100 CDs Ripped FREE with a Sonos Bundle!

Just a quick public service announcement - we’re running a promo this month where we’ll convert 100 of your CDs for free (read: no money!) when you purchase a Sonos 150 Bundle ($999). Give us a call at 1.866.391.8447 to talk to a Ripstyles expert!

An Official Start (again)

Jumping right in - we’ve had some experimentation in the blogosphere with ripstyles, but this is it. We’re official. This is the official ripstyles blog, it’s managed by Jonathan (that’s me!), and since my business cards say CEO and Co-Founder I’m going to assume that’s my title. Most of the writing will be done by me, but we’ll have some of the other staff and friends put some stuff up once in awhile, too.

So what do you want to hear? Our initial thoughts are to mainly make this focus on notable new product news, how-to articles, and quick one off bits of interesting media. What would you like to hear/read/see/etc? Shoot us an email to blog@ripstyles.com and tell us your thoughts!

Hello!

We’re just getting this setup, so there will be formal introductions and announcements soon!

How To: Using iTunes’ Consolidate Library Feature

In my line of work, talking to people about iTunes libraries that are a complete and total mess is commonplace; music on the desktop, in the Music folder, on an external drive, on a network drive - everywhere. So many people are thrilled when we tell them about iTunes’ library consolidation feature. Essentially, iTunes will pull all of the music that’s in your Library file, yet scattered throughout your computer’s storage locations and “consolidate” it all in one place.

Say you have an iTunes library with any number of songs in it. Now suppose that some of that music is on an external hard drive in a few folders, some is on your desktop, and most is in your Music folder. The goal is to move all of the music to your external hard drive, and get it all organized into neat files based on artists and albums. iTunes will do this for you!

• Make sure that your external hard drive is attached, and open iTunes. Make sure you’re running iTunes 8.0 or later
• Ensure that there are no exclamation marks (!) next to any of the songs in your libaray. These mean iTunes can’t find the associated song on your computer, and you’ll want to make sure they’re all available
• Open iTunes Preferences (Edit -> Preferences on Windows, iTunes -> Preferences on a Mac) and click on the “Advanced” tab
• Click the “Change” button next to iTunes Music Folder Location, and choose your external drive (you can choose any location to keep all your music in, this is simply an example)
• Make sure that “Keep iTunes Music Folder Organized” and “Copy files to iTunes Music folder when adding music to library” are both checked.
• Click OK to close the Preferences window
• Now click on the “File” menu, then choose “Library” and “Consolidate Library”
• iTunes will warn you that this action cannot be undone; click “Continue”
• Let iTunes work it’s magic - if you’re like me and have thousands of songs, it may take awhile. You might consider doing this process overnight.

And you’re done! Keep in mind that whenever you open a song in iTunes, it will now be copied to your iTunes Music folder location you chose, and kept organized by artist and album.