Amuro.” I changed the kanji version of her name to “Namie Amuro” because I know her better that way and I had more songs under that name.
• Nakashima Mika is (incorrectly) alphabetized as “Mika Nakashima.” Her name shows up as “中島美嘉” (“Nakashima Mika”) because of the ripped import CDs and as “Mika Nakashima” because of the Freegal downloads. Currently, both forms of her name exist in my library.
The best solution is to change everything one way or another—put the names in Asian form or American form, Romanize everything or use kanji for everything. However, this is one of those rare instances where I chose to do nothing. This mess has been building for a decade. Attempting to unravel it now would wreak havoc on my library. I don’t want to deal with it.
That said, I’ll be using the Romanized, American form going forward. I don’t buy import CDs anymore, so the kanji names hardly come up anyway. I just hate to erase the kanji because it feels too much like I’m watering down a culture to fit my standards. Plus, the kanji looks very cool.
Managing Group Albums
As I mentioned before, I listen to a lot of K-Pop groups (primarily guy ones). Organizing groups in my library is complicated because each member—of which there could be anywhere from two to thirty—is a moving piece to keep track of. Individual members or a subset of the members (aka a “subunit”) often have songs on their group albums. It became important to formulate a plan for how to handle those situations.
Solo Songs on Group Albums
Typically, the Artist and Album Artist fields for solo songs only contain the group name. If the member or members involved are listed, it will show up in the Song field as “Title (X solo),” or occasionally, in the Artist field with that member’s name. There have been several instances where I’ve learned after the fact that a song isn’t actually a group song.
I decided to recycle the format that I use for soundtracks as the default: member name(s) in the Artist field, group name in the Album Artist field. Then I tag the song with the group name in the Comment field.
Example: The guy group VIXX has a subunit called VIXX LR with its members LEO and RAVI. On their Beautiful Liar album, LEO’s solo song “Thanks For…” has “LEO” as the Artist and “VIXX LR” as the Album Artist. I tagged the song as Vixx, and it appears on my smart playlist for all VIXX-related songs.
Easy-peasy.
Subunit Songs on Group Albums
Things get more complicated with groups where I may have to keep track of solo songs on group albums, solos on subunit albums, songs from different subsets of members, and solo songs/albums from different members all at once. I usually check the tracklist section for the albums on Wikipedia, which usually notes any solo and subunit songs.
Then I chose a format. If the song involves two members from the same group, I write “X & Y” in the Artist field (not to be confused with “X x Y,” the format I use for duets). For three or more members, it’s “X, Y, and Z.” If the song belongs to one member but features another member, the Artist is “X feat. Y.” The Album Artist is always the group itself.
GOT7’s &ME album is a good example here. Besides solo songs and full group songs, there are songs on the album that perfectly illustrate my formats:
• “1:31 am” – JB & Youngjae
• “WOLO” – Jackson, BamBam, and Yugyeom
• “OMW” – Mark feat. Jackson
I had to fill this information in manually using Wikipedia. When I first got the album from Freegal, every track had “GOT7” as both the Artist and Album Artist.
The CD for BTS’s latest album, Proof, does better on this front. Obviously, “BTS” is listed as both the Artist and the Album Artist on most of the songs. On solo tracks, however, the Artist field lists that member’s name. That’s exactly how it should be!
The only track that I had to tweak to fit my rules was “Tony Montana,” which listed the Artist as “Agust D feat. Jimin.” Agust D is the member Suga’s solo alterego. If the Artist had been “Suga feat. Jimin,” I would have left it alone like I did with the “OMW” in the GOT7 example above because Jimin is also a BTS member. However—and there’s been a whole conversation about this lately—I consider Agust D to be separate from Suga and thus, separate from BTS. So I put “Agust D” as the Artist and changed the song title to “Tony Montana (feat. Jimin).”
NCT’s special subunit, NCT U, presented a unique challenge. NCT U songs are performed by a collection of members from NCT’s main three subunits. These songs list “NCT U” as the Artist and “NCT” as the Album Artist. At first glance, it seemed like they should have followed the same format as my Glee and Empire songs, where the actual group member’s names are listed in the Artist field for each song. What’s the difference between the ‘NCT U’ name and ‘X Cast’ labels?”
The answer, I concluded, is that “NCT U” has a very specific purpose, while “X Cast” feels more like a generic label. Moreover, changing “NCT U” in that way would cause problems that changing the Glee and Empire ones didn’t. I left it alone.
Group Members on Non-Group Songs
Lastly, there’s the issue of a group member or members being on drama soundtracks or featuring on a non-group member’s song. Questions popped up about whether to mention the group the member(s) belong to.
When I got the song “Here Always” from the Hometown Cha-Cha-Cha K-drama OST from Freegal, the Artist was listed as “Stray Kids” and the song title had the subtitle “SEUNGMIN of Stray Kids” in parenthesis. I changed it. I put “Seungmin” as the Artist and left the Album Artist empty. I briefly considered putting “Stray Kids” as the Album Artist, but the whole point of a solo song is that it’s not directly affiliated with the group.
Of course, there’s always an exception to the rule. The Artist for the song “Once Again” from the Our Blues K-Drama OST came with “Winter (aespa), Ningning (aespa)” as the Artist. I changed it to “Winter & Ningning (aespa).” Unlike “Here Always,” “Once Again” is part of a soundtrack album, which means that the Album Artist field is automatically “Various Artists.”
When a group member collaborates with a non-group artist, the format differs from song to song. Heize’s song “Distance” has “(feat. I.M of MONSTA X)” after the song title. Suran’s “Diamonds,” however, doesn’t mention NCT anywhere even though Taeyong, a member/the leader of said group, features on the song. The same goes for Colde’s song “When Dawn Comes Again,” which features Baekhyun without mentioning EXO.
I started wondering, how important is the “of Group X” part anyway? Not very. I always tag the songs so they’ll show up on the appropriate group’s smart playlist. It’s only helpful in the cases where I don’t know the artist or their group well. And yet, its very presence or absence creates this weird hierarchy where one artist is presumably too famous to mention the group they’re in while another artist isn’t. I didn’t like that.
Therefore, the default format for these songs will be like the “Here Always” example—group member as the Artist and an empty Album Artist field unless the song comes from a soundtrack. If it’s a collaboration, the member’s name will be included in the song’s title as “(feat. X)” sans the group name, as I have removed the group names from all of the non-group songs. That means that “Once Again” will list “Winter & Ningning” as the Artist (no aespa needed) and “When Dawn Comes Again” will continue to be “(feat. Baekhyun)” [minus the EXO]. Everyone is equal.
Musicolet Adjustments
It’s been two years since I started using the Musicolet app to play music on my phone. While I love the app and have no real complaints with it, I had to slightly alter or relax some of my organization rules to fit how the app works.
First off, there’s no Sort As function (that I know of). Without it, I can’t properly alphabetize things that are written in kana or Hangul short of actually changing them. I’ve done that twice. I changed Mika Nakashima’s kanji name to the Romanized version to make her show up as a single artist instead of two. Beyond cases like that, there’s nothing I can do. I’m definitely not going to Romanize every instance of kanji or Hangul in the app.
Second, there’s no Comment function to tag things. That means I can only file a song under one genre. To make up the difference, I create playlists to keep track of songs from my various subgenres.
In iTunes, “Stay With Me” by Chanyeol & Punch is filed as Soundtrack with a K-Pop subgenre because it’s a single from the K-Drama OST for Guardian and sung in Korean. It’s also tagged as “EXO” and “Kdrama” in the Comment field because the main artist, Chanyeol, is in that group and the song is from a K-Drama.
In Musicolet, I set the genre as K-Pop and put it on my “K-Drama OSTs” and “EXO” playlists. It basically amounts to the same thing as the tags. The only snag is that I have to do everything manually and I sometimes forget to do so.